Advice to 30/ 30 Poets

Keep an open knife on your desk,
look at the blade once an hour.
I could stab someone, or myself,
or someone could stab me.
A reminder of the end, the knife
is a cliché for your mortality,
you’re stuck on the point of the blade.
Time is running out, do you feel it?

Eat ice cream, break a glass.
We’re polite to one another
because we know how bad it really is.
Wear feathers and hats.

If your well runneth dry and it‘s written down, it‘s gone.
Formalization in a digital format is lame.

Write on paper and let it pile up around you
like loving arms or a voice in your ear,
drop-shoulder calm. Live your poetic
morality dream in a tactile sense.
When it’s written down it’s gone.

At the end, place your 30 days in a plastic bag
and bury them until they‘re gone. After that,
once in while, not every day, write a poem
in the sand with a stick.
Take a photo of your sand poem.

Tell your poet friends if they want help
to give me a call, my whole life is a poem.
I go into the gas station talking poetry.
That's how I pay for my gas.


This final 30/ 30 poem is dedicated to Nick, my poetry coach.