To become a poet there are some simple steps you might want to follow.

First, you have to be incredibly egotistical and melodramatic. Then, you have to identify those traits and selfishly give them stanzas. When it comes to your melodrama don't let that speak clearly — it has to be felt.

Example of bad melodrama:

The flower weeps for spring.

Example of good (hidden) melodrama:

The flower hangs its head

Dew trickling from its petal like a tear.

This tear is a call for spring.

Both options are awful but flowers and spring beg for the cliché so avoid those subjects. Also avoid love, the rain, the sun, and battles set in the Middle Ages. You may touch on these topics when the cliché has been properly and irrevocably beaten out of your system.

When it comes to your vast, complex, never-ending ego try to manipulate your poems so that the reader thinks it is actually about them. A good way to do this is by speaking in the 2nd person. By making it seem like your poem is about the reader, or the human condition, you can secretly talk about the only subject of interest — yourself. Dreams and existential crises are a fun way to start.

Example:

You may have noticed that dreams

Are your personal Heaven and Hell.

So slip into your coma of dreams

Brought to you by a dark room

And closed lids.

You may be having trouble with the conversational tone, and you may be having trouble coming off like a preacher at a podium but it may be all about the process or all about the critique.

When it comes to critique always say thank you, because then, eventually, you will become truly thankful. Even if Colton Davis in your high school poetry workshop says he thinks it is cool that you lucid dream even though your poem just clearly stated that Satan himself had infiltrated your subconscious and you had no control over him at all, and knowing you were dreaming was not comforting or helpful. In fact it solidified the idea that your own mind may have a goal of torturing you every time your head hits the cool side of the pillow. But, you smile and say "I know, right" and laugh and except the many workshopped versions of your poem that all have "nice imagery" written in that meek, high school trademarked, handwriting at the bottom of the last stanza.

You must know that no poem will turn out how you expected it to. Also, most poets are pretentious, self-indulgent, insecure, phonies — including yourself so have fun trying to "make it" as a poet (also that's not a thing, no one has ever "made it" as a poet. You'll just die and your cousin, probably named Denise, will find your poems in a drawer in your bedside table and she'll submit them to the Kenyon Review and 200 years from now you'll be known for never reaching your potential). Also if you want to write a poem it helps if you are, or at least were an intensely sad alcoholic. You will take a college poetry class taught by David Glockner, a Keats loving socialist. Everyone will sit around in an infinite circle jerk (a cliché but a good one), praising one another's poems and tiptoeing over critiques and it will be by far your favorite class you have ever taken.