WRITER'S RUME: To Do

your experience, on your refrigerator

Now that you’ve articulated a promise, made a vow, and determined what it will take to honor this, let’s look at your work from a different facet of the same gem.

List poems. I LOVE a good list poem. Perhaps cuz it satisfies a primal desire to articulate goals, or set a course for things. Used to be, I made lists ALL the time. The books I would write, the songs I would record, the connective tissues between each track and the short stories that would spin off from novels. I didn't understand the power of the list as a literary tool until just the last few years, while in exile in Arcata.

So. Write a list as a poem. Could be, 10 Reasons I Hate Entropy, or Why I Won’t Let You Love Me, or, To Pick Up From The Corner Store, or All the Things I Forgot to Put in my Apocalypse Bug-Out Bag. Find the extraordinary out of the mundane—or—take the unexplainable and make it into a list we might understand. Writing a poem as a list is a way to distill down an idea, or emotion, into actionable items. If it is a shopping list, what are you shopping for? Forgiveness? Conquest? To be seen? If it is, rather, something so hard to pin down, perhaps listing its characteristics might be a way to articulate what that thing is.

A list can be a compass oriented to a northern star, or an autopsy of an event, or a wandering path to that thing you haven’t been able to wrap your arms around.

Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me, (which I just read and highly recommend) writes about lists beautifully. I hate to quote another author at length, but she nails it:

“My first diary was full of lists. Behind its wintergreen cover and exquisitely miniature lock, on its gold-leafed pages I maintained comprehensive records of the books I read. How else would I know when I had finished them all, as I intended? I listed the books I wanted to read, art I wanted to see, albums to acquire, films to watch. I kept meticulous lists of songs I loved, places I wanted to travel, projected earnings from summer jobs, my friends in descending order of endearment, and later, with an elaborate code signifying the degree of my physical accomplishment—the people I wanted to seduce.”

She goes on to discuss the list of Lorraine Hansberry, writer of A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry listed internal desires with clarity, and as the years passed, listed how those parts of her changed. I won’t copy/paste here, just urge you to read Febos’ Abandon Me, and the rest of her catalog.

Constraint, if you so desire: don’t tell us you’re making a list. (See my poem, below.)

Source code: read For everyone who tried on the slipper before Cinderella, by Ariana Brown, and alternate names for black boys, by Danez Smith, both incredible poets. I’m throwing you into the deep end of the pool, as they are quick to show just what can be done with a list poem, in the best of ways.

Also, read the track listings of albums, in particular ones that you listen to from beginning to end. The Allegory, by Royce the 5’-9” and Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo & Youth demonstrate continuity, and yes—I know they’re beefing. Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Is there a title you can give that list? A List of Everything Wrong With America, or 13 Things for When Life Gets Lifey? This might be another way to prep your creative brain before you set pen to paper.

What follows is my take on it. Unpublished, as yet.

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All the smoke

So I started smoking again.
At first, sage with other herbs and spices but that made the cabin smell funny.
I tried using blunt wraps, but that made the cabin smell like
purple which is a vibe, not a fucking flavor.
I cannibalized my furniture as blunt fillings but that is hard to smoke
that just made my lungs bleed.
Other possible fillings from history are wormwood,
cannonfodder, and human hair from
antebellum furniture stuffing but then there's the smell of slavery
try falling asleep to that.
I found out the Illuminati smokes blunts laced with bonemeal
they use sweatshop-grade butane lighters
engraved with the bitemarks of the children who make them.
It turns out lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills is a lie
they light theirs with urban myths and gerrymandering.
I tried smoking dreams but the catch to smoking dreams is then all
you want is more—and I'm trying to quit.
I tried smoking chrome but once you fire the pistol
the barrel is too hot to place your to your lips
let alone your temple.
I was told tomahawks double as peace pipes
all I have is a rabbitstick
but what it takes to carve
a ceremony from warfare
is too much
instead I used an apple—
and while an apple as pipe is useful when the police roll by
cuz you can just take about bite out of it
like, Nothing going in here, officer,
I've always hated apple juice.
It turns out “apple of my eye” means you are reflected and
you are seen in somebody else’s eye
but the few times I have felt seen
the sob catches in my Adam's apple
and my throat is not a pipe.
It never was & I know that now,
I know a child is never to blame.
I tried inhaling the smoke of riots but those aren't
riots those are uprisings
and the race riots back in the day were really massacres.
“Massacres: Smoke ‘em while you can!” just doesn't sound like
good marketing or maybe it is, for a luxury brand.
I tried smoking gunpowder but that just pissed me off.
Imagine how a pitbull feels, with that in his dog dish—
pelted with BBs from an owner, curated for
brutality when all he wants is to lick
an abandoned kitten back to health.
Gun powder goes into a rifle just like tobacco into a peace pipe
so which came first—
I tried smoking through bongs, but the sound of the
water bubbling reminds me of a death rattle.
They call smoking crack
sucking the glass dick
but have you seen a fucking bong
that's a glass dick and for
true potheads the bigger the better
so who is sucking dick now?
I tried smoking lottery tickets but the amount you have to smoke
to get five bucks back is not a worthy equation at all.
And the daily double scratches at my throat.
I tried smoking opium but most of the Chinatowns where
one could get it have been burned down
last I checked you got
San Jose, Santa Clara, Los Angeles
who knows who else is tucking those skeletons
under their smoking jackets?
To quote Royce the 5’-9”
Google that when you get a chance.
Now how you like them apples—

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