Dear Consistency,

I’m sorry I didn’t

write my poem-of-the-day yesterday,
and I’m sorry I won’t be writing one
today.

Building habits is hard,
and I know how you often get slighted
for your twin, Impulse.
But today, yesterday, perhaps
tomorrow, it isn’t about either of you.
It’s about life.
It’s about real jobs that need to get done,
real live people who will be affected
by the time I could have given to them
that I spent devoted to you;
head hard with overcrowding shadows
of commitments that went un-
followed through.

As much as I would like to make
daily prayer of pen to paper
a priority, Rome was not built
with similes; the Sistine Chapel
wasn’t sketched out with line
breaks; the person you care about
will never know the feeling of your lips
if you are too busy trying to find the words
to describe his.