Initiation

"You know you're a writer if the poetry book on your kitchen table was a pile of napkins last week." --Brian Trent

I used to be suspicious
of those can't-wait writers,
the ones bunched up
in backseats, curled over
neglected breakfast plates
as they scribble flash genius
in the margins of x book,
on last night's ratty dinner receipt,
across their own pale skin.
Please. If it’s worth remembering,
it'll still be there in an hour,
I'd think, rolling my eyes,
secretly a touch envious of
"what he's having."

So then, last Tuesday,
as I squeezed my way
onto a crowded train,
who would've guessed
I was less than a minute myself
from a similar possession,
overtaken in a moment's time
by the screaming need
to WRITE IT DOWN.

Whipping open
whatever battered magazine,
I did.

--me