School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

It's tough to break yourself as news to a town that already knows you.

Time cures you first, and then it kills you.