increase your daily chapstick application by fifteen

hundred percent.

                            practice your kinkiest sex

on your frown-frumpiest days.

retreat for at least an hour every night  

to be with your butt-soft, ass-tough poems.

apply ever more of your heart

to your mouth—

                                 but don’t forget speaking

is only one form of loving.

if one cat sweater doesn’t suffice, don

on top of it another, larger,

sweaterier cat sweater.

remember that a synonym for your heart

is total babe.

remember that the moon shares

             that synonym.

wonder aloud on a park bench in a busy park,

is this poem too moony,

too self-helpy?

                                      accept help

beyond yourself. admit you were wrong

about how good the burgers were at that one place,

they only tasted that good to you

because you were utterly

                                         magnificently stoned.

say the word “vestibule”

five times fast.  

for a week, say to everyone you meet, yes i now

             spell my name “chanel,”

             no it’s still pronounced “chen,”

                        yeah if you don’t get that, i hate you.

listen to the pomegranate

on the kitchen counter say, you think you know

             what a fruit is. you haven’t the foggiest!

become alive

enough to live

your pomegranate faggotries.

             understand that your slutty love for words

isn’t always a lovely sluttiness

for truth. recognize that sometimes

                                         & sometimes often

another synonym for your heart

is undeniable asshole

              —though undenying this is only the first step.

store your chapsticks well.

say lolz

ever so slowly. be not

only a generous lover

             but also a generous love.

                                       know

but don’t dwell on the mountainous

fact that there are just slightly

over four hundred

                                  thousand steps.

know, in the depths

of total babe, that you will, some

                            very december days, be poemless

                            & even sweaterless,

but never will you be kinkless.