BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR TELEPATHIC PROSE
Lee Sharks & Jack Feistfrom Pearl and Other Poems

1.     Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

2.     You are your own best advocate. Insist the world acknowledge your poems as artifacts of tiny doom. Accept nothing less. Threaten to smash yourself in the face with gasoline and set your hair on fire. Leap over the seats to aggressively stand inside the world’s personal space and get up in its grill. Take this container of Tic-Tacs and smash it on your forehead. Crush each Tic-Tac individually into your eyeballs and ask the world if it likes your poem, and if it likes your poem, then eat your poem: “Do you like my poem? Then eat it.”

3.     Always seek constant approval, then punch your cat in the face.

4.     Arrive alive. Don’t text and drive.

5.     Always write poems all the time.

6.     Never professionalize writing. Professionalism is the last refuge of responsible people looking for work.

7.     Your life is your poem. Take care to write it biographically. Failing that, invent false biographies and post them on Wikipedia.

8.     Get as much education as you can, then ****** your education in the face to save it from sloppy education. Get enough education to respect your contempt for education.

9.     Give it all that you have, as deep as it goes, as desperate and total as taking a breath.

10.  Also be pedantic mundane pig-critic of precise punctuation juggling and ruthless crossed-out darling murdering of your own puny sentences. Save every draft and revert to original after enormous work, then drown yrself in the bathtub. Remember: editing is organization.

11.  Be long-sighted prodigy of skeptically believing in nothing, but also believe in destiny, but quietly, and hit yourself in the face for naivety’s sake.

12.  You are a seamstress of words—place each stitch carefully, deliberately. Develop a series of rituals and perform them, without variation, prior to placing each word. Allow the frequency and intensity of these rituals to grow until you spend hours, each day, touching and retouching your left index finger to the tip of your nose in a rhythmic, counter-clockwise motion, in sets of thirty revolutions, in order to place a single character. Spend years of your life shut away from the world, wasting away into an awkward, unhygienic shadow of your former self, and have, to show for it, a two-syllable word of Germanic origins on an otherwise clean, white page. This word will be redoubtable, the bedrock of your writing career. Go on to spend vast sums of personal wealth and total dedication, alienating the remaining handful of long-suffering friends who continue, despite all odds, to solicit the memory of your humanity, in order to learn the arts of metalworking, Medieval alchemy, and font design, recreating a metal-cast, alpha-numeric set of Times New Roman font, from scratch, going broke long before “numeric,” and with only the half-formed germs of the characters W, N, and sometimes-vowel Y.  hat are such retrictio s to  ou?  ou are a poet,  ot a mathematicia .  ou are a creature of steel.  ou  ill  rite a  e  and better  orld, a  orld  ithout the letter   , forgi g it, o e smoki g husk of a  ord at a time.

13.  Turn over a new leaf. You’re not getting much done like this, anyways, let’s face it. Break the chains of your censoring, conscious mind; tap into the spontaneous well of unconscious human brilliance that springs from the source of dreams. Thwart the stick-in-*** tyranny of your internal editor by making a commitment to write constantly, without ceasing, editing, or even thinking, no matter what, ignoring the anally retentive quips your brain will no doubt make. Make a further commitment: you will not only write, irrespective of internal censorship, but in a way that is unconscionably terrible, on purpose. Your writing will be, by turns, embarrassing, infantile, automatic, and marmaduke poppers—or shall we say, antagonistic to the indoctrination in repressive concepts such as “sentence” and “word” of your reader, who is always, and only, you. Let your writing be a spiritual discipline of Bat-a-rang pancakes and lightly alarm clock, ding—your toast is done.

14.  Always Alka-Seltzer eyelids all the time.

15.  At last, you are ready to make it new, to ****** your darlings, to first thought, best thought, to your heart’s content. Your adverb will be the enemy of your verb, the difference between your almost-right word and your right word will be the difference between your lightning bug and your lightning. You are ready to have a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, then censor the s**t out of it. You are ready to turn your extremes against each other: Unlearn your apple pancakes and burst through the mental barriers; then slow the flood, let the lovely trickle out & edit, edit, edit. Capture spontaneous gem of native human genius, then marshal vast armies of technical knowledge & self-discipline to ensure it glimmers and cuts.

16.  Believe in things like destiny. No really—the path will shatter you so many times your shards will have splinters, your bombshells, shrapnel. By the time you get there—which you probably won’t—even your exhaustion will be tired. Exhaustion of mind and body will have passed so far beyond the physical, and through malaise of spirit, that it will emerge on the other side, as physical exhaustion again. In the face of this, nothing but a little Big Purpose will do. Besides, a little ideology never hurt anyone. Feel free to be all Voltaire with your bad self, in public—but don’t give up.

17.  After all of this, when your will is finally broken (again), and you have given up for the final time (again), start over. The former model wasn’t working. Refashion yourself and your writing. Lather, rinse, usurp your noble half-brother, and repeat, until you get somewhere, or die in the trying.  

