Words run through my veins
         Freed by the cold sting of a pen.
     Flowing over my arm in stanzas and rhymes,
                 I relish the feeling
                          Of poetry running under the pen.
      So many times I cut the words free
  Until I have a song
               Falling in crimson drops from my body,
And I can again contain the words
                                       I hold in my blood.
     But my body replenishes the words,
                               And I must again free them.
        The pen cuts through my veins
                     Spilling the sonnets and the ballads,
And I do this again and again,
                   Until just once the pen goes too deep.       The words flow too swiftly to make a poem
   And I lose the would-be poems that made me.
                     I release the poetry in my veins,             And as they desperately try to revive me,
                                        I slowly fade out.

       My words were my strength
                                          and my downfall.