Writer’s Lament

Say one true thing
Write an unselfconscious sentence
Show me something that doesn’t hide behind art
Make me unaware of an audience
Write what you know and don’t pretend you know it
Don’t romanticize it or rationalize it
Or darken the edges
Or brighten the corners
Make it simple
Start it easy like
so
“I am a man, nearing 44, sitting in front of a black computer keyboard” and so on
and so forth
Till it tattoos the screen with glyphs that resemble something like a truth

Of course it’s not truth
Just an approximation
A verisimilitude
A distant cousin to the shadow
Whatever the fuck that means