How to be a Great Poet
A little instruction manual for aspiring poets...
If at all possible (aside from daily chores and bodily functions), don’t ever work— especially an office job which incarcerates you from nine to five. It’s the superheroes’ worst nightmare. Dolce far niente is what you’re aiming for. Therefore (you should make this top priority), and become independently wealthy any way you can without the guilts. Because you know it’s time to jump off the merry-go-round when all the horses wail: “Last stop downtown Chicago” When garbage trucks belch in your face without saying “excuse me”. When— after your tramping feet wear out a trench between your day job and your source of transporation— you finally realize God exhausted his supply of extras in the movie of your life, because you see the same old faces crash against your daily shores while they hold board (bored?) meetings in the middle of the street. When hairs— stressed out in despair— leap off the mountain of your skull. When nothingness oozes into your veins like commuter trains injecting payloads of burnt-out drones into the city. Nevertheless, your inner pendulum must stand absolutely still no matter how violently the earth shakes around you. You must pull the car over to stop and smell flowers of fireworks as they blow luminous pollen into the eyes of night. You must learn to love things that completely baffle your dysfunctional family. Your heart must become your eighth layer of skin. Your nerves must be taut as telephone lines through which the stars of your words beam celestial symphonies. Face it, you simply must do what you love to do. A poet’s work is twenty-four/seven. What nobler enterprise is there worthy of your precious time? No one realizes how important this business really is. You are the human antenna, absorbing all the scrambled sounds and voices as you surf the frequency bands of the streets in search of the perfect signal. After a while you may become your very own Hubble telescope, able to penetrate people’s galaxies clearer and deeper than most of the lower-end floor models embedded sideways in your average cranium. The whole universe pours through the heart’s nuclear reactor, until its core melts down into words and feelings, and covers the world with the fallout of your fame. Be prepared for the uncomfortable silence of crowded elevators. To be interrupted by an ecstatic bird’s song you’ll never hear again! To cross scrimmage lines of people hunting for lunch in the noonday sun while you’re out for a quick bite of heart. (They can’t help but shove their ugly snouts into your lapels, because they can tell—from that lost look on your face— you’re seeking out a new civilization). Don’t panic. Days and nights will slowly fill your soul like a gas tank—or gunpowder in an M80— and blow apart in an explosion of poetry which crystallizes the shrapnel of hours and minutes left in your wake. Life deals you so many cards. Moreover, the Dealer’s sneaky; he always keeps the best ones up His sleeve. And how you play the hand is strictly up to you. But remember to keep the nine of hearts in reserve. In due time— you’ll see— you will ascend a grand staircase of clouds bearing your poetic nuggets, and claim that prize: the Sun’s chalice! From which you’ll drink that luminous liquid of that eternal vintage reserved only for the victorious.