NaPoWriMo Day 7

Checklist for poets

It is probably best to be male.

If you must be female, try to be fragile

either in body or mind – flirt with

an eccentricity at the very least.

Scrawl your poems on your prescriptions,

or in a childhood language made up with your siblings

which no one else understands.

An alcohol problem would not go amiss,

if you are not fortunate enough to be close to Italy

and that is the only way you can drown yourself.

Take and break many lovers –

if sapphic or extramarital, so much the better.

Do consider a difficult relationship with your mother,

whether or not your father took himself out of the game early.

Cultivate a nemesis, with whom you can trade

stinging barbs in the literary press.

Know the power of a grand gesture,

a borrowed twenty, and a fine linen shirt.

Bury your folio with your wife, or use to wrap

the ashes of your husband’s heart.

Remember the meaning of success:

one day you too will be dead, and a GCSE student glad of it.