The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
How to write a poem

Stop in this moment.
Look down, look around.
Gather tenderly the scraps of desire and broken dissonance laying at your feet.
I mean...those sparkling fragments that pique the mind, 
the salty ash left over from the brain's grind,
from the myriad of thoughts, in deep nebula veiled,
see a virgin unravaged lying in innocence so frail.
and ask why, to what purpose, from where, and how.
Indulge your curiosity, inhale, consume, ingest, 
draw deep into the very gut of the subconscious,
feel the tension rise, the maelstrom mounting down upon you, with
wicked harbingers who will leave no sinew upon your bones.
Do you...lie back and ponder, savoring sweet dreams?
	or do you feel the rumble of leviathan upon the deep.
	Do you see flowers and sunrise and noonday sunbeams?
	or lightning upon ice, facing the crag mountain steep.
Good, now that you've dumped complacency out the back door,
a word on method.
Quite simply, your words must dance.  
They must move as if they are a body unbound,
first a linear gesture, then spatial symmetry and structure,
then a depth must come from the holistic unity of expression.
1,2,3...	Gaze upon the virgin subject, whose taut suppleness evokes an idea,
	Then caress and encompass, tender tickles upon such trembling innocence,
	In whose arms you are consumed and in whose desire
your desire cannot look away, so entranced by beauty untouched.
So how do you begin?
If you have not already begun, you've missed the point.
If you do not lie on the edge of ecstasy unleashed, scrambling for a pen as if you could possibly care,
then why lift your nib?  If you have not lost yourself in the enormity of conception; 
if you cannot see your insignificance before the unity of all, then only presumption will
dribble upon your page.  For it is in that ink which spurts upon the page, from an
uncontrollable drive to dig deeper into soft virgin soil, that a poem is given birth,
christened by urgent pangs for the Beyond, and beheld as its own voice.
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©2003 Mark Daniel Milbocker  All rights reserved.