They say to write poetry is easy. Take a few words, put them together, make them sound nice.
“Or else do like I do,” she said rather quietly. “Tie them in knots like a cherry stem with your tongue. When you do…”
“You’re a good kisser,” finished the other.
“A good poet, you mean,” I interrupted.
So, like they say to write, you have to chew thoughtfully, first, on a ballpoint pen. Sit in the dark, invoke spirits of Plath and cummings, try to make words cum in your mind.
They say to write poetry is easy – all you have to do is
“Imagine yourself on the pedestal, splitting image of”
“…god,” finished the other.
“God can’t be split,” I argued.
“You can do anything, if you’re god.”
When you write you are god. Or are you. How can you create something from a box-set of letters, words from fridge magnets, a puzzle of chance and a stew of alphabet soup. How can you be god, when you write. Or are you.
“To write you have to have cigarettes,” she declared. Pulling out a pack, lighting a match. Reds, lights, menthol, slims. “Your choice of smoke is like the air you breathe. You have to learn how to write.”
“You have to learn to be god,” continued the other.
But how can you be god, how can you spread Genesis to Revelation on paper, how can you make your pen flow like fluid, like an orgasm, like a growth spurt, like honey dew. How can you. Or are you, already.
Do I have to be someone else when I write, I asked. I only want to know one thing, is it easy, or is it difficult.
They say, to write is easy, it is just a matter of getting used to words.
“Then,” she said, “read me something you’ve written.”
Clearing my throat I started to chant, words I picked up from the corners to the cracks of the floor:
“And in my arms it cries
Like a baby for milk
Like insomnia for sleep”
“No good,” she insisted. “You are still not god.”
So I tried harder.
I read:
“I never wanted anything
but your hand on
my belly.”
I followed my reading with a question: Does it make sense?
“I don’t know… does it?”
“Does it? I don’t know.”
“Then continue.”
I continued:
“Head in my tongue,
like caviar,
moving as if eclipse.
The eclipse never ends
I forever
see half.”
To write is easy, they say. All you have to do, to write, is to string words together, and to become god.
