They Come To Me Poem by Charles Chaim Wax

I really don’t want them to
these souls
inhabiting destruction.
Reading Virginia Woolf
her words catapulting me
into the London twilight
then drowning herself
no instantaneous death
before the lungs burst
Or Cesare Pavese
his friend saying
“an immense and complex
distrust of men and life”
went under at 42
his poems
shining on his grave
And Edward Lear
that queer duck
who scribbled absurd lines
seeking to capture
a human touch
on his desolate cheek
never did
and others nameless numberless
somehow the great matter
eluding intelligence
not so the Rinzai Zen Priest Poet
Ikkyu
scribbling delight
in the moonlight
with his own frail flesh
his precious poems
an elixir of life.