I read up some on those entering poetry contests
Do not write a poem about poetry
Or serendipitous love between strangers
standing in line at Peet’s Coffee,
Or spoken word… do not wail for others’ causes
unless you’re angry with your very own injustice;
Write nothing on anything wished or rumored,
like a dictator’s brain warping cancer,
or those boys in the tabloids,
in their orange jumpers,
who threw rocks off the overpass,
making some people die.
Do not write about the sultry August sunsets
over Gethsemani Abbey. Do not.
Thomas Merton has carried this sublime beauty
to the grave in a divan of silence.
If you can write after reading Cohen,
then he’s spared you of a wicked truth; that is
without the elixir of bone, blood, and sinew,
you’ll write merely pretty lies.
You may karaoke “When Dove’s Cry”
at the Vegas Lounge in Minneapolis.
But Prince crooned from his guitar.
Can you picture this with a poem?
I hear, poetry is not gossip. You shouldn’t write
of the stillness of pines,
unless you love Mary Oliver
as she loved the secrets of the woods.
Best you be like the newborn mockingbird,
alone all its life in a soundproof cage.
Whatever song you sing upon emerging,
that is your winning poem.
