You know it's poetry when the words choose themselves, when they come unbidden from the part of your mind that stores Yeats and Keats and Bukowski. When you cannot sleep until you get it all out, like the gory aftermath of a night of too much alcohol, when the difference between pen on sketchbook and fingers on keys is negligible. When you correct yourself, scratch out, backspace, because the flow is wrong and thus the sentiment. When you shake as it overwhelms you and your back hurts and your vision blurs with the strength of it. When all the past stories are meaningless pieces because small talk is unimportant and you're accessing the undercurrents, but you won't feel the smooth cold on your feet until the rapids, the foamy unstoppable waves of creativity, are past.

You look back at what's come out, the end product of your ectasy, and think, I did that? It came out of me? Because you don't recall the process by which you produced it. There it is, staring at you, final, but how it got there is a mystery, though you clearly see the pen shaking between your fingers.

You sigh and think, now I can go to sleep.