What happens if you’re supposed to write,

but you don’t know what to create about?
Do you just keep writing
until something comes?Is it like eating breakfast cereal?
You don’t really know why
or how much to eat,
but you know you have to fuel your body?

Is it like that except for your mind and soul?
I’ve seen that vision of
sitting on the stump in the woods and writing.

At this moment, though,
I’m stumped
as to what I should write about.
And it’s hot and humid
and the bugs are buzzing
and I once saw where Tennessee Williams
wrote A Streetcar Named Desire
in the old French Quarter in New Orleans
(I wrote a STELLA poem about it!)
and I wonder how he stood it

with no air conditioning,
sitting in a room
in a brick walk up
in the French Quarter’s
sweltering oppressive heat.Why does no great literature
come out of sub-zero freezing pain?
Can I, as a Yankee transplant,
tap into that creative energy
that oozes like sweat-made tea
and humidity,
that soaks the back of shirts
in Rorschach patterns
along the spines
of men and women?