HOW TO WRITE GOOD POETRY

Good poetry writing
is a massive eruption
of sexual energy
from the mind and body.

it’s like kissing with tongue and teeth
till you fight for air,
till you bleed
like a song of grief
like a cry
of utmost happiness.

it’s like a rabid dog biting you
at any time of day or night
when you’re alone and drinking
alone and angry
alone and broken
when you do not have anything.

It’s dizziness, addiction
a fatal disease
a trance in which you walk on the edge
painfully happy.

it is a sonata for violin and harpsichord by Bach
under the arch of the summer skies
when clouds collide
and music burns and thunders
and far away – seven
funeral bells.

it isn’t writing poems,
but life –
more than words and rhymes, and metaphors,
more than sleep
love
sex and
satisfaction.

it’s a gentle lover who
never leaves you,
slow lonely madness
from hunger and thirst
one hundred percent love for yourself

readiness to be rejected
to be thrown into the Hell
of indifference
and oblivion.

good poetry writing
is almost impossible
after Tsvetaeva Rilke, Cavafy, Elliott,
Yates, Rimbaud and Bukowski,
but you can’t help it
and you attack the white sheet
with all your passion
wild and furious

and while men and women at night –
howl, moan, cry
under the sheets
you melt away
no lover
no hope –
that’s how you write good poetry…

if you can’t do it that way
it will be no great loss.

——–

BY ILEANA STOYANOVA
from her collection ” LOVE SONG”, published by Znatsi , 2009

Picture Rupert Loydell

(Translated by HRISTINA KERANOVA)

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