Learn to love silence and the taste of water.
Let birds nest in your best suit.
Live at home.
Change your mind often to prevent wear.
When called upon to speak, let words escape you: ululate.
Weep at weddings, dance at funerals, sleep-walk in parades.
Peg your moods to the weather.
Keep careful records of the shapes of clouds.
Burrow like a star-nosed mole into the task at hand: blindly, guided by an extinguished light.
Give yourself up like a river in flood.
Whatever you accomplish, make it look as if it happened on its own.
Form a committee for the reinvention of the wheel.
If you’re boring enough, even death may forget about you.
Erase your tracks with a worn-down broom.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- How to wake up
- How to eat
- How to walk
- How to listen
- How to wait
- How to breathe
- How to find things
- Manual: How to make videopoems, courtesy of Swoon
- How to lose
- How to dance
- How to procreate
- How to play
- How to listen: the movie
- How to mourn
- How to calculate
- How to grow up
- How to spit
- How to burn
- How to mourn, Belgian-style
- How to make a fist
- How to make a face
- How to sacrifice
- How to take notes
- How to talk
- How to dig
- How to sleep
- How to cast a shadow
- How to teem
- How to fit in
- How to sit
- How to panic
- How to exist
- How to drive
- How to question authority
- How to cook
- How to find things (videopoem)
- How to distress furniture
- How to meditate
- How to be a poet
This is the best yet, for me, Dave.
It’s cool Vasko Popa is an influence . . . _Homage to the Lame Wolf_ is a favorite.
~Kris
Yes, and G-d bless Simic for translating him (and Tadic, and Lalic too).
I’m glad you like this one — it’s undergone more revision than any of the others so far, to the point where I have a hard time maintaining my objectivity and perspective.
I love this, and even fancy myself part of its dramatis personae!
Well, I don’t know about that. You are a success story as far as I’m concerned. But I can tell you that the line about tango in today’s installment came straight from last night’s Facebook thread.
This is a brilliant one, Dave!
Thanks, Maria.