I can’t write poetry and I will never
be a poet
despite the fact this is, after all, a poem.
It’s not because I can’t understand similes
or assonance or imagery or alliteration or
anything else I was taught in a freshman 
creative writing class, but because I was 
taught these things. I was told that to 
capture an idea blooming in my mind, 
fighting desperately to become words
on paper 
for the whole world to read, that I needed
to do it a certain way. Poetry needed to be 
complex, saying everything except
what I wanted 
to say, distorting the idea that glimmered 
in my mind until it became so dull,
I didn’t recognize 
it anymore and decided I would wait for a 
new glittering idea to burst at the seams
of my creative mind. I can’t write poetry 
because I try to capture what runs wild
in me, 
all those words and concepts. I try to pin down and 
perfect the feeling of holding a pencil, anxious for the words
to spill out, or the moment of bliss when your eyes snap open on a Sunday morning from the smell 
of mom’s cinnamon rolls, the ones you call your mother’s even though they popped out of the blue tube from Shaw’s.
Even now I can’t quite 
explain what I want to, what I need to,
so you see
I’ll never be able to write poetry.
All I can do is scribble
down thoughts made prettier with 
careful word choice, or more dramatic through personification, perhaps
made even more 
confusing from metaphors that aren’t quite 
developed yet.
I think it’s why I keep trying, 
keep putting pencil to paper hoping
that the filter education put between
my brain and hand 
will someday dissolve so that I can free
the images, thoughts, and stories racing around; 
let them blossom on the paper instead
of capturing them in words that don’t
quite say enough. 
Until then, I just can’t write poetry and
I’ll never be a poet.