If you follow the rules…
Erasures with the Magic Rub
(only!) that lives in the opaque
and brittle baggie with green
Farber Castells of various down-grinds
from the Panasonic’s teeth.
I always choose the longest.
Erasures OK, sometimes, with
a Ticonderoga if pulled from the baggie
where it sleeps in carbon
dreams of words, but never
writes, only snuffs wrong words
softly with its butt end.
If you follow the rules and
never reach into the desk
drawer for implements,
keep your pencil sharp
and – this is key –
be legible, illogical,
willing to write about anything
to carry perplex in its lattice, then
your tools have made a poem
and you, a poet.