Can You Stop Being A Poet?

Can you be a poet and suddenly just stop?
Can you be a poet for a while, maybe a long

while, and then become something else entirely?

I only ask because lately I've been feeling all

expository. For example, this morning

I was going to write a poem about the

rising sun and it started off like this:

The rising sun was beautiful

for the following three reasons:

Do I really intend to express myself

• with bullet phrases

• and numbered paragraphs?

Once my lines flowed across the page
like spilled cappuccino leaving an un-
mistakable trail impossible not to follow.

I could scatter similes and metaphors

around like they were cracked

corn and each line was a chicken.

Now, when I make a new stanza I think:
Stanza originally meant stopping place
and its origins are connected, somehow,

to a farmer plowing a field.

Now when I hear the word onomatopoeia

I immediately think of an Italian going

to the bathroom.

Now when I seek verisimilitude

it feels like I've just been hit

in the face with a wet rabbit.