I live in a place where there are no rules

at least an hour a day. To clarify,

it has no rules 24/7, and

I’m there one to two hours. That place is Art.

To clarify, I did not put Art there

as a predicate modifier for

that place. Art is the place, poetically.

It is a way to clarify, to be,

to think, to feel, to do, and to create

with no rules to ruin, dissuade, or stop

you. There have been countries with rules for writers,

artists, and the rest. Art there was put

on hold for centuries. And Letters, too.

This does not mean that Art cannot have order,

harmony, theme, composition, balance,

poignancy, and so on, nor should not.

None of these values is the same as rules,

however. So Art at the very same

time can involve disorder, dissonance,

decomposition, imbalance, no point

at all but randomness to grate on souls

with its sheer anomie. Yet Art should learn,

must, in fact, learn from the great masters, I

believe. Learn rules to break them, as they say.

The only rule that rules all. A haiku

with sixteen syllables or eighteen: So

what?! Hopkins hammered out a sonnet with

eleven lines—ten and a bit, when you

look closer. Then, to clarify, he called

it “curtailed” sonnet. Who cares what it’s called?

It’s beautiful and breaks both rules and hearts.

In other words, even at the expense

of going on and on too long about

my “daily bread,” which I am sure you’ve noticed

I just did, I recommend you try

to live in a place where there are no rules

at least an hour a day. To clarify!