6.11.17

I hate poetry,

she says.

I just don’t get it.

What’s the point?

None of it makes sense

and all the other stuff

I can write myself.

You’re right,

I say.

it doesn’t make sense

to me either, and the

stuff I write is shit,

my niece could do it

and she still poops

in diapers.

But let me ask you something,

I say.

Do you ever feel that terrible rage

inside you, the one that feels like a balloon

expanding always, agitating all your guts?

The one that feels like an emptiness

so deep you could scream

down

into it

for

generations

and nothing would happen at all?

Do you feel that terrible rage?

When I say that my life is like my virginity,

do you understand why?

Because I’m not sure how I ruined it

but I know its irredeemable.

Do you ever look at broken things

in the world,

like cracked windshields

like fried television screens

like shattered vases

like cancer-ridden dogs

like rotten fruit

like burning houses

like pedophiles

like barren rose bushes

like businessmen

like unstringed guitars

like fallen trees,

do you ever look at these things

and say,

I am one of them?

Do you feel that terrible rage?

Or how about this:

The next time you’re in the hospital

and walking through the halls

that wreak of sterilized death and

exhumed human bile, be conscious

of how you feel in that moment

and write it down.

That is poetry, I think.

I think it doesn’t need to make sense.

I think that words, like colors and tastes and

sounds and virginities, are just sensations,

words are like sex,

and some sex is strange

some sex is uncomfortable

some sex is painful

some sex is confusing

some sex is disheartening

some sex is soul-crushing

some sex is joyful

and some sex is unimaginably beautiful.

But some sex, no matter what,

is better than no sex.

Do you feel that terrible rage?

Or how about this:

This guy who used to beat me up

in elementary school once said,

Being pissed-off is better than being pissed-on.

I have never been pissed on.

But I’d be willing to try it

because then I could write about

how if felt.

Am I making myself clear?

---

Written at 11:26 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.