ADVICE
for my creative writing students
Nothing is personal
anymore; it's all fair game:
your failures, that drunken, lecherous uncle,
three cardinals in the apple tree,
your sister's breasts.
Cut your chest wide open
and dump your heart out
on the sidewalk in broad daylight.
Whatever fear or hate or lust
moved you to this point
now becomes
your canvas and brush,
your peculiar image to share.
Nothing is sacred, nothing confidential.
Every dialogue is grist for the writer;
every word and line contains blind potential;
every sky and landscape is bludgeoned into your forehead;
every dream is surfacing to breathe.
Like a common cripple,
dragging your innards behind you,
you must deal with the world
as it is and accept your lousy fate.
Even then, there are no guarantees
except one:
none of it
will keep you alive.
HOW ONE LEADS TO ANOTHER
When I write
I make up the rules
like the one about smoking cigars
in hotel rooms, with the windows open,
and the sound of California
droning through concrete behind me.
A bell bangs twelve times
and then the trolley is off to Mexico
where poverty wipes its drooling lips
on the back of every tourist's fist.
The urchins have what you need, dammit,
just buy it and get on with your life,
which, of course, you're losing every minute
of every hour whether or not
you own Microsoft or work for peanuts
in a traveling circus. We're all clowns
in the end, big, floppy feet waving
to the dead down there,
whose bizarre faces look up at us.
By definition, the dead aren't as lively,
or loud, or as alert as we expected.
I don't remember all the bones sticking out,
the thinness, the frailty.
Someone must not be feeding them properly;
I've heard a lack of calcium can do this.
And since I'm in charge, I'll put in the order
for more vegetables and milk; I'll start
an early morning exercise program;
I'll do away with death as we know it,
and replace it with long, extensive cruises
in the Caribbean, decades in length,
until everyone's on board, drinking, dancing,
and we see a real heaven
on the horizon.
David James' books include A HEART OUT OF THIS WORLD (Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Press) and DO NOT GIVE DOGS WHAT IS HOLY (March Street Press). He works as
a dean of academics at Oakland Community College in Michigan, teaching on
the side while trying to keep the students and faculty happy. As he says,
"It's a thankless job."
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