Have you ever felt the hunger deep inside?
The monster with its insatiable cravings,
The claws that promise to tear you apart
That beast that calls itself inspiration,
The terror that says it is drive to create

Have you seen the ghost that lingers
Behind blue-tinted window-panes, in the breath
Of white vapor on a snowy day? Have you seen
‘It’, it that lives in heartbreak and mines it
For sepia-tinted photographs and
Confusing poems?

I’ve seen it on sunny days, in the way warmth
Lights me up inside - though even more than that,
It’s the memory-hued colors of California afternoons
It’s the way those colors look on print, even though
I can’t ever capture its feeling

And that’s what it is, isn’t it
The reach to put the unexplainable into words,
The unimaginable into pictures
The pain of it into being