How to write a poem

Get a pen and get a notebook and open the pen and open the notebook and sit down.
Title it: [insert awesome title]. Try: “How to Write a Poem.”
Take mental breather. Look around.
Come-to ten minutes later. Realize you hate the title.
Contemplate leaving. Leave.
Ride subway back to Brooklyn. Listen to music with words like: romance, family, disbelief, modern.

New rule: No more music with words. Only electronic or classical. Maybe jazz sometimes.

Look away at nothing when the couple across the way shows off some well-adjusted PDA.
Contemplate recent painful life choices.
Contemplate move to New York.
Change mental subject. Force mind back to poem.
Arrive at nothing.
Arrive in Brooklyn. Walk away from home, following tired yet decisive feet.
Window-shop various restaurants.

New rule: Do not go anywhere easy or anywhere you’ve already been.

Do not go there; too crowded.
Do not go there; too expensive.
Do not go there; that’s a convenience store.
Do not go there; you’ll just hate it.
Do not go there; well, actually, it’s fine, go ahead.

Enter Pizza Town.
Switch off conscious thought to prevent further mental falls into depths.
Order pepperoni. Make it two. Extra grease.
Stare at wall of pizza art. Think about nothing.
Sit down. Eat. Watch pretty women walk by. Avoid staring too much.
Avoid all other eyes like the plague, like eye contact might transfer STDs, like friendliness is a painful poison.

New rule: No more new rules.

Start writing. Get nowhere.
Contemplate writing ability as a whole.
Contemplate decisions leading to current location.
Contemplate decisions leading to current social, employment, and relationship status.
Contemplate entirety of life decisions.
Find recent and earliest pain points. Place blame squarely on shoulders of mother and ex-girlfriend. Ignore the fact that they couldn’t possibly be responsible due to lack of intention and involvement.

Come-to when that Kokomo song comes on the radio. Consider fleeing country for Kokomo, singing, “Come on, pretty mama.”
Realize that, in all honesty, “That’s where you wanna go, down to Kokomo.”

New rule: Go to Kokomo.

Leave Pizza Town.
Whistle Kokomo theme song along streets of Brooklyn at 9pm on a Monday night in April, especially loud when near strangers, especially especially loud near strangers who are women that might find this incongruity moderately amusing.
Smile that eating has improved your mood. Consider the outside chance that you have been starving for hours.
Arrive at Starbucks. Purchase small vessel of happiness boosting elixir. Add steamed milk and caramel.
Consider current role of caffeine in life. Consider use for happiness highs. Consider drug-like appeal. Consider.
Sit Indian-style on a bench, like a child.
Find paper. Find pen.
Write.
Smirk, smile, giggle, think, be like a child.
Discover correlation between energy level and mood. Remember previous epiphanies featuring similar conditions and conclusions. Resolve, as before, to never forget, again.

Sit in awe of life, opportunities, passions, luck, and joy.
Relax.

New rule: Relaxation + coffee + greasy pizza + relaxed bowels = noxious fume, one that’s been bottled up over the course of the day, but smells as if it’s been aged and released from the bowels of Hell. Or Hell’s sewage treatment center. Or the bowel’s of Hell’s sewage treatment center.

Consider odds of finding a smell like this in Kokomo, and potential repercussions of reproducing a similar smell there.
Consider running for it, for fear of brutal public scrutiny. Instead, sit.
Dwell.
Write.
To be like a child may be your happiest state. That is, to be happy, relaxed, carefree, and just a little silly, in a slightly embarrassing or harmlessly inappropriate but mostly idiotic yet giggling way.
Return attention to original intention: your poem.