Charles Bukowski
So you want to be a writer.
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Layout for Prose Poetry
Know that you won't have to worry about rules of form. Rhyme schemes, meter, stanza and line breaks don't apply.
Consider the structure of prose. Prose poems take the shape of paragraphs and contain sentences and sentences fragments.
Think about a time where you were struck by a particular image, how you came upon that image, how that image made you feel and what went through your mind when you saw it.
Write about that experience. Pay particular attention to describing the image and your emotions in detail. Use poetic devices like consonance, assonance, simile, metaphor, repetition and symbol. You can tell a story in your poem, but it comes second to the language (or how you tell the story).
Don't worry about correct punctuation right now. You may be writing a prose poem, but you still want to keep the effects of poetry. Sometimes correct punctuation can hurt the rhythm you've established. Your prose poem can contain sentence fragments and very long sentences.
Read over your prose poem. Take note of the language you've used. See if you can add more detail. Take note of the story or the thoughts you've expressed. See if anything needs to be added or revised.
See if you have an epiphany. Not all poems need epiphanies, but some really benefit from them. See if the poem's train of thought naturally leads to an epiphany or a closing thought or image to leave with the reader.
Consider the structure of prose. Prose poems take the shape of paragraphs and contain sentences and sentences fragments.
Think about a time where you were struck by a particular image, how you came upon that image, how that image made you feel and what went through your mind when you saw it.
Write about that experience. Pay particular attention to describing the image and your emotions in detail. Use poetic devices like consonance, assonance, simile, metaphor, repetition and symbol. You can tell a story in your poem, but it comes second to the language (or how you tell the story).
Don't worry about correct punctuation right now. You may be writing a prose poem, but you still want to keep the effects of poetry. Sometimes correct punctuation can hurt the rhythm you've established. Your prose poem can contain sentence fragments and very long sentences.
Read over your prose poem. Take note of the language you've used. See if you can add more detail. Take note of the story or the thoughts you've expressed. See if anything needs to be added or revised.
See if you have an epiphany. Not all poems need epiphanies, but some really benefit from them. See if the poem's train of thought naturally leads to an epiphany or a closing thought or image to leave with the reader.
Pantoum Poem
All the Wild Horses
Standing and watching
a part of the world pass
enjoying the beauties
of each peaceful day.
A part of the world passes
as we stand side by side
each peaceful day
so full of beauty and comfort.
As we stand side by side
eating the grain
so full of beauty and comfort
our minds and hearts at ease
Eating the grain
standing and watching
our minds and hearts at ease
enjoy the beauty.
Diamante Poem
It sure is beautiful here, isn't it? Look how drastically different this is; cold and warm at the same time. This is my entry for today.
Winter
Rainy, Cold
Skiing, Skating, Sledding
Mountains, Wind, Breeze, Ocean
Swimming, Surfing, Scuba Diving
Sunny, Hot
Summer
Tanka poem
Thunderclouds building
Gathering strength as they grow
Releasing themselves
Pouring life-giving torrents
Cleansing the world in shower
Who is a Poet?
A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.
This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel—but that’s
thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is
feeling—not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single
human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think
or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the
moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working
just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possible
imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like
somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the
time—and whenever we do it, we are not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and
working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem,
you’ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do
something easy, like learning how to blow up the world—unless you’re
not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn’t. It’s the most wonderful life on earth. Or so I feel.
What is Poetry
What is Poetry? A poem may appear to mean very different things to different readers, and all of these meanings may be different from what the author thought he meant. For instance, the author may have been writing some peculiar personal experience, which he saw quite unrelated to anything outside; yet for the reader the poem may become the expression of a general situation, as well as of some private experience of his own. The reader's interpretation may differ from the author's and be equally valid-- it may even be better. There may be much more in a poem than the author was aware of. The different interpretations may all be partial formulations of one thing; the ambiguities may be due to the fact that the poem means more, not less, than ordinary speech can communicate. T.S. Eliot
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Going Out With a Bang.
Lying on that fold out couch in the lower level of her family's tri-level home was something, actually, the only thing that the two of us could depend on every Friday night.
It never mattered if we wanted to be someplace else, or with somebody else, Friday nights were reserved for our "little sessions", as we jokingly named them.
She used to say that lying her head on my chest helped her to think. That somehow, hearing my ticker beat helped her to navigate through the thoughts and ideas that were crashing in her mind and to build a better realization of her own being.
