My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon, weekdays, particularly Wednesdays. This is how I go about it: I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door. Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only a white shirt, a pair of pants and a pot of cold tea.
Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair. I slide it off my bones like a silken garment. I do this so that what I write will be pure, completely rinsed of the carnal, uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body.
Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them on a small table near the window. I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.
Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin. I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.
I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on. I find it difficult to ignore the temptation. Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter.
In this condition I write extraordinary love poems, mostly of them exploiting the connection between sex and death.
I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe where there is nothing but sex, death, and typewriting.
After a spell of this I remove my penis too. Then I am all skull and bones typing into the afternoon. Just the absolute essentials, no flounces. Now I write only about death, most classical of themes, in language light as the air between my ribs.
Afterward, I reward myself by going for a drive at sunset. I replace my organs and slip back into my flesh and clothes. Then I back the car out of the garage and speed through woods on winding country roads, passing stone walls, farmhouses, and frozen ponds, all perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet.