On the smoke from a bonfire

My muse has been away for awhile. The poetry has not been happening. I wrote a sonnet the other day that tipped over and died. Being creative is a horrible burden, risking it all to write even one line of poetry that should probably be left on the cutting room floor. The world seems a crazy place these where very little makes sense. People seem a bit crazy, but maybe they just need to stop and read a few lines and contemplate the road less taken. It is easy to just fall into certain patterns of behavior where spending money, buying things, being super consumers substitutes for just being a decent person. More things will  never make us better people. Art, any art, plastic or otherwise, verbal perhaps, non-linear, fragmentary, anarchic, might be a start to understanding what actually makes a human being tick. We need to get out of ourselves, be a little less narcissistic, stand in someone else's shoes, be less judgemental about just about everything, and let people, all people, just be who they are. Short or tall, thin or not, all colors, all persuasions, and perhaps no persuasion at all. As we spin, all together, on this tiny marble of a planet, we threaten our own existence because we have no tolerance for anyone who doesn't do everything in the exact same way that we do. Intolerance makes my stomach hurt. Diversity is the key to our success, but we buy another thing, store it in a garage full of other things we don't need or want anymore, and we criticize. What would happen if we forgot how to do that, picked up a book, any book, and spent a little time enjoying the art that someone else wants to share with the world? I got a postcard from somewhere in the Mediterranean from my muse saying that the food was tasty, the drinks were cold, and that as long as the USA was a mess, she wasn't coming back. *sigh*