18.  Achieve consistency of voice; it is the signature by which you will be known. Your “you” should ring out clearly from each individual letter. In this, the writer is like the salesman. Like a new car, neither the writing’s merits, nor the reader’s needs, will be the final, deciding factor. Ultimately, the deciding factor is you.

19.  Unlike a new car, it is difficult to drive a poem, to use it to get to school or work. Unlike a car salesman, a writer does not wear enormous ties.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

21.  Then again, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Throw things up a little bit. One day, put on your hobgoblin hat, the next day, your small mind.

22.  On second thought, re: #16-17: Stop here. You don’t look like much of a writer. Save yourself the trouble of a deep investment that is sure to yield no returns. The prize is big, and not many take it. The Iliad showed us that the prize of writing is life eternal, and taught us to long for that promise; but the Odyssey taught us not to bother. There are many suitors, a single Odysseus. While the husband wends arduously homeward, Penelope weaves impending glory, an evaporating glamour, enchanting them, until he arrives. We are in for a bad end, if we chase another man’s wife, or a prize not rightfully ours. There are many suitors, a crowd of them. They begin as a chittering swarm of bats and end in the very same manner. You cannot have what is not yours. What is yours, no man can take. So, like Emily says,

I smile when you suggest that I delay ‘to publish’—that being foreign to my thought as Firmament to Fin. If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her—if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase—and the approbation of my Dog would forsake me—then—My Barefoot Rank is better—

23.  Therefore, take these Sturm und Drang commandments to the trash heap. Return to step 1, as the only useful piece of advice: Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

(c) 2014 lee sharks & jack *****

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1429895012&sr;=8-1&keywords;=lee+sharks+pearl

His photograph, dusty and fading

Finds a spot amid

Hair brushes, bobby-pins and

Packets of make-up scattered beneath

The black and white portrait,

A college photo,

rescued from an old

family album after his mother died,

when they were dancing in step

through their days.  The photo,

slightly creased, changed less

then them. Laughing has dwindled,

loving glances seldom, touching

has vanished.

A radio blares an advertisement.

A special for retouching photos

Her thoughts dwell on retouching a marriage

On retouching her life,

on keeping the photo.

Cherry red nail polish chipped from nights before.
After blacking out she will later notice empty bottles sprawled out on the floor.
Ignoring her shame
she will once again play this game
by promising to have only one more.
Despite previous knowledge
she denies ever being an alcoholic.
She becomes out of control when she is full of liquor.
Why speak out about her problems? When drinking is so much quicker?
With hands decorated in chipped cherry red nail polish
She wonders if it could be symbolic.
She looks down, noticing the cracked lines of what was once a cherry red.
She considers retouching her nails but takes a drink instead.
She looks once more this time understanding the cracked lines of what was once a cherry red.
She considers retouching her nails but takes another drink instead.
She wonders if it could be symbolic
with hands decorated in chipped cherry red nail polish.
Why speak out about her problems? When drinking is so much quicker?
She becomes out of control when she is full of liquor.
She denies ever being an alcoholic.
Despite previous knowledge.
By promising to have only one more
she will once again play this game.
Ignoring her shame.
After blacking out she will later notice empty bottles sprawled out on the floor with
cherry red nail polish chipped from nights before.

An indifferent ache swirls in the silence
throbbing like a dancing candle flame;
no one understands the heart of silence
moving the darkness with its ancient dance

Its voice is only felt but never heard
the way it whispers the reality it bears;
disrobing the nakedness of a fragile heart
exposing inherent truth deep in disguise
retouching the chaos passing of love laid bare

Unspoken emotions that nobody hears
float around a muted tongue benumbed by fear
doubt is a bitter taste that knows not love
searching for a labyrinth to begin to wend a better way
trying to feel the unfelt warmth of love in an endless cold
waiting on a frozen emptiness that never thaws

No one understands the haunting fear,
... surly it couldn't happen again ― and surly it will,
a heart stifled silent,  silence doth loudly peal
                poignant dreaded words:

                 "It's not you ― it's me ,.......
      I love you but I'm not in love with you"

and like winter dreaming for the sun to reappear,
to come back again and dry the memory of fallen tears,
a hushed heart falls off the earth lost in ether shadows lay
mooning in the lonely silence within moonlit dapple

When you pull love too close ― it will push you away
some silence heals ― a dissonant silence cuts to the bone

       Only the lonely feel a silent voice sigh
         Only one hears a silenced heart die ...


               harlon rivers ... March 2018

Pressure to be pretty in the unearthly hours of the morning
Eyes pulled down by bags, bloated and yawning
Eyeliner and lipgloss and concealer thick and fast
Covering the callouses, praying it'll last

looking good and smelling good and in the peak of health
Its all an uphill struggle to better your fine self
Judged by a jury of unexperienced youths
Panicing at lunchtime, retouching in the loos.

