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 12, Guv Game

1. Work yourself to the point of absolute exhaustion.
2. Keep pushing.
3. Keep pushing.
4. Keep pushing.
5. Stop showing up for work.
6. Start calling yourself “the Governor”.
7a. IF
…any random asshole has the goddamn gall to fucking ask “governor of what?”
tell the dipshit: “governor of this”
and punch their fucking teeth out their ugly facehole..
7b. ELSE
…initiate a staring contest
with the next shitbucket of an idiot you meet
who is also taller than you are.
8. Hate yourself.
9. Die alone.
10. Level up.

March 12, Marching Game

1. Look at a grey cloud for a very long time.
2. Look at another grey cloud for a very long time.
3. Listen to your stomach rumble.
4,.Write a poem about this and give it to a beggar.
5. Ask the beggar to pay you for the poem.
6. Tell the beggar to change.
7. Wait until your turn to decide between fight(); and flight();.

February 20, Late Game

1. Go for a walk in the woods.
2. Bring matches, in case there is a fire.
3. Bring a gun, in case someone is murdered.
4. Bring an egg, in case you find a chicken.
5. Bring a scream, in case I’ve stopped listening.
6. Bring water, in case you find a lake.
7. Bring empty hands, in case you drop something.
8. Bring money, in case you forgot the matches.
9. Bring poetry, in case everyone falls asleep.
10. Never return.

January 29, Ladder Game

1. Climb onto a ladder across the street from a university.
2. Scream the following into a megaphone:
“We have you surrounded. You have no more places to hide! Give up now and no innocents will get hurt. You have 150 years to respond.”
3. Go back into the main university building.
4. Sit down.
5. Study poetry.
6. Score yourself based on how much
your neck feels like an ivory tower.

January 26, Poetry Game

1. Make up new words to replace the following:
hunger, vertigo, shortness of breath, paralysis, obsession.
2. Don’t call it “love”.
3. Find a pocket between the spoken and the unspoken.
4. Put the words you make up into the pocket.
5. Make regular visits to add, remove, or rearrange words.
6. Before you die,
teach all of the words
to someone you’ve never met before.
7. Add one dot to “OBFUSCATION”.

January 24, Selling Game

1. Tell as many people as you can that you are about to play this game.
2. Sell everything you own.
3. Spend a year in complete solitude.
4. Walk past my house every day.
5. Walk across a continent of your choice.
6. Walk in and out of songs, poems, and fistfights.
7. Find yourself standing outside my house again.
8. Carve your name into my door.
9. Sell it as a work of art.
10. Add 1d6 to your CREDIT RATING skill.

January 20, Home Game

1. Make a promise to yourself that you won’t be able to keep.
2. Go looking for a string to pull at.
3. Watch your snow-covered fields,
your comfortable cliffs,
your sleek city wastelands
all unravel.
4. Find a way to escape from wherever you wake up the next day.
5. Repeat the details of your every stolen glimpse or cowardly theft time and time again.
6. Make up for all of it with poetry and bad breath.
7. Throw away your shoes.
8. Tattoo “liar” on the soles of your feet.
9. Whenever you need to go somewhere, walk backwards.
10. Return to square one, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over  and over  and over   and   over    a n d   o v e r    a   n   d       o   v   e    r      a     n     d           o     v      e        r                   a        n         d                    o           v              e                  r                       a            n              d                           o                   v                         e                           r                        a
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