To The Reader

Kill the idolater in your head: a poet is a lonely man.
Admire his hand, his turn of phrase, but
do not venerate.
Beautiful words are not water:
they are bullets on your tongue, best served
ripped up, chewed up, spat back out in venom and jest.
Read as a hunter; read as a soldier;
read as a sniper trained on a target.
A poet is not a teacher, though
you must read as a student. You must
read as a businessman and read as the homeless;
read as the housewife, the whore and the faggot –

read, because you are a conversationalist, because
the pen in your hand won’t move by itself,
because to read is to write and to write
is to destroy with
your power to carve into stone:
I WAS HERE, AND I FELT!

Write, because you are the poorest man in the graveyard.
Write as the worm that will one day feast on your corpse.

Written in York Cemetery 22/3/2025.