From whence inspiration
A lottery prize
Buy enough tickets
Increase your odds
To make it happen

Conjured muse
Summons
A bearing down
A calling forth
To grind the spark

Often, silence
Seeking light
Hungering for more
Digging deep
Bumping into shadows

Slender pivots
Heralded new images
Energy ON
Minds in madness
The heart knows and responds

Internal engine purring
Inspiration, process, drive, product: Creativity
Lather, rinse, repeat

Too many people take the good in their lives for granted
Behaving in ways that imply
A belief that they deserve their blessings
Without actually pondering just why
They think the randomness of the universe
Accidents of birth
The preordained arrangement of genes
(Precise donor A mates with precise donor B resulting in self-deluded offspring C)
Should have bestowed upon them
Great hair, lovely cheekbones, high IQs, strong physiques
(Not to mention being born in the most powerful nation in the world
Instead of a back-street hovel in Bangladesh
Or the isolated frozen tundra in a far-flung corner of Siberia).

Too many people assume the mantle of entitlement
Thinking a bad day is one when their daughter fails to make show choir
Or where layoffs at Christmas will negatively impact a school bond issue
Or how unmatched metallics mar a cultivated pulled together sense of fashion
Unaware how petty their grievances come across
To those who have truly suffered
To those who have truly known pain and sorrow
To those desperately seeking a respite from their troubles
And never, not ever, finding it…

Oh, yes, the humanity!