after you do everything else...

Bypass the phone, stove, kitchen sink, prostrate coughing, Stay down its under the bed, there
collecting lint and dust: Your Road-map to The Land of Writing

Crawl into the far darkness, you’ve got it—
There in that corner! Scramble Up into the light,
find your reading glasses and awaken a plethora of new anxieties.


Don’t think of those dozens of haunting pieces
never completed forget about unpaid bills. Be vigilant of excuses that leap-frog over your creativity.

OK, make that cup of latte, but first figure-out how
to make that foaming spout work after you fish
the directions from the box out by the garbage
and don’t get angry, he didn’t throw them out on purpose.

Have one page completed by bedtime, after you remember that brilliant sentence, and the day of the week, and the year in which you are
trying to make a living, while barely living.

Of course before you begin, you’ll have to fix the computer, after finding the phone number
for tech Support, after finding the registration number, after phoning Dad to see if he'd kept a copy when he'd lent you the CD.

And do consider not napping before you’ve done something, and it might help if you find an editor
to marry.

And certainly your writing will improve if you go back to therapy, to complete your work on
not finishing anything in an entire life
of promises and disappointments to your mother.

And stop being co-dependent.

But do try to marry that editor, preferably one
who is also a therapist. And never make a spouse
into a therapist or editor, nor friends, nor relatives but find loving kindness for them and yourself-- down under all the fatigue—
along with the map, another pair of broken reading glasses and that book from the library you loudly denied having ever taken out.

And since you will already be on your knees you can count blessing way down there, they are under the "ifs" and "buts"; in the suffocating dark there—
remember that father really had thought highly of you (before you were pubescent) said you were
smart and special.

Remember: annoyances of mothers and (in)significant others, make good material
So be happy they inevitably pull you into corners you’d rather not go. I don’t care what it takes,
Go there. For the map. Even though, or because, you feel like crap.

Forgive your brother and the other men who ditched you, or better yet write about them.
All the while, taking care to craft your words, whether given from the angels, or the muse or the Gods, all as defined by your changing beliefs,
as defined by your bi-chemically induced and
chemically-controlled moods.

And for an interesting slant, try blaming chemistry not mother, father and teachers who constantly
interrupted you and the muse. They interfered with your brain in well-intended attempts to re-wire and re-route it to pick up and relay frequencies of The Mundane.

Be tolerant of commerce worship: that world wherein you could never figure out your place, because there simply was none.

Forgive the ignorant teacher or better yet vent about the teacher’s preposterous belief that creativity was something given to a student

Forget for now, finding the artist colony (that might support surrender to the muse and to energies-in-motion passing through the brain, out the hand, onto paper).

Don’t blame the snubbers who discouraged, dimmed, confined and punished inspirations
Tolerate ambivalence, the real reason behind you
procrastination.

Throw out reluctance, dig in and write, overcome bitterness that you have to excuse yourself. Forget or enshrine in words, how an adolescent, a would-be writer went stark-raving angry, and was forced to give up living to make a living.

Consider how lucky she may have been to having been prematurely made world weary of constant intrusions that splintered her golden thoughts
from out a goldmine within. And give her praise in writing.

So what that you had at times felt suicidal. But not like Sylvia Plath, who at the height of success, looked down in terror at how hard she could fall.
No, you’ve never known any success, really, yet
althought you’ve felt like a famous and rich novelist
when you wrote.

Remember that dream of being handed the small blue volume of writing. The author's name had been your own. It hadn't been a best seller but
the man asked you when the next book
would be coming out reminding you that it had sold fairly well and that the world was waiting.


Remember your success may wind through many paths marked "Failure"…. So that
by midlife you now have no choice but to do anything other than taking your meds and sitting home and writing…. which once you complete something and see it in print, will have suited you just fine.