POEM #10 (&11): Instructional

Write instructions for yourself. They *can* be instructions/limitations for a poem... or simply instructions for an activity for yourself. Make these instructions interesting. Write them in paragraph, list, or lineated (broken and enjambed lines).

Then complete the instructions.

Then--if the instructions were not instructions on how to write a poem--write a poem about the experience.

Example of CAConrad's Soma(tic) Rituals HERE.

Not exactly the same, but here is an instruction poem by Neil Gaiman (yes, that Neil Gaiman)... HERE.

Some of my assignments below (without resulting poems):

1.
Describe a substance–its properties and affinities. Tell what the substance hates. Can it be held in hand, balanced on the tongue? Is pain involved? Name other likelihoods. What things might such a substance combine with itself to build? Detail its distillation.  Justify the purified form. Discuss, if you can, the substance corrupted. Give six examples.

2.
Tangle. Take two or three pieces of writing–yours and/or others’. Mix. The rules are the same as for one-pot meals: the stirring must be thorough. This is not bread-with-raisins, this is not chocolate sauce on top of ice cream or grilled cheese (so good). This is succotash. Also: simmer. Go away, come back. Go away, come back – fiddle. Add. Excise. Blend. Strain. Stir again. This is an all-day soup – let its commergence pervade your sphere of action for the entirety of a single waking day. Be the richer.

3.
Outline a talk.  In the talk you must be brilliant.  A celestial organism – a sky-whale.  Yes.  Imagine that you are a sky-whale tethered to the earth by a nano-filament and to be once again free, you must argue to the pissants of this small-minded planet the width and breadth of the universe – and why you must be again allowed to breach its surfaces and to search in its most intimate rifts for all that a sky-whale must search for.  Remember, you must succeed according to their rubrics.  Your existence is contingent on their mass decision.  How to seer the mob into seeing.  I challenge you.

4. 
Look at a photograph. Say, an empty chair sitting next to an empty chair. There is so much to say. Explain all that is unrequited and unfinished between them. This is a dialogue. Explain why it is snowing and whose mouths are to be fed before twilight. Have the long heldback conflict commence under the cover of silence. And if they are rocking chairs? Reflect on rust. They must not be an old married couple or brothers looking back. Any conversation should be able to lead to true intercourse, or out to the road beyond the hydrangeas. What are ghosts to one another – what keeps them troubling the air?