May 9, Lerner Game

1. Make poetry famous.

2. Burn your initials into the sun.

3. Read poetry
from the middle of a burning building,
standing in the fast lane of the freeway
OR
falling from the top of the Empire State Building.

4. Be Richard Speck,
rather than Gary Snyder.

5. Ride a rocketship to hell,
rather than a Volvo to Bolinas.

6. Sell arms to the Martians,
rather than wait sullenly for a letter from some deceased clown with a three-piece mind, telling you that you’ve won a bulletproof pair of rose-colored glasses for your poem ”Autumn in the Spring”.

7. Be hated by everyone
who teaches for a living.

8. Read your poetry and watch people
get headaches, vomit, weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding,
eat their television sets,
beat each other to death with swords,
and go out and get riotously drunk
on someone else’s money

9. Do not bury poetry
or dandle it on your knee like a retarded child
with beautiful eyes.
Instead, blow it up
or throw it off a cliff into icy seas
and see if the the motherfucker
can swim for its life.

10. Buy one of those beautiful
switchblade knives.

April 8, Bass Game

1. Get yourself one hell of a fishing rod.
2. Go fishing.
3. Keep an eye on the line.
4. While you wait,
think about your long gone childhood days.
5. While you wait,
think about all you’ve loved and lost.
6. While you wait,
think about the tears you wish you never held back.
7. Catch the fish.
8. Beat it upside the head with something blunt;
a stick, a joke, or a… blunt.
9. Find some people who really like to party.
10. Drop dat phat bass, yo!