Hair and eyes and lips and cheeks and clothing and skin
Bottle after bottle, empty in the bin
Scraping and slathering, plucking and plastering.
The never ending problem, thats actually, within.

I am often asked this question in comments, private notes and emails.

The short answer is: I don’t know.

I don’t know if there is an answer or if I’m the man to even try.

First, there are probably as many ways to write poetry as there are poets. I can’t imagine any one size fits all template. That is too horrible to contemplate.

Second, my method is actually a non-method. I will describe it, but I doubt it will be useful or transferable.

I have been a fanatical reader all my life. I still am. I probably read an average of three books per week. This has been going on for decades.

I have been reading poetry seriously for perhaps 43 years, including being taught how to read closely by some brilliant professors as an undergraduate and graduate student.

This has deposited an enormous mishmash of poems, sentences, images, phrases and fragments in my brain. Add to that mishmash decades of reading across disciplines, especially history, philosophy, religion and novels. Imagine that mishmash slowly marinading and fermenting.

From that random accumulation, without provocation on my part, poems emerge. There is no order to this and not much effort. I just channel what shows up. I do some retouching, but little serious rewriting.

And there you have it: my non-method. It should be obvious why I doubt it will be of much help to anyone else.

I can give a bit of advice, but only based on my experience.

Love words. Love to learn them. Love to play with them. Delight in them.

Read as much poetry as you possibly can. I doubt anyone can become a poet without doing this.

Be patient. It takes a while for the marinade to work. I’m 65 and I only began writing seriously eight years ago.

Find your own method and your own voice. You’ll know when that voice is authentic.

And then, sing out.

The last time I sat down with myself
was in the sink
in the dark
penetrating the only creative train I could find.
Coal, cargo...
Robbing words so I didn't have to think
or explain the difference between
'deeming' language and
'demon' language.
From my perspective in the sink,
the retouching of morals
is all circumstantial
because maybe tomorrow I'll save the fire
instead of the human,
you know, save the fire from the human.
That way, I don't have to decide
who's going to burn.

{This is a work in progress, still needs some retouching}

She was a lonely child, forgotten by time,
who grew into a woman plagued with a broken mind.
She carries the burdens of another one's crime;
keeping their secrets at the expense of her soul
while wanting for the day that she will be whole.
Her lips still tingle from the taste of their sin,
though faded are the scars that once littered her skin.
But then what were they compared to the ones burning within?
For her wounds are eternal and they still bleed inside
keeping her running through darkness with nowhere to hide
And fighting battles each day no one else can see
For her enemies are the shadows of each memory.
Her mind is a battleground born from years of abuse
from a love that was hateful with ugly words so profuse
that they cut deeper with their edges than any blade could
and hurt for much longer than any wound should.
There were no bandages for the anguish, nothing to heal
the depth of her pain from the cold, verbal steel
and the hollowness she carried from the innocence lost
was the price to be paid; yes her soul was the cost
With their vile words and their cold touch a constant stain she kept seeing
it became too exhausting to pretend her well-being
was anything other than a perpetual fall;
her existence the proof that time doesn't heal all.

What outfit do I wear today ? The suit of armor that repels those committed to my destruction or the cape of pride , that which repels religious fanatics and their fables !  I've many protective outfits and triggers to choose from today . Like yesterday , retouching numerous blemishes which appeared on my social portrait from drops of rain , one for each memory ,  many storms  , clouds , billowing this very morning ..  A thespian stands before the looking glass ready to perform , plea for recognition and stand in judgement from his peers ........

I've been painting for a long time
Retouching, crumbling it up
Giving it a new shade
Blue replacing the red
Waves replacing the wind
Patching it up a bit in the edges
A stroke here and a stroke there
Trying to unmix the sky
Though i know
Somethings can't be unmixed
Nor can be remixed
Retouching again,  crumbling it off
And there you are 
Telling me,  i am not the painter
Telling me i am the canvas
Should've told this a little earlier
I lost a lot of crumbled up skies
Lost a whole ray of colours
Lost all the worn out brush ends
And worst of it all
I lost a lot of 'me'
Trying to paint
When i was really the canvas
                               By Anjala

You once said you couldnt imagine a future without me
That you were made for me in a completely new way

I agreed
After all I can't think of anyone I'd rather roll alongside with

Then things got a little scary
Old problems of my past threatened me and tried making you a target
Only for you to put out those fires with ease, like your touch was made of the ocean.

Ive never felt like this towards anyone in my past
I doubt I could feel these emotions for anyone else

You've seen me at a valley, and helped me find my peaks
No matter what needed to be said you'd always reach

I can see how real it is every time you look at me,
Retouching on my soul like bread and warm butter
Repacking in my goal like a **** on a new ******

I can love you loud or quiet, it's entirely up to you
But the moral of this story is
Breazy, I'm in love with you.