(At times, I thought she was crazy. How could lying on a couch with me, sometimes without either of us saying a single word the entire night, help her in any way?)
But I guess I would consider myself crazy as well, because I'd tell her that having her beautiful bronze Puerto Rican cheek resting on my chest, with her toned left arm draped over my stomach and her left leg resting atop my left, helped me to visualize the songs that I was trying to write back then.
She and I met our freshman year in college. She was twenty, I, twenty-four. We both started our stints at college late, and both for the same reason; we both knew if we started at 18, we would have partied too hard and failed out.
We began our Friday night sessions a month after meeting and they continued until the week after graduation.
Those Friday nights, though I wouldn't change any of 'em for the world, were extremely hard for me at times. I had the sexiest girl I had ever met lying with me, with an extremely intoxicating aroma of whatever perfume it was that she used to wear. So many times I wanted to grab her to kiss her and profess my love. But, I never did. Nor will I ever get the chance to.
She moved to New York City the week after we graduated to take a job at a magazine. We had one last Friday together after we walked the aisle to grab our diplomas. She used to joke and call them, "the $100,000 pieces of paper that tell people we can tell a story".
That last Friday on the couch in her parents house was so different than the rest.
Usually as we lay on the couch we'd have conversations that covered everything from the war, the Cubs, story/song ideas, family, sex and whatever else might have came to mind.
But that Friday, that one last, magnificent Friday, the entire time we were on the couch, neither her, or I, spoke more than three words. I believe we didn't talk because we both knew that our time together would be coming to an end and neither wanted the goodbye to be more depressing than it was already going to be.
So we just cuddled up next to each other on that couch in her parent's big-empty house on Gracie Grove Street, listening to the beautiful music being played by the rain bouncing off the slab of concrete out the back door and the rolling thunder above.
And while I watched her eyes begin to shove tears down her face, I too, began to cry as I kissed her forehead. She pulled her head off of my chest and looked into my eyes with a smile as she got off from our comfortable cushion and walked back into her bedroom.
Minutes later, I heard the acoustic guitar being played from the speakers of her stereo and could hear her little bare feet dancing across the wooden floor behind me.
As I raised my head to see what she was doing, I was amazed. She stood before me, in the light of a few candles, and from time to time, the lightning that burst through the windows, with nothing on beside her black panties and her straight black hair covering her beautiful breasts. She stood motionless, one hand down toward her left hip, the other, touching her toned stomach. She looked so smooth, so sexy, so confident in what she was doing.
And when I stood at the side of the couch, and walked to her to ask what she was doing, before a single word escaped my mouth, she placed her middle and index fingers against my lips and shook her head, ever so slowly, from left to right.
(What was going on? Was the woman that I wanted for the last four years, the woman that I've never tried to do anything with for fear of losing the best friendship that I've ever had with a female, trying to tell me that she wanted me as bad as I wanted her? Was this to be the ending chapter of us? To go out with a bang?)
And as I stood in front of my angel, she lowered her fingers from my lips and pulled my shirt over my head, throwing it to the floor. She placed her tiny, delicate hands on my chest and slowly pushed me back down onto the couch/bed.
She looked directly into my eyes, a half smile forming with her gorgeous set of pouty kissers and began to unfasten my belt. From there, her fingers undid the button and unzipped my faded blue Levi’s. She slowly pulled them down, licking my stomach as she played with the top of the denim. She rested back on her knees and pulled my pants down past my thighs, my ankles, and let them fall to the floor.
I was a bit shocked, I had no idea that she wanted to do what it seemed we were about to do. I lie naked on the couch, with an absolute beauty on her knees before me. She slowly crept up our cushioned pad, stopping at my waist. She lowered her head and put me into her mouth.
Slowly, up and down, faster, in and out. She licked the head. She wrapped her hand around me, stroking up and down in unison with her lips. A little twist here, another there. Her long black hair tickled my stomach as it landed on my skin. With her other hand, she cupped the twins down below as she put her lips against my torso and me into her throat.
She took me out of her mouth and began to crawl up towards me. She placed a knee on both sides of my head and lowered the shaved spot down to my face.
