Poets, guidebooks, and parking lots

You are alone in nothing, who write poems.

What a terrible decision never to be alone!

You feel that you are lone. Liar! Who brought you here if not a writer? Who can stand you but another?

The musician records tracks. The painter blankets the canvas. The writer, aternal, begins. But what can the end be to beginning with friends who never die? I am a baritone (bordering tenor, my mind is clear) to Keats. Should I apologize for no choice? While in amongst all this I choose: I am a guide to Jupiter's pocketbook.

The poet is not the guide to the poet.

The poet is the accident to the guidebook.

The poet is the guidebook falling out of one's pocket into the fire or onto a muddied trail, picked up by a fellow traveler who thinks about asking around at the parking lot for who dropped the guidebook, but hesitates, climbs into their car, and drives home.

What lonely work it is! Writing the poem, reading the same poem.

What can we do but write poems? It's the only thing we can do!

It's the only thing we must do.