your favorite writers

will always tell you
if you’re going to be a writer
you must write

will always tell you
to write all the time

because they claim they did

and you
(following along in their wake
like sweet little sleep deprived interns
in the Hospital Of Broken Hearts)
ought to damn well
do the same

your favorite writers
are going to tell you to write
every day
tell you to churn
thirty poems in thirty days
or a novel in a month
because that’s how it works
when the Fire
is on them

that’s how the poor slobs
got to be your favorite writers

that’s how they got to be famous
one month of crazy at a time
at most for a few months at a time
and voila
the New Hotness
doth arrive

your favorite writers will tell you
all sorts of things
to disguise the fact
that they don’t have a clue
as to how this works

they assume
cause and effect
because to assume otherwise
is to make a case
for genius werewolves
vampire ghosts
and sentient zombies

listen:
if your gut tells you
the best thing for your writing
is to take a month off
or square your taxes
to screw your neighbor hugely for hours at a time
or walk your mother in the park
to watch a lot of television
and drink

you owe it to yourself
to try that

when I look at my favorite writers

I see more of that
than the cold and sober work they prescribe
for
whippersnappers
and upstarts

formulas are for chemists and physicists
writers suck at them mostly
write when you want
how you want
where you want

my beloved interns
get some sleep
this ain’t life and death

no matter how it feels
in the moment

no matter how it feels
in the long haul

Nothing good to be said
about now — Thursday morning,
ten o’clock.  Everyone’s
at work, street’s quiet,
cats are sleeping, I’m left
with The Work and the radio
or television, depending 
on what level of pain I’ll accept
to distract me.

I hate The Work as much as I love it,
as much as I hate and love myself.  Hate
its compulsory lion-taming ethic,
its dance-card-always-full expectation;
love its ultrachic disturbance
of the astral plane, its almost-human
face. When it beckons I am at once
comfortable in and imminently fearful
of rejection from its favor.

Thrusday, 10:00 AM.
Tired.  
Losing myself.  
Beginning
to become The Work,
puppet dancer
for a distant master,
unsure of the answer
to one Great Question:  

what should the singer do
when the band enters 
an instrumental break, when 
they extend, jam, go somewhere
the singer cannot follow;
what should the singer do
when it’s early and 
there’s nothing left 
to be sung?

People
retire daily.

There is 
precedent for it.

I am going to 
stop cold 
soon, end this 
nonsense, stop with
poems, end this 
blather and 
get back to 
what I was before

I was Seized.

Everyone
scoffs,
but they don’t understand
how little of this
has made me
happy.  

Maybe I wasn’t meant to be happy —

but I damn sure need to try and 
this is the only thing left to 
eliminate —
the only silencing
of compelling voices
left to be done,

so it shall be done.
If it takes and I live, 
all the better.  If it doesn’t take,
then I will die and then
it will take.  One way 
or another,
I shall one day
be rid of the words.

There’s no need
for me to be doing this
as others are already,
and there are a lot of them,
and they are proud of doing it,
and will tell you they do it,
and call themselves doers of it,
almost at the drop of a — beret?
baseball cap?  See how strong

the instinct is, the one that makes us
find the right word
and then crow about finding
the right words? There are a lot of us.
In fact I don’t know a soul
who has never written a poem.
There’s no need for me to be doing it

other than the selfish one within
that says I’m supposed to be doing this
and insists upon doing it even when
no one’s listening, reading, caring.
Even when every kid with a pen
has stopped listening, reading and caring;
even when every geezer is stubborn
and hung up on the Roberts,
Frost and Penn Warren;
even when I myself think this game
has lost its hustle and lustre —

still, though poetry has no need of me,
just like all these others
I am superficially convinced
of the general need for it,

even as
inside,
I am deeply afraid
of my need for it.

Terriers, retrievers, even sour ferrets
tossing rat-ragamuffin garlands of phrase,
tossing praise and damnation before us all;

what’s made them so tenacious
when it comes to the tight chains
they have wrapped around language and tongue?

They spell it all out as if
they have no faith in their listeners
to leap with them and land well.

Beacon, beacon, flare, flash, spotlight — 
give them the time and they’ll show you
what each second means, even if you’re

living through them yourself.  Magic men,
wisdom-drenched women; boys on fire, girls
on fire, and who knows who else coming ablaze;

all that jungle and banquet of breath —
and then from each a quick look over the shoulder,
just a sneak peek to see who’s watching and hearing.

Terriers, ferrets, dogs of word,
beasts of the stage moment; it’s not your roar
we love.  It’s not the music alone that works:

rather, the way the sound carries a thought.
Rather, the thought embedded in the sound.
Rather, the wondering audience going along,

trusting the ride.  The ragged harp
implying melody.  The terrier settling into
good hound, pointer not retriever.  “You get it.

It’s over there.  I’ll be quiet now until you do.”
Not looking back for the result. “Here it is.
Take it, it’s waiting.  Shhhhh…”