My tongue licked her up, and then back down, in circles, zig-zags, faster, slower, plunging it into her, out of her. She leaned back and I could see her pulling her right nipple. As she did this, her left hand was behind her, stroking me. Her stomach began to pulsate. I could feel the moisture increase and warm up. She was getting close.
But before she got there, she scooted back down my body and put me into her. She squatted over me and slid up and down, ever so slowly. Her left hand on my chest, her right tickling her clit. She never looked so radiant. She moved up and down at the same tempo of the music on the stereo. It was timed perfectly.
She took me out of her and turned around on me. She raised her beautiful bum and put me back into the pleasantly plumb spot I desired.
Up, down, slow, fast, an almost rolling motion that I'd never experienced before and still, to this day, haven’t yet again. Her hands were on my shins and I could see the beautiful tattoo of angel wings across her back. Her black hair draped over her shoulders, onto her 36B chest. Her back was arcing, she was getting close.
She pulled away from me and backed into my face. She put me into her mouth to lick her. With my tongue tickling, I put a finger inside of her...then another. I could hear her moaning as she bobbed up and down. Her muzzled moans sounded sexier than anything I had ever heard before.
She pulled away from my face again and crawled onto her knees. I just stayed lying there. She looked back at me with a smile, and curled her finger up to me, telling me to come to her. I raised up from lying down and came up behind her.
I was aching by then. She had almost made my cum four different times by that point. I put my hands on her body and plunged into her anticipating area. She gasped for air as she reached back grabbing the backs of my thighs, pulling me deeper and harder into her. Her face went down into a pillow, her back was so arched you could have poured a gallon of water onto her perfect body and there wouldn’t have been a drop of it spilled.
She let out the loudest of her moans then. I could feel her pulsating much harder. I knew she was cumming. And I too, was just about to. I felt it coming on and began to slip out of her.
“Cum in me.”
Those were the only words that either of us said to that point. And though I knew better to cum in any of my partners, I couldn’t help myself. Just hearing her sexy voice saying those three words, made me cum so much harder.
We stayed lying on the couch for the rest of the night, without clothes and without words.
There were much prettier noises then our words would have made being played by the rain on the concrete slab out her back door anyway.
It never mattered if we wanted to be someplace else, or with somebody else, Friday nights were reserved for our "little sessions", as we jokingly named them.
She used to say that lying her head on my chest helped her to think. That somehow, hearing my ticker beat helped her to navigate through the thoughts and ideas that were crashing in her mind and to build a better realization of her own being.
(At times, I thought she was crazy. How could lying on a couch with me, sometimes without either of us saying a single word the entire night, help her in any way?)
But I guess I would consider myself crazy as well, because I'd tell her that having her beautiful bronze Puerto Rican cheek resting on my chest, with her toned left arm draped over my stomach and her left leg resting atop my left, helped me to visualize the songs that I was trying to write back then.
She and I met our freshman year in college. She was twenty, I, twenty-four. We both started our stints at college late, and both for the same reason; we both knew if we started at 18, we would have partied too hard and failed out.
We began our Friday night sessions a month after meeting and they continued until the week after graduation.
Those Friday nights, though I wouldn't change any of 'em for the world, were extremely hard for me at times. I had the sexiest girl I had ever met lying with me, with an extremely intoxicating aroma of whatever perfume it was that she used to wear. So many times I wanted to grab her to kiss her and profess my love. But, I never did. Nor will I ever get the chance to.
She moved to New York City the week after we graduated to take a job at a magazine. We had one last Friday together after we walked the aisle to grab our diplomas. She used to joke and call them, "the $100,000 pieces of paper that tell people we can tell a story".
That last Friday on the couch in her parents house was so different than the rest.
Usually as we lay on the couch we'd have conversations that covered everything from the war, the Cubs, story/song ideas, family, sex and whatever else might have came to mind.
But that Friday, that one last, magnificent Friday, the entire time we were on the couch, neither her, or I, spoke more than three words. I believe we didn't talk because we both knew that our time together would be coming to an end and neither wanted the goodbye to be more depressing than it was already going to be.
So we just cuddled up next to each other on that couch in her parent's big-empty house on Gracie Grove Street, listening to the beautiful music being played by the rain bouncing off the slab of concrete out the back door and the rolling thunder above.
And while I watched her eyes begin to shove tears down her face, I too, began to cry as I kissed her forehead. She pulled her head off of my chest and looked into my eyes with a smile as she got off from our comfortable cushion and walked back into her bedroom.
