I Wish This Chronic… Poem by John Tansey

I wish this chronic…
I wish this chronic,
clinically diagnosed, disability:
This obsession to write;

Its need to place letter beside letter;
in sort of intimacy, caress;
A matchmaker of words, so to speak.
It is this I wish would cease and desist;
It is incurable. a terminal disease
that will claim me at end!

A bloodletting…
From back in the feudal ages;
With leeches, heated, bulbous, glass jars;
And, still, the demons persist;
prodding!
Until I insist, myself, to pare the vein,
and let the venom out…