Meet me down here, if you dare to give up your last good thought. 

If you’ve nothing left to lose, I’m burning empty pages— 

journals I could never fill with anything worth the read. 

It’s the year of drought, and I am doubting every minute. 

I beseech the visionaries above the clouds of smoke— 

what do you keep in that living, breathing bottle of thoughts 

to have kept gardens growing after mine have all dried up? 

What meager words do I have left that I can still pour out? 

Or am I doomed to be stuck here, always yelling upward 

that I am nothing more than empty, barren, down and out? 

When you told me you were with me in the valley of death, 

did you know then how unpoetic death would really be—

nothing heroic or worthy of stirring up speeches, 

but a slow and pointless drying out, over and over 

again. My blood is worthless for ink, and if I’m human, 

I have not learned to create as my creator made me.