Is it poetry really necessary? Vital? What about the art? Is there life outside of art? The grand art? Is there any practical use of poetry? A friend of mine used to say: "you can't pay bills with poetry—generally speaking—but certainly it turns most of us more human". Well, my opinion  is quite similar, and I could observe that—like occur with other forms of art—no one writes poems, prose, paints, sculpts in a premeditated manner, something like "today it's a nice day to produce a masterpiece". We can't say the same about to write a best-seller book, of course!
I write poems and prose in Portuguese, my first language. It is very difficult for me to translate my poems to English. Therefore, I eliminated them from this page and instead I decided to present an old poem written in English in its original form (how pretentious that boy!) Maybe later with help of my friends I will translate them.
See now, that's it's the principal advantage on the pictorial works—you don't need translate them (grin)...
 
 

Poor dog       ©1997,99 Carlos Goncalves Sipping my drink all alone... In an empty apartment Whilst this, dogs barking in the black night, A little distant—it seems so, Maybe are they barking to the silver moon, or deep night, or each another Poor pitiful me— I don't know to bark or something, I just have those old blues coming into       my room slowly,

Coming from another apartment, probably       another solitary soul, With an old stereo playing those old       scratched records, so mellow— Makes me elude and divagate— And began to talk with my pockets, And finally I perceived—after two or       three more drinks— That I wrote another selt-pity poem,  So ordinary and useless, Like my old typewriter in a computer age. (A small note: the drinks here was served by Charles Bukowski)