Step one is waking up
and writing about your day.

I want to talk about language,
your mothers cheapest wine and worst blueberry jam
staining all your best clothes with verses.
Vignettes appearing all over
the rented tuxedo from the wedding.
Dark ink and oil separates in a margarita glass
soaking into the cuts on your dry lips,
dusting your hair and the spaces
between each individual vertebrae.

Syllables dripping from the tip of your nose
and fingernails
leave novels on the linoleum and
books of sentence fragments on the hardwood.
Poets bleed into cracks on fine china
pooling into poems.
Space heaters emit quotes from dead people
I sign each word when
the analogue clock ticks,
each poem adding another minute to the day.
I’m always hoping I can squeeze in a few more hours
so I can watch the ****** orange sky
with grass in my shirt,
the Pixies mumbling in the background
leaving lyrics trapped in my teeth.

Anthologies of letters
between man and his dog
hidden onomatopoeias in every backyard.
I'll write you 364 days of the year
too many paragraphs to fill the barbecue.
Burn through pages with paper matches
making enough poems to last a decade.

Transfer phrases into the soles of my shoes,
I want to walk on water,
the "W" curled up beside my baby toe.
Every inch of the fabric we call skin,
stamps and ink pads,
turn everything to poetry.
Despite seas of fog
where breathing stops the words
from forming in your throat,
the only way to express is by experience
and frantic fountain pens.
Smoke on the balcony
writes starry sonnets about the girl in your bed
lining the waxing moon with poetry,
a **** homage to Shakespeare himself.

Serendipity;
finding something good without looking for it.
A feeling I have encountered
keeping my breathing sporadic,
rarely setting me on fire.
Living Chinese finger traps
burning blue poems on my palms
splotching the back of my neck
licking up my thigh and hips.

Let me throw away my common sense,
the final step of becoming a poet.