I’m fond of saying I write, but I don’t make shit up.

That ain’t a slogan. That’s the whole method.

Your writing is yours. I don’t get to tell you what your art should look like. That’s crass. But poetry is still a craft, and a voice don’t get sharper by accident. It gets sharper because you keep telling the truth until the language has to catch up.

This is just how I see it. If it lands, good. If it don’t, I ain’t here to judge your style.

In the Book of Ellis, chapter 69, (yeah, I’m being a smartass), poetry is some piece of the human condition, lived through one person, said in language tight enough to carry more than it looks like it can hold. There is no Book of Ellis. I’ll still stand on that definition. Ten lines of poetry can do what a hundred lines of prose only walk around. Sometimes more.

You’ve felt it. Some poems hit you in the chest. Some feel like somebody trying too hard to sound like a poet. I’ve written both. The difference ain’t talent first. It’s honesty. Write from where you actually are. From what’s eating you. From the people leaving fingerprints on you. You don’t have to write to cut. You might. You might write sorry. You might write dread. You might write the thing you still can’t say out loud. Fine. Just don’t lie.

Tell the fucking truth.

That’s when the art starts doing its own work. I pour my soul into the page. Not pretty. Not careful. Just what’s in me. Do that long enough and your voice stops impersonating somebody else’s and starts sounding like the life you actually lived.

When I say a poem works, I mean it leaves a mark. Emotion. Recognition. A picture you didn’t ask for. A feeling that stays after the last line. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think the opposite. The right words can start a thousand pictures.

That’s where people fall down. They reach for cliche because cliche already knows how to stand up. Problem is, cliche been handled so much it don’t burn anymore. You can use it. Just don’t let it do the talking. Twist it. Stand on it. Then say the thing only you would say.

Find the images that belong to your life. That’s voice. Fire is mine. I burn. In want. In hurt. In need. In the kind of love that don’t know how to be small. So I write inferno. Pyre. Heat that don’t ask permission. You got your own weather. It ain’t less real than anybody else’s ever was.

Nobody else is going to speak you.

So write. Write a lot. Suck. Fail. Write some trash. Clean it up. Miss. Hit. Write a banger and then write the thing you’d hide under the bed. Use the voice anyway.

I try to land on a hard last line. I don’t always. I try, because a poem should leave you holding something, and the last line is where it either stays in your hand or falls through. I listen for rhythm. Cadence. Not rules. Just a pulse.

I don’t know what happens when all this is gone. While we’re still here, I think we find meaning in what we refuse to fake. And I don’t think anything on this earth is more valuable than one person’s honest experience of whatever the hell this is. I suspect we’re here to hand it to each other. That’s why a poet’s voice matters more than it ever gets credited for.

Even if nobody ever understands you.
Even if nobody ever meets you in it.

The least you can do is speak.

I may not be seen.

But I will be heard.