professionals

[Wjames]

To be a writer,
you have to be shameless.
Or just shameless enough
to feel nervous sometimes.

Good opening. You have to be nervous enough to ensure your stuff is good, but shameless enough to put it out there and try and be good.

You have to be free.
Free enough to at least know
what freedom felt like
once.

If you aren't "free", you have to be free enough to be aware that you aren't free.

You have to be the kind of person
that never plays games,
even when you take your son in the woods
for an all night Wampus cat expedition.

Good flow, imagery, and spontaneity.

You have to be someone that believes
not only in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny,
but in the Noid and the thing that was supposed
to be in the pumpkin patch in that Charlie Brown cartoon.

As you wrap the hidden presents on Christmas eve,
and fill a basket with candy
during the wee hours of Easter morning.

You have to be willing to believe in the things which you, and other people create. Whether it be the childish magic of Christmas, or the written word of Shakespeare.

But more than any of that stuff,
you have to be willing to go to prison
in your parents' basement if need be.
Or live off your wife's internship for a president you'd never vote for.
Or cut yourself a few times along your inner thigh,
just to know what it is that drives those people
that can't live without dying a little in public.

Or, at any rate,
you have to be the kind of person
just bad enough at math
that having to learn to count money is a far worse fate
than being chained to an out-of-date typewriter
for an entire adult lifetime,
with no backspace function,
and the letters worn off the keys.

Great powerful finish, good flow, nice imagery, and reality behind the words to back it up.

Awesome poem, liked it start to finish.