This Is Not Poetry

It isn't the line break or the simultaneous of your submission. 

It isn't the deft of your dash or the clever of your comma 

or the placement or displacement of your period. 

It isn't the slush in any pile or the guidelines for your gambit. It’s everything you're not doing with your words.

It’s life outside your process, beyond the thwack of your machines.

It’s not on your favorite paper or in your tethered books.

It’s everything they haven't told you because they haven't felt it for you.

Or if they have, it’s everything no one knows about because they've hidden it in lines.

Go be the spiral that gives. Go be the circle of cycle that isn't bound by what's not already free.

Go speak outside the bleaching, and go listen outside the reading. 

Touch the earth and then touch your face. Tackle someone’s absence and then give them your present facing.

Stop writing what's already written, and stop reading what isn't right.

This is not poetry. This is your chance to get it right.