Meditation #8

All you have to do
to be a poet

is to notice the way
a word slides into another,
or how it bumps against it.
Does it tickle your teeth
or break them?

Decide which you prefer.
Decide which makes for
a better picture
of what you mean to say,
or decide if what you just said
is something you meant to say.

If it isn’t, decide whether or not
saying that is what you need to say.
Decide what it is
that you say when you say it.
Get it on paper and then
decide what to do with it:
burn it? publish it? say it all again
with different bumps and glides next time
you say it?

It’s easy to be a poet.
All it takes is decision upon decision
reviewed through a clear lens
while chewing your words like lettuce,
like clams full of sand,
then choosing whether or not
to spit them out, and to decide
whether spitting them out is for your own good,
or for the good of someone you haven’t met
so they can pick them up
and chew them again.