I don’t know what happened.

One day I sat down to write a poem

and I did not recognize the language

I was putting down on the page.

And so I just sat there and criticized it to death

for being so meaningless,

for not giving me a hot spot to exploit

and turn into a strategy for eliciting

maximum claps.

Hooray! At some point I forgot how to write

and I now had to learn to all over again

without guideposts to help me along.

“I” would need to step into my symbols

and trust them to change me into discernible places

from here on in,

into a guy with a knack for flaunting failures

as if they were purple hearts

given to all surviving members of

the Special Forces fall over your own feet unit.