A question, a query for you,
and a word for every writer
who ever penned a poem or
who wrote a rhyme, if you'll
permit me the time to ask.

Why do you write?

What compels you to put
pen to paper, put pencil
to parcel in such a way?
What drives you to do
these things or to
write these words that
may never be read?

It's a query, a quandary
that'll get a hundred
answers depending on
who you choose to ask,
but certain themes
will show their faces.

Whether it's to outpour pain,
or to try and bring joy,
a kind of temporary glee,
to someone who might need it,
or just as a way to tell
a story of the heart or mind,
you'll find a connecting bind.

People who write want to invoke.
They want to invoke emotions,
or invoke thoughts in minds,
or invoke inspiration in souls,
or invoke true love in heart.
The goal is to invoke, and
to connect with the words one writes.
It's an impulse universal,
a goal of us creatures social.

I know that would be my answer,
if I asked myself the same.
If just one word out of one poem
out of the hundreds to be written
could connect to just one person
in the entire world and inspire
them to write something greater
than I could ever hope to conspire,
then I'd know that I had made it,
and that I could retire and die young,
cause through the words I wrote,
I'd possess a life eternal.

For to write is to invoke is to connect is to inspire is to live,
is to be human.