How To Make A Poem Poem by Day Williams

How to Make a Poem

Of many ways to make a poem, let
Me tell you one: First, you ignore the phones
(A habit you acquire when you're in debt):
And second, you write letters to your foes

And tell them how their hatred helped you grow
And bloom; third, you wiggle thumbs and toes
Behind a light and draw the silhouettes
On walls which run with beads of jogger sweat.

You are not done. You rip your four-room heart
From chest and focus through a microscope
To know for whom it beats, and why, and where.

For forty days behold great works of art.
Then take a pen or pencil hooked to hope
And faith and love, and write about your cares.