Night Sweats... an answer to a question about inspiration

Today I was asked how I am inspired, what motivates my poetry.  I replied that it isn't so much motivation, it's more like sweat. You don't ask your body to perspire, it just does. You exert or become overheated, maybe you are slammed by stress and so your body cools you.  Poetry is the sweat of emotions and it has no choice but to flow and cool you when the feelings are too strong.

Night sweats

Turn down the heat

The words can’t sleep!

Bursting to the surface

A thousand glands of feelings

Triggered

Too much to control and so…

Thoughts connect to feeling

The dam is breached

Escaping my pores

Words flow

Break free

Pouring through my skin

Coursing down to my fingertips

Out, out --  onto the page

Organic they rush forth

Emotions spilling

Emanating from within

Tangled in language

Words for grief, for passion, for anger, for joy

Wet and salty they take their place

Syllables and sentences

I write release

I write and then… comes peace

I pull up the blanket

Sigh 

    and fall back asleep

2/17/24