Minutes later, I heard the acoustic guitar being played from the speakers of her stereo and could hear her little bare feet dancing across the wooden floor behind me.
As I raised my head to see what she was doing, I was amazed. She stood before me, in the light of a few candles, and from time to time, the lightning that burst through the windows, with nothing on beside her black panties and her straight black hair covering her beautiful breasts. She stood motionless, one hand down toward her left hip, the other, touching her toned stomach. She looked so smooth, so sexy, so confident in what she was doing.
And when I stood at the side of the couch, and walked to her to ask what she was doing, before a single word escaped my mouth, she placed her middle and index fingers against my lips and shook her head, ever so slowly, from left to right.
(What was going on? Was the woman that I wanted for the last four years, the woman that I've never tried to do anything with for fear of losing the best friendship that I've ever had with a female, trying to tell me that she wanted me as bad as I wanted her? Was this to be the ending chapter of us? To go out with a bang?)
And as I stood in front of my angel, she lowered her fingers from my lips and pulled my shirt over my head, throwing it to the floor. She placed her tiny, delicate hands on my chest and slowly pushed me back down onto the couch/bed.
She looked directly into my eyes, a half smile forming with her gorgeous set of pouty kissers and began to unfasten my belt. From there, her fingers undid the button and unzipped my faded blue Levi’s. She slowly pulled them down, licking my stomach as she played with the top of the denim. She rested back on her knees and pulled my pants down past my thighs, my ankles, and let them fall to the floor.
I was a bit shocked, I had no idea that she wanted to do what it seemed we were about to do. I lie naked on the couch, with an absolute beauty on her knees before me. She slowly crept up our cushioned pad, stopping at my waist. She lowered her head and put me into her mouth.
Slowly, up and down, faster, in and out. She licked the head. She wrapped her hand around me, stroking up and down in unison with her lips. A little twist here, another there. Her long black hair tickled my stomach as it landed on my skin. With her other hand, she cupped the twins down below as she put her lips against my torso and me into her throat.
She took me out of her mouth and began to crawl up towards me. She placed a knee on both sides of my head and lowered the shaved spot down to my face.
My tongue licked her up, and then back down, in circles, zig-zags, faster, slower, plunging it into her, out of her. She leaned back and I could see her pulling her right nipple. As she did this, her left hand was behind her, stroking me. Her stomach began to pulsate. I could feel the moisture increase and warm up. She was getting close.
But before she got there, she scooted back down my body and put me into her. She squatted over me and slid up and down, ever so slowly. Her left hand on my chest, her right tickling her clit. She never looked so radiant. She moved up and down at the same tempo of the music on the stereo. It was timed perfectly.
She took me out of her and turned around on me. She raised her beautiful bum and put me back into the pleasantly plumb spot I desired.
Up, down, slow, fast, an almost rolling motion that I'd never experienced before and still, to this day, haven’t yet again. Her hands were on my shins and I could see the beautiful tattoo of angel wings across her back. Her black hair draped over her shoulders, onto her 36B chest. Her back was arcing, she was getting close.
She pulled away from me and backed into my face. She put me into her mouth to lick her. With my tongue tickling, I put a finger inside of her...then another. I could hear her moaning as she bobbed up and down. Her muzzled moans sounded sexier than anything I had ever heard before.
She pulled away from my face again and crawled onto her knees. I just stayed lying there. She looked back at me with a smile, and curled her finger up to me, telling me to come to her. I raised up from lying down and came up behind her.
I was aching by then. She had almost made my cum four different times by that point. I put my hands on her body and plunged into her anticipating area. She gasped for air as she reached back grabbing the backs of my thighs, pulling me deeper and harder into her. Her face went down into a pillow, her back was so arched you could have poured a gallon of water onto her perfect body and there wouldn’t have been a drop of it spilled.
She let out the loudest of her moans then. I could feel her pulsating much harder. I knew she was cumming. And I too, was just about to. I felt it coming on and began to slip out of her.
“Cum in me.”
Those were the only words that either of us said to that point. And though I knew better to cum in any of my partners, I couldn’t help myself. Just hearing her sexy voice saying those three words, made me cum so much harder.
We stayed lying on the couch for the rest of the night, without clothes and without words.
There were much prettier noises then our words would have made being played by the rain on the concrete slab out her back door anyway.
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