What drives one to commit poetic acts?

To struggle with words and lay out the facts

Of cognitive process probing abyssal zone

 Of absolute being, of essence alone?

What causes from a poet’s soul, ink to flow

And bleed on bare fields in patterns so?

What causes from a poet’s being, words to fly

To alight on a medium, their sounds to cry?

What wrings from a poet’s spirit, phrases of rhyme

So complex simple, yet cognizant of time?

What draws from a poet’s core, melodic verses

That in tone and timbre, exotic beauty nurses?

It’s pain, rage, anger, hurt. And it’s despair.

It’s all of the above, and feelings beyond repair.

But also it’s love, empathy, happiness, and joy,

All the great list of pleasures they employ.

Warbles of language, the poet’s emotions extract,

To clothe their pages with raiment, color exact,

Then juggle pieces fondly more precisely to convey

What brain, being, essence, core and soul can say.