sledge poetry

I suppose no two creators create in just the same way. No painters have the same stroke, and no guitarists twang quite identically. Perhaps there are poets who never edit at all, or some who do a first draft straight through then put it in a drawer for thirty-seven weeks. Or some who edit right away, but very...gently.
For something as "delicate" as poetry, my own editing doesn't feel gentle. It feels like i'm wielding a mini-sledge, striking away for hours, trying to sculpt the words into submission. I bang away with the sledge in my right hand...despite the bluntness of the instrument, my less dextrous left hand would yield apalling results. If i'm lucky, the finished product bears a resemblance to the first draft. If i'm not, it can be days or weeks of hacking and lunatic stanza-shuffling. Lines or words can be taken out, put back in, taken out, put back in...on rare occasions, i even take recourse to a thesaurus, trying and rejecting five, six, seven words...
Often a perfect strike, a perfectly-phrased line, will require a complete overhaul of the rest of the poem. Even the lines that were working.
Last week, i wrote a poem entitled "everything":
http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2011/01/sex.html
I whacked and banged for many hours, over several days. Sometimes after staring at the words for too long, your brain starts shutting down. You can fight off the bleariness, or lay your head down. Knowing when the poem's done is an inexact science...on at least half the poems i think are done, i scramble back hours or days later. Sometimes you just say, "Hey...that's the best i can do." "Everything" went through many title changes (even after posting, you can look above and see one): it was also called "Poisoned", and others i've since forgotten. There was a line that hung around for days..."Brother hate brother, lover hate lover". And "Sex took our friends" was another line that rests in (hopefully) peace. For the longest time, the entire last line was repeated throughout the poem.
Bang. Hack. Slice. Slide. Bang.
The end results are...usually middling. A good poet will write good poems (though not always, by any means). A great poet might never write a great poem, that perfect lightning strike of inspiration and craftsmanship. There are few rules, and no guarantees. A perfect title for most poetry books would be "Hey, I Wrote One Really Great Thing, Now You Wankers Get to Read All This Other Crap!"
Mommy, why is that sweaty man walking down the street with a mini-sledge wrapped to his hand?
That's just a poet, sweety.