I sit down to produce a jot of verse— I stand up, and I pace around the room. What might have been a banger will get worse The more I pace. To hesitate spells doom. For any work which takes a focused mind— And poetry is surely in that group— Ideas must flow all at once, I find, Or else I'll lose myself: caught in a loop Of thinking, and rethinking, and—oh, fuck! I've dropped the thread entirely by now. That's what I get for pacing: a big suck; The glimmer of a topic, but no "pow!" One saving grace: there is no Poem Boss. When I screw up, it's no-one else's loss.