SCREAM.

 

I set out to write a poem at 8 PM Mountain standard Time

on a Friday night

and God damn it somebody calls me to ask how to write           

First of all I want to say you can write anyway you please,

but you protest to me

I want people to listen

and I laugh,

people don't listen,

they pretend to listen

so you have to scream so loud

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

to get their attention

after that write any way you please

yes i am a nonconformist revolutionary

and the audience is a bunch of meek suburbanites

come to the inner city for a thrill

i take out a machine gun and rattle off metaphoric rounds

over their head

how they are enslaved to a society

that executes the innocent

and send their children off to die for principles

they have not a clue as to meaning

rather just wrap the bodies in the red white and blue

send the next batch of kids to grammar school

who end up questioning the universe

and you send your grandkids back to  West Point and Annapolis

to perpetrate the  American myth

and I say no no no no no no no

I don't need people quoting

Gen. Shermans's aphorisms

About inflicting blood and gore  on the Confederacy

but I went off on a tangent

get back to the reality of writing a poem

just before reading it

drink a shot of whiskey and think of the week in review

I was meaning to write something good

but I ran out of drugs and overate

felt like I was ready to end all

then I wrote a poem for my mother's 80th birthday

and I had to stay around to see how that came out

yes the week was not a good one

I really wanted to write something that stung

something that really makes a difference

about the world we live in

all I can talk about is drugs and death and unjustified wars.

So one more time I take my time

to write something that doesn't quite make sense

and what I should be doing

 is screaming

stop the god damn war and all the killing

I don't care if the battles are now out of sight

and people just care about Grammys and Oscars and

all that entertainment drivel

now I am confused at what I was doing so

I was writing a poem about the week

my summary of what happened

people lived people died people were killed and people cared.

Live die and care.

So I should write something funny

I went to a comedy club

it was gospel singers in Denver

no that was not the comedy

the comedy was my life

I laugh because  because I still am alive

despite the disease drugs and driving

I should say the week was a monumental success

because the uranium didn't go off

and I am at the Mercury Café

reading on a Friday night

an incoherent poem about living dying and laughing.