"Inspiration"

Poem.

Someone once asked me where I find my inspiration.
I stopped, like deers do in high beams, ready to jump but my poet won’t budge from his seat.
I don’t know how to answer that.
I just stare and murmer “Um...”
“The world, love, economics...what?” he fires at me.
My lungs crash into each other.
My heart beats ‘timber.’
I can hear the drums in my chest beating, fast, like bottle rockets in jars.
My mind writhes, like a know it all with too much to say running off at the motor-mouth.
He jumps back at me, as if to say ‘hurry, tell me now!!!’
“So what is? Huh, I just want to know.  I mean...”
“Sir, stop.”
He shuts up, like a baby who’s just discovered his own hand, caught, like I was, teeth biting his tongue like a piece of candy.
“You want to know why I write?”
“Mhm.” he retorts, knowing not to say much.
“I write because there’s some people that won’t.
Because there’s some people that can’t.
Like the dead, and the unborn.
And the shy kid in your math class.
I write because some people are too afraid of what this clown of a country is going to say.
Because I feel a need to change somebody, like love does.
I feel I have something worth hearing like the man behind an information desk on the news, ready to tell you nothing short of amazing.
And I know, my fellow birds and bees need some other pleasure than themselves every once in a while.
I write, because like certain kinds of disasters, I still ain’t done here.
Because there’s still that mom who hasn’t heard the right thing to stop her crying.”
I see his face drop and bust open like a light bulb.
His knees buckle.
I see his hands sweating like your first time on stage at the second grade talent show.
“Let me tell you why I write.
The world, it stops revolving every now in then, but the shift, is too big to handle, so you don’t even feel it, and someone needs to get it going again before you notice that the gears shifted.
Certain types of pain need addressed.
Certain types of people need to be told it’s OK, like a clown who has just lost all their makeup in the middle of a show.
Sometimes I write because the moon isn’t enough of a spectacle to light up an imagination.
Because some quotes are just too small to capture the real feel of what he wants to say to her on valentines day.
Because some people need a message to slip into the exclamation mark at the end of an angry letter.
I write because I need it, I write because you need it.
And the day the communisms fall around themselves, somebody will need to talk about it.”
I saw his heart lynch inside of his stomach.
His eyes glazed over like a drunk guys face who just got called out by a cop.
His emotion hit stone and plumeted from it’s own depth.
He just hugged me.
I said “I write for moments like this.
When people open their eyes.
I write for the words that take up room in the calmas of statistics in charts detailing teen death rates.
My inspiration comes from every ditch digging itself, and every giant falling from his clumbsy knees.
For every star pacing back in forth on it’s own wings.
That girl who needs to know that she just hurt the one guy that really loves her, she needs to wake up.
That’s where my inspiration lays.
It’s as simple as the glare in an eye.
I see the beauty in everything.
It’s all like an abstract painting that looks like the world, no matter which way you turn your head.
I write because my heart beats the footsteps of those I don’t know.”
He crashed.
And fell.
I asked him “Why do you write, sir?”
He answered me, shocked and confused, “I don’t write...”
I said “You will.  And when someone asks you why you write, or where you get inspiration from, hand them a pen and paper, and tell them...’You tell me.’.”

Reviews

[Poetic Beauty]

I love this poem. this is a great way to express why we write. I never took the time to look at it like this but you certainly are write. We as poets or writers write because we have something to say and the reason are endless. This poem is a great way to explain why "we" write. Thanks for sharing this piece and the next time someone asked me why i write i will think of this poem.