Take Your Meds, Sit Home, and Continue Writing.

Bypass the phone, stove, kitchen sink
prostrate coughing
Stay down its
under the bed, there
collecting lint and dust:
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.


Now, try thinking a complete thought before going to the next and
remember: one med at a time.

And don’t be afraid
Remember the saying, "throw up in the morning,
clean up in the afternoon".

Good, another rough draft. Now
Clean up, I said.
And don’t forget: not over 12 versions
Don’t think
of those dozens of haunting pieces
never completed
forget about unpaid bills


Be vigilant of excuses that
leap frog while creativity sleeps.

OK, make that cup of latte,
But first figure-out how
to make that foaming spout work
but first fish
the directions from the box
out by the garbage
And don’t get angry,
He didn’t do it 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.

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

And stop being co-dependent.

But do try to
marry that editor, one
who is also 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 denied loudly 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 he kicked you out, said you were
smart and special—
overcome low self-esteem: it won’t help your writer’s voice any.

Remember: annoyances of mothers and insignificant 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.
Not the nap.
Even though you feel like crap.

Forgive your brother who isn’t interested,
because he has lots of money,
it was his cultural bias that
discouraged inspiration, not him

Take care, nuture those
gifts of words given
from the angels or muse or the Gods,
as defined by your changing beliefs,
as defined by your bi-chemically induced and
chemically-controlled moods.

Try blaming chemistry
not mother, father and teachers who constantly
interrupted you and the muse
who finally gave up and went to Sylvia Plath instead

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
The world wherein you could never figure out
your place, because
there simply was none.

Forgive the ignorant lover.
The teacher’s preposterous belief that that creativity was something given to a student
Forget 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
for not having been born
to increase the gross national product

Forget that an adolescent a would-be writer
went stark-raving angry
forced to give up living
to make a living.
Consider how lucky: having been prematurely, made
world weary of constant intrusions
that splintered your golden thoughts
from out a mine within.

Yes, so 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
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 glossy
will have suited you just fine.