I Wish I'd Written This

For Young Poets

First, stop banging away at silence 

like you would with a snow shovel against the ice.

A poem is not a dancing dog,

summoned to perform on its tiptoes at parties.

Put away all spirituous beverages.

Those who write while pitching in a sea of booze

do so in spite of such idiocy, not because of it.

If you haven't the imagination to see things differently without such props,

then become a mail carrier or a bus driver.

Read.

Read Lorca and rip your hair out til you're bald.

Read Neruda and flail, little fledgling on the cliff-side!

Read Plath, tuck your children safely in their room and then

to the kitchen with you to contemplate why cowards can't be poets;

at least not for long.

All you wild spastics shouting at the coffee bar,

waving pages and thinking volume and auctioneer-speak make poetry?

Sit down. Have someone duct tape your cake hole shut.

Think about what you haven't done, until you're ready to join us.

Now, to purge.

Write several great long hunks of unreadable shit,

staggering along on broken syntax,

with words strung together willy-nilly like last year's holiday lights,

all the similar-colored ones in a row, and half of them burned out.

Write haiku about a yew tree or a cherry blossom.

Get your paper plate-eyed friends to declare it all "brilliant!"

Then throw it away and we can get started.

Light candles.

They won't help you to write, but I like them.

Lock the door and don't answer it;

your husband will find his favorite golf shirt on his own,

and your children are already ruined anyway.

Let's do this thing.

The hard part is already done!

The lonely rejections and upheavals of childhood,

the sexual confusions and self-destructive rebellions of youth,

they're over with.

The burials, the pointless treks, the lovers who laughed and left,

the beetle of doubt and otherness digging its burrow behind your heart--

all of this is long complete.

Now, just stare out of the window at the sorrowful blue of the sky,

and the silver beauty of the impossibly distant moon.

Bite your knuckle if you have to, but stillness is best,

even to the point of drooling and apparent catatonia.

"What are you doing?" you'll be asked.

Working. Slaving. Making art.

Understand this, give yourself permission for this,

even as the dishes fester in the sink and the baby cries;

The seeds of greatness will germinate inside the still soil of you, The Poet.

It's not an easy road,

but there is soul and pride to it.

Your poems will be your own particular inverse garments to wear,

heart and guts to the world.

You have joined the cabal of those who possess a true talent:

unicycle riders have their uncanny balance,

lesbians their tongues,

demons their blackness;

now you have your poetry and people to admire you and say,

"It's nice",

"This is what you were doing?"

and "Huh." 

Or,

you could still apply to Beauty College.

It's up to you.

– Shay Caroline Simmons

No apologies if you've read this one already very recently, because I know you'll love reading it again. And if you haven't, oh what a treat I've just given you! Shay recently posted it to her blog and linked it to The Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

It blew all her readers away, and several said they wished they had written it. I wished that too, and rapidly secured her permission to say so publicly here. Some people said it should be disseminated in schools, blazoned on college walls, and so on. Well, I'm doing my bit!

I have featured Shay here before, and so has Sherry. If you'd like to know more about her, this link will take you to my article, which also links to Sherry's feature as well as to Shay's Amazon page. If you don't already follow her blog, it is Shay's Word Garden where she posts as Fireblossom. All her poetry is wonderful, and I think it all deserves to be read as widely as possible.

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.