| Easy to write poetry, easy as bakin cookies. All you need are the right ingredients. You must have a mind ripping traumatic experience with at least one parent, preferably both, and you must know—really know without the bullshit of romantic drunken fantasy—the horror of the absolute bottom bottle of addiction. Then jump back up: punch drunk & swinging, fiercely. You’re also going to need an intimate understanding of a fractured mind; I mean cracked by circumstances out of your control, not the crazy fun of ordinary madness; I’m talkin weasels screaming in your hair. You have to know poverty, empty pocket poor, truly gut hungry, alone, desperate, wandering, wondering how the hell to pay the most basic of society’s bills. You have to owe much, own little, but most importantly you must know the torture of dancing with the opposite sex in the cruelest possible way, not once, but many times and you must have worked many reward-less, backbreaking, soul-stealing jobs for little or no money; working day and night and have nothing to show, penniless. Robbed, rejected, cheated, ridiculed, broke the law and jailed for the crime and beaten to a bloody pulp by bare knuckles, not just once but many times like making love to the sidewalk: all requirements. You must be able to look directly into the mirror insanity of yourself and laugh coolly, lost inside the Devil’s hot whorehouse without anything to bargain with other than your own beat to hell spirit, and despite all of it: the good, the bad, and the ugly; despite the odds all against you all the time, you must have the heart and the courage to speak the truth with style and dignity and try not to bitch about your problems. You need to strike the lightning to the monster within you and rage controlled chaos; swallow the clouds and the thunder and the rain and let them live, let it all live, your fingertips to the flames; earsplitting, your voice shattering all force fields because you are now indestructible: it’s just that easy. |
