writing poetry is so flipping hard

[billy]

we all have our own ideas as to what poetry is but that's an aside really.
ray posted the follow (i amended the first 2 lines to suite me) but he more or less is in my head and i don't like it. i'm not as capable of writing poetry as well crafted as he is but i use the same mechanics. i find poetry extremely easy to write, though good poetry i do find particularly hard to achieve. i haven't written any for a while but there's a change a comin'. like ella i get excited when i think i've done a decent piece or i get a few good bits of feedback. we all like different things in life poetry is no different. what i like someone else will hate. i aim for a majority one way or the other. but the writing part is flippin' hard

oops, posted wrong again. anyway...

good stir, bad stir, good stir, bad stir, etc. (calm may or may not come later).

altered 1 Ii think of something while taking a dump or having a bath (never both at the same time) or falling asleep
altered 2 I try to remember what it was and try to write it. It turns to mush. I throw it into my 'bone pile' folder.
3 I am not feeling inspired, but I want to write something. I look in the bone pile
    and 2 has somehow transformed itself into 'interesting'. I try to edit it.
4 2's mush turns into 4's morass.
5 Back it goes, into the bone pile.
6 I overhear someone talking at a restaurant and I go through steps 2. through 5. Again.

7 But every once in a while it works and I feel I've made something beautiful
    (even if only to myself) and I am THRILLED.
8 While thrilled I see that 1 through 5 are but parts of a wonderful journey.

9 The thrill subsides and 1 through 5 are back to being tools of the devil.

10. But still...