by stant

I sit and tap out words. I listen to All Things Considered over the Internet. The broadcast comes from Santa Monica. I listen to the traffic updates and pretend I am in California. I have the windows open today. It's warm. Except for the thin dry air, it even feels like California.

I get an email. It's a submission for the web site. I try to read all the way through it, but it's difficult. Words on paper. I don't know if it's good. I only know if it's painful. I wade through the piece again. I get distracted. An itch on my knee. The ash on my cigarette. I hate poetry. I have no right editing a poetry web site. I read the email anyway.

I shouldn't outta do it, but I'm frustrated and in need of diversion, so I read the bio. The poet is about this old. Lives about here or there. The poet has a homepage. DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK! I click on the link. It takes about two and a half weeks to load. I wait. In a world of fire engines, LoDo cop crashes, and surly upstairs neighbors tanned by the flashing strobe lights of Colfax piercing boutiques, I have to open this homepage and peek in like I was passing a car crash looking for a severed head. I am out of control. Now I'm looking at the nights of Christmas because this asshole has all sorts of shimmery twirly things. My mouse hand starts to twitch and I feel pressure on my bowels. His web page looks like the New Age meets a fucking Goth nightmare.

He's got arrows, and torches, and vines growing up the side of the page. It looks sort of like the botanical gardens grafted on to a 42nd St. cityscape without the hookers. As the page loads, I watch my toenails grow cause the master jpeg of them all is loading. It is a photo of the bearded offender loading. Loading right there in my house. Right there on my desk. He's looking really sharp, wearing one of those blazers with the leather patches on his elbows. He's looking there. OUT THERE! BEYOND! Some place that you or I will never know and never go. To me he looks like a therapist or a shrink. Hell, he don't look like he's ever even thrown up! He's looking out, off into the pretentious distance.

I read on and find out that he's an MFA from Pompous U. In his latest literary coup he was selected and printed and lauded in none other than the September Issue of The Gentle Asswipe Review. Not his work. Him. He's been accepted. His persona. His aura. Him.

And I know, I really really know that I'm gonna reject this asshole's work. because it won't have any balls. It won't have any heart. It won't have any depth. It will be the culmination of seven years of higher education where some other pretentious asshole taught him to write like a buncha other pretentious assholes. Probably taught him how to dress too. If he had gone to UVA I bet he would dress like Tom Wolfe... NO. I am going to reject his work. I'll do better than that. I'm gonna reject Him. And I'm gonna pay. Cause he'll keep writing and writing and writing, sending me reams of electronic shit, till I can't stand it and I'll finally ask him to leave me alone.

Eventually he'll say the equivalent of, "Don't you know who I am?"

And I'll say, "Yeah. Why do you think I'm rejecting you?"

Poets. Ain't gettin' paid. Ain't gettin' laid.
--Roland X

I stand at the podium and read my work. I hate poetry. Hell. I hate poets. Poets ain't got a leg to stand on. Ain't got a pot to piss in. Poets crush words. We call it art then wonder why we're so misunderstood. With 112 readers on the list, poets walk up and read everything they've written since they was fifteen years old. A poet stands up and gives a five minute explanation to a one minute poem. Usually it's because he hasn't written the damn thing well enough for anyone to understand it, but sometimes it's to show us that he's a learned individual. We can marvel at the fact that he has read so much and fucked so little.

"Umm, the title of this poem is taken from a third century B.C. Greek philosopher Hemroiditous. There is also a reference to a little known figure in Greek mythology Epicacous who is known in some small intellectual circles as the Purger."

And when he gets done with that, we'll get to marvel at more of his brilliance cause the poets creed is, "just one more." In the middle of a disinterested audience and impolite applause, the poet, completely disconnected from the audience has to read just-one-more. The poet has been going to this reading for the last twelve years and has to read just one more! Never one more. Always just one more! Just one more like he's gonna leave here and get hit by a bus. JUST ONE MORE! Just one more about I am so misunderstood. I am so manly. I am so girly. I am so down. I am a junkie. Fuck me.

I'm gonna cut out the middle man. Right here, right fucking now. Wanna know what this shit's about? "LOOK AT ME, DADDY! LOOK AT MEEEE!" Try it sometime. Be honest! Stand up in front of this podium, jump up and down and scream it out. "LOOK AT ME, DADDY! LOOK AT MEEEE!" and sit back down. Cut the crap about art and feelings. If I hear one more piece about feelings I'm gonna puke polar bear shit outta my nose. If I hear about your molestation one more time I gonna scream. This ain't therapy motherfucker. If I hear one more poet get up and describe female genitalia in explicit detail, I'm never gonna fuck again. Ever! In fact, I'm gonna take showers with a fig leaf on for the rest of my life. If I hear one more poet stand up with a book of 14th century Gaelic love poems, I'm gonna stick ice picks in my ears and laugh uncontrollably. What's wrong with reading your own work? Even if it sucks, it's yours. This goes for reading Latin love verse, too. If they knew so damn much about fucking, how come they so extinct?

I've been listening to this shit since I was eight years old. That's right. Eight. In 1966 I was going to coffeehouses and listening to beatniks read shit that is even more insipid than what I've heard in New York, LA, or even our fair Denver. And they did snap their stupid fingers instead of clapping. And they did think they were down. And when I was eight, it was really something.

I am not eight anymore.

When I was a child I spake as a child. This page is a sponge filled with blood and doves, and it takes balls to squeeze a moment out of this mess of nouns and vowels. It takes balls to throw a passage on the floor because it doesn't fit it my piece, although it may be the best thing I've written in ages. It takes balls to get honest. The thing about writing is sometimes I manage to rise above myself. I manage to do something that is above my abilities, and outside my self-involved bullshit.

So I sit and tap this piece out. I daydream about California. In front of me is only white. Only white is a question. Only white mocks. Only white is anything I have the balls to make it. It is my father's depression era mentality of "if you work hard you'll get ahead." Almost. If I work hard I'll stay even. I won't drown.

This piece is not honesty. It is what honesty means to me. It is the glory of the coffee house and the sound of three listless people clapping. It is also self-indulgence. Writing about writing is horribly self-indulgent.

So, in the spirit of self-righteousness, I say my piece, feel the breeze through the window and pretend I am back in California.