wrap your mouth into a cliche. write about icarus, write about roses. write about the flowers in your ribs and the stain of your fingertips and the skin of your knees. write about cigarettes and getting high and kissing the wrong person. and space; write about space over and over in sixty iterations of it, write about star-blood and star-crossed and star-glowing, write about universes and galaxies and gladiators in constellations. write about the space between two people in a small room, write about the space that is too small no matter how big it is, write about the space that is too big no matter how small it is. write yourself a star and eat it, tinfoil-tasting, on the floor of your kitchen, while you regret missing your mother’s cooking. but write it.
write ugly. use too many undercase letters because you’re pretentious. USE ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT A SCREAM TRAPPED UNDER YOUR FINGERNAILS. ,, cut & paste grammar (? who gives a shit ?) ,, r3inv3nt so much u come back 2 l33t speak, dial it down a bit. write in the language of flaubert, then dickens, then the language your father used before he learned english. then write the language of talking to your dog, then write the language of high school essays on books you never finished. utilize the word utilize where it don’t belong. fall in and out of love with contractions. accidentally become bukowski for a hot sec, grow out of it.
write things you wish you hadn’t. write stuff so bad you can’t help groaning. write things that end in “a;sljflk jfg h” because they petered out while you were typing. write things that feel childish and use so much rhyme it throws you out of it. write things that feel grown-up and unfamiliar, too formal to function, up-their-own-asses. write things too enigmatic; forget what you wrote them about, but tell yourself it’s for the best. write things too obvious. go through a micro-poetry spell, go through a prose-poetry spell, fish the bottom of the box for x-ray goggles and write about how the cereal felt. write about your cat and the rug and un-deep fake-deep terrible stuff.
write things you really wish you hadn’t. stuff that hurts to read and hurts to look at later, stuff that makes your skin uncomfy and your body crawl. write stuff that looks better at the back of your closet. but stuff you can’t get rid of, really, not ever. stuff that, afterwards, makes you feel heavier. stuff that somehow, impossibly, kinda makes you lighter.
write about stuff you don’t really understand, write about social problems you barely experience, write about slam poetry. write about power outlets, write in the style of internet poets, write frost-length sonnets on how pink her lips are.
write bad. write worse. write bottom-of-the-barrel, and then keep scraping it. keep digging in it. god, how many people are too scared of being bad that they just. never get around to it. that they never even start doing it. what if all they have to say is silly shit about lost love or greek myths or a good kiss. what if they’re bad at it.
be bad at it. do you know how fucking rebellious and wonderful that truly, i mean truly is? and that’s poetry, man. the act of being so vulnerable, you’re willing to completely suck at it. big ideas in small boxes. it takes a long time before you get the packaging to fit.
go write bad poetry. i can’t wait to read it.
