So You Want to be a Writer

If you like your sleep,
don't bother.
Writing doesn't have the courtesy
to let you sleep.
You might as well,
get addicted to caffeine-
stock up on tea bags
and instant coffee-
for the nights of anxious words
that lie ahead.

Get in the habit
of eating your vegetables.
Writing is about endurance
Didn't mother always say,
"Spinach makes you strong."
It's true.
And like artists
who go on painting fruit,
writers can go on
about their broccoli,
and the readers never tire
of its green florets, veins, and valleys.
Also, since Americans
stopped endorsing
cookie devouring creatures,
they look forward
to anyone who successfully
makes a tomato entertaining.
It's the health department
you ultimately must win over,
with your pure and clean
stream of consciousness.

Write until your feet hurt.
This will happen
long after your
hand starts cramping
and maybe even after it goes numb,
but at least then
you have the assurance
that you wrote for
a good long while
and of that while
something had to be worth
sharing.
If you still
don't have anything
except the name of your sweetheart
scribbled over and over
across pages and pages
of now impure pages,
then you'll at least have a story
about how your feet
almost fell off
that one time you sat writing.

Finally,
if you must succeed
you'll stop reading
-or listening
as it may be-
to this rambling poem
and transfer some thoughts of your own
to whatever medium you choose
before this
stanza
ends.