You really have to be naked when you write poems. And poems are best written in public.
Scratch yourself down there and try saying the first line of your poem. Does it sound right? No but more important: Does it feel right?
People will judge you for writing poems. It’s part of the deal.
Make sure to spit a lot. Hiss. Moan. It’ll help you rattle up some ideas.
Oil and grease your body.
When the cops come, resist, passively. Go limp and relax your body. Chant the last line of your poem. Release the lines. Release everything. Pee. Fart. It’s natural.
Poetry is hard work.
Start an emergency somewhere. Or at least a sense of emergency. Go around a party talking about the second economic plunge and the looming figure of China. Mention how easy it would be to poison people’s drinks at this party. Stand in the circle until they drift away. You’re such an outcast in this city.
Be on the look out for farming and gardening tools. Red wheeled ones. Steal said objects and place them next to your chickens. Your white chickens. Eat the brown ones. This might inspire contemplative line breaks and unexplainable popularity.
Are you still naked? You better be.
Don’t ever cut yourself and bleed for the sake of art. It seems desperate. The wrong kind of desperate too. You’re an artist. You don’t need shit.
Forget your humanity. Remember how smart you are. The size of the earth? The capital of Belgium? Chief import? The movement of galaxies? The three major religions? Why? Meaning? The war? What did your teacher say? How? No idea. Get emotional. Be needy again.
Walk around a lot. You poor son-ova-bitch.
Get a job. Become jaded. Move to suburbia. Drink slightly more than you should on the weekends. Take the carpool lane. Alone. Never. Never ever. Never write about this experience.
Study poetics. Study literary theory. Study theory of literary theory. Write essays about the problem of language being used to study objects composed of words that study objects composed of words. Wonder if you forgot to lock your car in the campus parking lot. Wonder if the windows are cracked. Wonder if your weed will go dry.
Drink a lot of coffee. It’ll help you pee.
Get naked and oil your body up again. Line up every single person you’ve ever dated and slip from one embrace to the next down the line. This is metaphor.
Do slam poetry. Just do it. It’s pretty fun.
You really shouldn’t tell your friends that you’re a poet. Don’t tell your parents either. Don’t even tell strangers. It doesn’t get people laid anymore like it used to.
Be unintentionally celibate. Angst.
When it is April, pee on flower patches. It will fertilize them. Let everyone know that summer is coming soon so it won’t be a surprise. Start a world war.
Are you still naked? Put on some clothes. Put on thick rimmed sunglasses. Criticize all your friends through poem. All your hipster friends. They don’t really like jazz. Text message them. Be drunk for this. Don’t forget to how-
Drink more alcohol. It’ll help you pee. Peeing is the essence of poetry writing. Relax. Release. Your body will do all the work. Just collect the output.
Write about your daddy. Write about someone else’s momma.
Touch yourself. Re-read your work. Does it feel right?
Eat someone’s plums. No apologies.
Resist. Passively. Just write a lot of complaints. You’ll change the world in a high pitched whine.
Slippery. Oily. Nudity.
