It’s a prose poem, and the response to an assignment in my prose poetry class to write a prose poem on writing a prose poem.  Normally I wouldn’t post it but posting it catches me fully up and *all* my writing, so there you go.  I can’t not.

The Prose Poem

You do not have to use words that require a dictionary beside you to page through every other line looking for definitions.  You do not need to buy a book of rules because neither does such a book exist nor do any rules apply.  You need only to present yourself to the darkness and open to what comes, be it slowly or fast, capture it without thought, do not edit:  first energy speaks to the ear not to the mind, soup and crackers as important as myth and story.

Destroy the linear, bake flowers into patterns of sea shells – whorls and hollows to the fore.  Sink into the place that is silence but which needs to speak, spilling outward unbidden like broken mirrors, stolen runes, pennies cast and read on a straw-strewn floor telling the possibilities of anything you might ask.

Then, take the answers and polish them for display in a bright room with no windows.  Bid all who enter to make a wish, say a blessing, count the stars in the night’s sky.  From this comes the poem, birth-blood fresh, speaking in tongues, arrived fully gown wearing indigo and crimson, smelling of vanilla and lime, singing stories stolen from the wind.