A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

forest
calmness
inspiration

He writes poetry
But no one knows

He writes poetry
He writes about love
And loss

He writes about smiles
And frowns

He writes about sorrow
And forgotten towns

He writes about how lost he gets
Caught up in his own mind

He writes poetry to
And about others

But no one knows

Know one knows the depth of his soul
Because they all choose to see the exterior
And that exterior screams

Preppy
And preppy
Don't have souls

Or so they thought
Until the day he was consumed
By his own poetry

I feel like a stranger
Stuck in another stranger's body.


-- Eleanor