Everything2 is just that…
EVERYTHING TOO
Do you love poetry?
Of course you do! Look around…
…you're soaking in it!
You write poems don’t you?
Sure you do! Look at ya…
…you bet your ass you do!
BUT WOULD YOU HANG YOUR OWN POETRY ON YOUR FRIDGE?!?
fuck no!
Your poems live imprisoned in those worn out notebooks that have seen the sticky surface
of every coffeehouse and twenty-four hour joint in town…
…and no doubt in other towns, cities, states, and countries as well.
You visit them every now and then (the poems) and reminisce about how insightful,
poignant, bittersweet, and breathtakingly beautiful your secret use of free will
and language used to be…
…it may even look good today, or better.
With sketches, words misspelled, crossed out,
paragraphs circled with demon tails pointing
to their rightful place in the order. “Looks so good”, you say to yourself:
”…you know, if I were to clean this up a bit, there is some halfway decent stuff in here,
I wonder…”
You wonder what?
“Would other people like it?”
“Does it really suck, but I like it cuz I wrote it so I understand it?”
So you show it a bit…
Play it cool like:
“Oh here, set your drink on this…what is it?…oh…just some stuff I wrote…sure, if you want
to…it kinda is, well, suckey tho.”
Then you try not to look like a lunatic as you burn holes in the top of her head…
So you look deeply into your cinnamon plum tea… maybe add a drizzle of honey…
light up a smoke…
and you wait.
Depending on how “good” or fascinatingly pathetic and frighteningly revealing your “stuff” is,
will be the numeral with which the length of your actual wait in elapsed time is factored. “Felt”
time is factored by how confident you are that your “stuff” is fly, or maybe you don’t give a
fuck what the chick thinks anyway.
Chances are if you write poetry... you give a fuck.
So you get a favorable response, and you go through this horror a few more times and you
decide that this “stuff” that you write isn’t complete utter crap after all. But what do you do
with it?
Are you going to write a book?
And what will you call it? “Poems and writings by Mike Rack”?
(or whatever your name is.)
NO.
Poem books do not sell unless you are famous or dead.
…If you were both, then you’d really be cookin’ with gas.
You could try “Open Mic Nite” at the local coffeehouse…
…but what the hell do those people know?
Besides, criticism is so much better when it’s faceless, I mean Christ! What if you read your
favorite piece and you look up to a silent angry mob?
Or you can try E2!
Log in, pick a killa name (that hasn’t been picked yet), dust off those chestnuts and give
them a polish. You get feedback and then some without ever having to look your critic in the eye…
Try some reports you got an A on in school, try some facts that you cannot find in here,
earn your bullshit, and best of all…
WRITE!
welcome to the rebirth of your desire to write.