How To Write Poetry
How to Write Poetry
Wear dark clothes.
Be troubled.
Maintain a mysterious gaze into the unknown.
Tell others you stare into the future,
but it looks so much like the past and present,
you worry about repeating yourself.
Slump at the desk.
Stand slowly. Walk tentatively.
Reveal secrets.
Wreck your eyes, lose your glasses,
then write about injustice.
Maintain a mysterious gaze into the unknown.
Tell others you stare into the future,
but it looks so much like the past and present,
you worry about repeating yourself.
Squint—even when you do not need to squint.
Project weakness, illness, and strength—simultaneously.
Strap a broken watch to your thinner wrist.
Hide shoes in thick bushes
near the liquor store and deny, deny, deny.
Confess. Apologize. Rant.
Change your mind freely.
Issue quiet cryptic warnings—in writing.
Carry signs which display incoherent messages.
Speak to inanimate objects.
Be dramatic.
Here is an example:
Beware, dreary midnight bird.
Foreboding darkness fills the abyss
like darkness fills an abyss.
Foolish shadows hide as love sinks
into the foreboding personification
of suffering hibiscus—
stunted, drooping from toxic fumes
spewed from the disappointment factory
where hopelessness, itself,
loses hope and flops face first
into the inevitable soup of tragic disaster.
Copyright © Jim Babwe | Year Posted 2022
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