Why Write?

To hear the mermaids singing. Not quite.
To make sense of life. No experience, no nonsense.

To make life better for future generations.
Why care about the future? The dead don’t live to see it.

To save people or nations. 
Poets just wanna have fun.

To exceed one’s limits, derivatives with limits.
The one power that a man can have is in the perfection of himself.

Clear commentary from which many people will derive meaning. 
Having nothing to teach I tell a joke. The snail joke.

To produce knowledge, nuance and pleasure.
Whatever you do to one side of the equation you gotta do to the other.

There are a few mirrors in which I imagine myself.
The dream mirror in which I’m killin the villains.

The public school in which I teach, energy incubator awesome biomass
      collector innovation inhibitor introduction to classical mathematics 
      memory organizer promotion celebration teen lovefest testosterone 
      uncontrolled substance.
Jail’s the alternative, alternate noosphere, foreseeable force,
      intemperate penance, meditational penitentiary, prayer cellblock,
      library laundry, aborted love life, deflating genes, judges’ chambers,
      movie night.

Bad movies in which the logic switch is turned off.
The end of faith in which acts of war are mistaken for religious acts.

Photographs in which the name and face don’t match.
Measurements in which the last significant digit is the Other.

Might as well go to market.
Might as well believe in that higher power.