When all my best poems come from pain,

I think of my freshman fiction classroom.
Dr. Tudor said not to fall into the trap
of thinking that the darkness gives you
anything of use, but how can I ignore
how all the modernists were alcoholics,
and the post modernists speak for
themselves, and I’ve never written
a love poem that didn’t later burn me.
Forgiveness only comes after trespass.
Maybe it’s not the tortured that makes
the artist, but still, I milk the pain
for all it’s worth; this trauma is only worth
kindling for the fires of creation.