A numbers game

lew welch spent decades an alcoholic cabbie
and a well documented week battling tremens
alone at big sur
just to get one line
down
the way
he wanted

in 1971
he wandered off
with a 30-30
near
gary snyders cabin
and
never came back

kerouac wrote over a million
words by 21
had a dozen unpublished books
by 35
died hemorrhaging his liver
to a toilet
at 47

they say to make
art
is to be
crazy alone
forever

but
maybe it takes more

there was
byrons painful club foot

joyce and einsteins
schizophrenic
children

matisses wheelchair

renoirs arthritis

huxley and homers
premature blindness

eliot a nervous breakdown
pound institutionalized
rimbaud shot
dostoyevsky nearly executed

franz klines 17 evictions

I wonder what it'll take you?