If We Must...

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If it all feels helpless, if that famous ‘inspiration’ will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not—and the odds are against it—go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper—write.

~ J.B. Priestly

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Persuade into a pen thought’s scraped from dust

Or siphoned from the air, life’s filigree

Of moment quick-fall sealed in poetry

The care of circumstance cleaves to our skin

Seeking to weigh our hands with living’s din

And yet, it seems we’re driven to a stage

Reserved for suffering with pen and page

We paper rooms with echoes; silence swells

With notes the aching throat and heart regales

But restless is that ever-thirsting yen

Until we fill and spill the poet’s pen

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Spell out thought’s burning, yearning wanderlust

Oh wretched, blessed bliss to beggars born

To live somewhere twixt pulse and parchment torn

© Janet Martin

Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.

~ Henry David Thoreau