Why I Write, Part x+276: Petty Revenge

You told me I couldn't; that I'd quit, and thus fail.

This meter's the rhythm to which I shake my tail.

You told me my passion's a big waste of time.

Each new poem is my middle finger, in rhyme.

Every artist has critics, and each man enemies,

and they bite, and they suck, like mosquitoes or fleas.

But unlike the insects I'd rather avoid,

My critics I spite, pouring words in the void.

If I could, I'd leave all of them buried in those,

Under verses and rhyme, and a mountain of prose.

Why I Write, Part x+275: My Passion to Write Something Good

While my passion to just play with words

Is frequently delighted,

My passion to write something good

Remains yet unrequited.

The fact that my next project

Will forever be my best

Was once a fledgling theory

Longing deeply for a test.

I once struggled getting started,

and I wondered simply “how,”

But that young theory passed the test

O're two thousand times by now.

'Tween my works that are in progress

and those that simply are,

An apple and an orange grove

Are the closer pair by far.

There's no sense comparing my work,

A pig-farm's worth of turds,

And new, God-inspired concepts

Unsullied by my words.

Why I Write, Part x+274: It Makes Everything Better

I'm not looking to get hitched, or even tie strings.

I've more passion for words than for almost all things.

There are so many things I don't want in my life

Save the minutes my mind's eye will live them, to write.

To love is just work. Dating's always a bore.

But romance of the mind lets my intellect soar:

No headfirst beginnings, nor heartbroken ends,

Just the sloppy wet kiss 'tween my pad and my pens.

Why I Write, Part x+273: It's Easier Not to be Wise

If I never stopped thinking, I'd avoid the road to hell.

If the devil's in the details, then salvation's there as well,

For all the talk of hands, the former finds my idle brain,

and the latter keep my mind at full steam, train a train.

My refuge from flesh is a life of the mind, meter and rhyme.

I can out-think my id, at least some of the time.

Why I Write, Part x+272: Drive It Home

I've lost some pop; I've popped, gone flat,

Replaced Bitter Bierce with soft and fat.

Now I'm the gray A-baller, just playing out the string,

An old one-trick pony still doing the same thing,

Driving a pen that sputters and coughs

Its way back to the well. I go back to the trough.

I scarcely recall having faith that I'm right.

I still wear the sword, but I skive off the fight.

I used to write because I blazed with belief.

Now I write just to turn an old leaf.

Why I Write, Part x+271: Unicorn Blood

Of you is the gossip within my swelled heart,

So allow me to do Shakespeare's kindness, in part.

In fact, my heart won't shut up about you.

I will help you live on, just as Eos might do.

The knowledge you're near thrills my skin like a feather,

So I'd like to grant you cursed half-life, forever.

You might be immortal, but how will you know it

When committed to text by an unread blog-poet?

Why I Write, Part x+270: Why I Might Not Write Much Anymore

I failed to be the man I'd become

When you needed me, and now all is done.

I came equipped with intent, but no plan,

and I am the white-armored bannerman

Of storytelling tradition that makes women props.

Who you actually were, I have almost forgot,

Though I recall vividly how you once made me feel,

Like I need to think of myself to make you real.

Was I really your friend, or did I get confused–

the millennial Hamlet–use your ghost as my muse?

I still hope I regret my part and your ending,

But that I write of you, I'm no longer pretending,

and now that at last I have ended this lie,

We'll see how many ways I can let a thing die.

Why I Write, Part x+269: Accidentally On Purpose

Though I wish I were more painstaking,

I imagine how tight it would bind

If it weren't merely a saying

To truly be of a single mind.

I would be thoroughly discontent

Without those thoughts everyone gives

On accident, absent all intent.

Those thoughts are where poetry lives.

Why I Write, Part x+268: Not a Daddy or a Dadaist

How nerve-wracking, to parent or paint,

To send my creations wholly away.

As a writer, my poems are with me to stay,

and I give the world copies, exactly the same.

Art's medium changes the nature of selling,

Which, in my art, is as safe as re-telling.

Why I Write, Part x+267: For No Good Reason(?)

