i. General Advice

Prudence is hiring a taxidermist for the wedding, shedding inhibitions
before letting the groom see you in your birthday suit,
knowing where all the exits are whenever you enter a

room, grieving the rabbit massacre just before Easter, feasting on
discounted chocolate after, having your cake while being eaten, too,
discontinuing a habit counts as doing something new, let your

gut get fed by what you write, retaining the weighty
minds of those whose work you read, being prepared is
never asking a question you are not willing to answer

yourself, silence seeking freedom in the asylum of making a
statement which evades quotation as a gesture, the way some
admit to a crime before committing it, contemplation is, after

all, nine tenths of the project, what inspires it matters
less than how it happens to manifest, allowing no congress

                    ii. Perennial Wisdom

to persist between season and analogy, seed-time and harvest, the

artist exists outside of chronology and aims above morality, to
be what he is, this is the whole of the
law fragmented into epigrams, a wintering of wisdom falling with

all the cotton softness of first snow onto blushing ears
blood quickens to warmth as it nears this breath to
hear and experience its truth’s chilling effect, a splintering of

circumstance drips mirrors of slivers, silver writes stitches of ink
into a storm without a sound, clouds fogged minds, drops
jaggèd hints, follows down the drip of a hand into

the pants of an excuse, dawn-coloured water routes through nude
light, taking with it residues indebted to its flight for
anything, any thing at all, resembling new life, this is

what ink does when and wherever it falls, crawls not
by claws but by breath it draws from the master’s
lips into a kiss he lays on his student’s mouth,

an unspoken promise to listen, a flirtation of the sun
with sensation no one can whisper quite the same way
as dawn does when she touches the torches of her

fingers to sweating skin, waking from within a sleeping heart
dreaming of being beaten again, this is the secret: taking
what has been broken and creating with it lasting masterpieces.