Or Die Trying

Poetry is the wick that burns through my life,
it lights the infinitude of possibilities.
I cast out my lasso into the sea of words,
and draw it in as a hangman stills a corpse.
Possibilities slowly deflate into stanzas,
I attempt to capture everything,
compress the infinite into a single metaphor of life.

Inevitably I fail,
the monster wrestles free.
With a handfuls of words,
I cover my poetic embarrassment.

Poem by poem I eat the elephant,
expanding myself,
eventually I will encompass all of life,
become a poet,
or die trying.