recipe for disaster in poetry

First, to start, for the sake of art, get yourself one (1) broken heart. Now, put both (2) bare hands in and shred that whole mess finely apart. But this recipe is not merely grief and bluster. If you really want a stew that’s true, you’re going to need one (1) heaping cup of structure. So, you will have to attend school for eighteen (18) years, maybe twenty-one (21) at worse, or in substitution, going into at least three hundred grand ($300,000) in student debts, whichever comes first. After that, you will know how to use two (2) level cups of bleached-out flowery words in an academic fashion, as we are trained to sift the amateur bullshit of bachelors from those piled Higher-deeper golden turds. A long stretch of barely-paid internships, of course, preferred.

Next, take that whole jumbled fumbled mess and shove it back into the (1) gaping hole inside of your chest. That will get it up to ninety-eight-point-six (98.6) degrees and now here’s the secret: never let it rest. Never ever let it rest. Oh, you can sleep and you can dream, you have to dream, without your dreams, the whole thing’s meaningless, the aching baking thing broken inside your chest, but you’ll never ever rest. That’s how you know it’s baking, the crazy thing you’re baking.

Sometimes life will beat you down and that thing there will defer. Sometimes you will feel just whipped but the thing inside will gently stir. You both (2) will grow and change, even when life hits frappe. Sometimes it will feel right but you’ll never feel okay.

One day, it will burst out, you will know it by the smell, you will hate it and you will love it and just hope that it will sell. At least for three hundred grand ($300,000) to cover all those debts. At least that’s what I’ve been told, I haven’t seen one (1) dime yet. Eat your heart out and bon appetit!

Last updated November 12, 2021