Like I Was A People

What am I doing walking around like this
Like I could cope
What made me think that
Like I wasn’t walking around big chunk missing
Nothing to fill it with but despair
And what happens when I run out
What am I doing walking around like this
Like I was a people.

face

This entry is part 5 of 12 in the series Undrafted, February 2015

I don’t want to cry in public
I’ve done it too much
He’ll say to the face
And scurry for the door.

Warning Dark Roads Ahead

I have embarked on a most ambitious piece. It’s going to be painful and it gonna be long. It might scare you or embarrass me. 

I might seem to become bizarre, disorganized, and riddled with mind-numbing pain. Be not concerned, I assure you I will be!

Call it Process or Method, Madness or the First Realm. “Call it shame or being abashed or trying again, for the last time, to return.” Call it Feeling.

If Cummings is to be believed, a poet’s job is to feel, and if I’m gonna feel anyway…I might as well give up and accept the mantle, amn’t l obliged?

So…Poet, it is, then.

A mad poet on a mad quest. And during that trek some bad lands and the messages you receive will seem scary and bizarre and riddled with mind-numbing pain. They will pop in and out of virtual existence, ghosts whispering in wasnever. Poems will flash before your eyes and with every blink you will question if they were even there. Scary things and gloomy things and heart-rendering stop it things will rush by will be distilled and fitted and molded and crafted into a final work which will be something worthwhile if not worth the effort.

Sometimes this is also the way poetry is done.

“but the song carries on…so holy”

Catch Bull at Four is my favorite album. I molded myself on it. My loyalty and love and honor were forged from it. My dismay at injustice and deliberate hurt, too, were formed within. The album swings from brightest optimism to darkest despair; both seemingly stemming from the same unjust universe.

Buy it, or listen below, but if you are susceptible to crying, bring tissues, there’s a high likelihood of tearing up—the second side will sneak up on you.