Though it's unpleasant, and thought it is trite,
For near fifteen years I've continued to write
Of a beautiful life and its ugliest end
Which I've long understood, but refused to comprehend.
I might've covered every detail, but over this I've glossed:
The world gains nothing from the writing, and the life's already lost.

Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 3: Tiny Tim Would Dig It

Kind sir, have you chance for a stanza?

I'm only a couplet away

From a poem to upgrade my website,

and I'd sure like to get it today.

You see, it's been months since my last one,

and my mind's furnace has been left cold.

A career and a mind-bending hobby

Burns more than my skull-shed can hold,

But the fact is I felt much more healthy

When I wrote something every few hours...

Why I Write, Part x+266: Internal Rationalization of the Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant (ft. My Internal Critic)

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find

That if I'm writing with an audience in mind

I do it not to move, but rather to impress,

Because impressive or amusing is what I like best.

It's rare words (or anything else) make me feel.

As a reader, the thought of it doesn't appeal

As would meeting (or being) the Pathosless Bard.

Also, to move people's pretty damn hard.

Why I Write, Part x+265: Director's Commentary for #WeCanLandOnACometButICant

I don't do it often, but when I do, I find

That if I'm writing with an audience in mind

I do it not to move, but rather to impress,

And that I'm rarely if ever at my personal best.

Lies My Devices Told Me, Pt. 3 (Or Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 2)

Check off that box,

and then go see a show!

Life's in schedules and lists,

What you make, where you go,

What you spend when you get there,

All the to-dos we all do,

Not subvocalized reasons

We have to push through.

It's the tangible clutter

That I purchase with time

That I could spend relaxing

My thoughts into rhyme.

Why I Don't Write Anymore, Part 1: That's Life in the Big City

"That's life in the big city,"
My grandmother always said.
I never knew what it meant,
Until I learned.
It starts slowly enough,
With a late dinner,
Or turning in early.
Then your job keeps you busy.
Your boss keeps you busy.
You but barely blink your eye
and you can't even remember
The last time you weren't too tired,
and just like that,
Your passion, your pride, your pastime
Has become a cold pantomime,
Slightly more important than your hair,
Slightly less than your taste in pornography,
and you've become the man you thought you hated.

That's life in the big city.

Why I Write, Part x+264: What I'm Not

I am not median, only mean.
I am not God and Country.
I am not friends and family.
I am not as seen on TV.

I am not opposed to alone.
I am not clinging
To any youthful longing
That Someday Someone
Special will come along,
Or that (s)he will understand,

and I am not giving up my Pen,
Who sure knows how to pretend.

Why I Write, Part x+263: What I Am

I am a patriot in an academic army.
I am arrayed against the forces
Of ignorance and anti-intellectualism.
I am in command of the scratch-paper and hoops.
I am a veteran of, on average,
About two more hoops than you.
I am less my knowledge than my experience,
and in the classroom,
I am only as credible as my volume of writing.

Why I Write, Part x+262: The Recipe

Start with a stance, passionate but unbalanced.

Throw in dashes of Dickinson—if she hadn't had talent—

and cut into sections with rhymed ends that slant.

Into some, the essence of nineties decant.

With the essance of aughts, be a little more stingy.

Let the thing stew in a brain-bucket dingy,

Then knead it in an uneven rhythm that skips.

Alliterate lightly to cover the blips.

Mix metaphors up like a suicide soda,

and finish it off with an unrhyming coda.

Oops.

Eh, nevermind.

Why I Write, Part x+261: Alliterative, Literate, Literary, Lawless

In reading and writing, regarding the radical
I've been too focused, fixated, fanatical
On being fantastic, first rate, foremost and formidable
To find favor with the finical, fussy, fastidious,
But not once have I wondered "well, what have I missed?"

Why I Write, Part x+260: Why I Unwrite

In my youth drawn by song into meter and rhyme,

But with no sense of my place in it, and no sense of time,

I've learned to treat great masters' sweat-born inventions

As an Empire to fight against, as merely conventions,

So I cover over them, thinly connect them, bite into them, a spider.

I'm no author of record. I'm only the unwriter.