Ever felt like this?

[billy]

the art then [for you] is not to be human

aside from the smart arsed remark. i think i understand you.; not that i could ever match your skills but life seems to have taken me over. i just can't be arsed to write a poem. i seem to remember feeling this way years ago and got out of it by forcing myself to scribble, the end product as usual wasn't pretty but it was a product of sorts. i am amazed that someone with your ability feels as you do but i think it just goes to prove the universe is fair. now you have posted this thread i shall, when i get home, write at least one poem a day mainly shorts and one reasonably long poem a week. they like my other attempts won't be good but they will be poetry [of sorts] thanks for the inspiration. i'm sure once you read my stuff, you'll be inspired to show me up

It is less than two months since I last swore off writing poems.  I still have not written a poem, unless you count a couple of rude limericks and a rather angry verse that repeated the word "fuck" several times but didn't really say much else.  So, no poems.  The world has not fallen apart.

 
But I have.  I've still carried on life much as always, making sure that I get information from myriad sources on as many subjects as possible to stay informed and ahead of the game if possible -- but without poetry, all of these things have been dumped into my brain with no way to download them.  Poetry, I now realise, was my way of making sense of the world and in its absence, I have lost myself beneath piles of unsorted horrors, injustices, hypocrisies and the occasional kitten video.
 
In the absence of poetry, I have found excuses.  I have become the whiny, annoying person who can't help undermining all the goodness in others because I can't see it in myself.  I have actively sought reasons to avoid anything that might make my life easier, or anything that seems remotely creative because I mistakenly conflated my ability to write poetry with my underlying creativity and thought I needed to turn my back on both.  My anxiety has increased and my empathy has been reduced to virtually nothing.  
 
And so today I sit and write this with a wish that I had a poem to fix it all, and realise that the well is too muddled with pollutants to yield anything pure.  All I have are disconnected phrases and an overwhelming sense of cliche.
 
This morning I realised that to be human, I need poetry -- and it's gone.

From my blog