“How to write a song: A poem”

A poem about how to write a song

Hello. You’ve reached Time & Temperature.

I wrote the first draft of this on an ancient typewriter in an office space I rented during the winter of 2020. The lockdown had driven me to a basement office in an abandoned dental building in the hope I could use the forced downtime to finally finish a piece of long form fiction (don’t say novel, don’t say novel), but I only finished a few songs and this poem. Hey, at least I didn’t go crazy.

Or did I?

This is slightly revised from that first draft, and I can only hope Maggie Smith or Maya Popa would approve of the changes I made. But it’s mine. It’s art. It’s life. As we say in my house, “it’s what it’s.”

---

How to write a song:

A poem

First

Tell yourself that it’s okay

That you’ll never know

Your dad

really know him

Not just that he was born in June

Maybe the 11th? 15th?

And played football in college

And talked in circles

And smoked cigars

and when looking at you

fixated forever

on a point just over your right shoulder

you’ll never know him as a man

Or a person

Then get drunk

so drunk

Then see what pops into your

foggy

Head and write it

down

Then

Change the pronouns and pretend

it’s about a lover who

Left you

Was always leaving you

whose birthday was in June

Maybe the 11th?

---

I hope you all have a glorious June. And that all the songs and poems you write are uncomplicated and lovely. Unless they aren’t, and that’s okay too.

yrs,

Rhett