Thursday, May 24, 2012

Of a Kind

She fancied herself a shitty poet, for she had come to believe that those were the most earnest. The talented poets, those who gazed upon the world and saw Truth, could transcribe their vision in a manner with which only other poets could comprehend. Poets of her breed, however, those who gazed upon the world and saw the world, wrote with an identifiable ease. They brought no new light, opened no eyes, moved no hearts, challenged no minds, but what they lacked in poignancy, they made up for in accessibility--in that notion they found transcendence. Like the talented, their audience was broad, though far less analytical and far more modern. They were of an age, a brief moment in time, a whisper into the very ears of God, vanished into the vast plane of history. No one would fight to keep their works in print, nor would anyone attempt to retrieve any lost publications of these truly awful few. When they work ended, so concluded their legacy. They were of a generation, that generation's chief voice as far as sales were concerned, and she was chief among them."Miss Emily Meyers," read everyone of her book jackets, "Shit Poet," and she delighted in the title.

This morning, she did not know delight, however. She knew frustration instead. It crept through her like a rat through the walls. The mini-van reeked of puberty sweat, her twin boys hitting each other in the back seats, her daughter pouting in the front. So much shitty poetry pouring through her and no pen to record it with, no surface to record it on. Did her kids not understand her status--queen of the shit poets, goddess of shitty poetry?

There is, of course, a distinction between the shitty poets and the shittiest poets. Shitty poets were those with mass appeal; whereas the shittiest poets were just shitty poets. The shittiest poets wrote in isolation, dreaming to ascend the ranks, believing that they would one day achieve the status of Yeats or Eliot or Dickinson or what have you, unaware of the majesty that accompanies the shitty poets once their shitty poetry saw sunlight. The only qualm Emily had, and it was a minor one at that, was with the word "shit," but she did not coin that particular part of the phrase anyway. Her brother, not one to censor himself and unfamiliar with concept of tact, provided the inspiration.

"What a shitty poem!" he declared upon finishing what she considered to be her magnum opus, and the words struck her. Shit. shit shit shit shit How vile, how unpoetic. She loved it ... sort of ... she hated it too. Rather, she understood it, realized its function in art, its appeal. This was the role she was born for. Rarely does one get the privilege to look into the mirror and lay eyes upon their purpose, knowing without any semblance of doubt why The Stork delivered your fetus to your mother's womb, but she, Miss Emily Meyers, saw exactly that on a piece of paper, informing her of her first publication. She was a shit poet.

That was her mantra, repeated whenever she sat down to write, and she could not stop writing. Her brain leaked shitty ideas for shitty poems everywhere she went. She wrote about love--all the best shitty poets wrote about love--and she wrote every night. Once she finished a collection, she started another. It was her livelihood, how she fed her kids, paid the rent, kept her dog supplied in the higher-scale brand of dog food for which he had developed an exclusive taste.

Her hand never ached. She did not comprehend "writers block." There were so many things to say, none of them vital, but all of them were said regardless.

That night, she found herself caught by a fever. She never felt this way. When she wrote, she wrote calmly, the words flowing out of her with the ease and steadiness of a running faucet, but tonight, the words pressed against her, forcing their way out. Tremors shot up and down her spine. She was a nine on the Richter scale, a code red threat level, ready to blow at any second. The lights were dim in her room--the pitter patter of little feet on the floor downstairs provided the soundtrack. Every now and then, she would hear an "ouch," and she would mutter a brief prayer that her sons had not killed each other in whatever ill-conceived game they immersed themselves in and that her daughter would not play the role of collateral damage. She would tend to them if she could, but her work had consumed her, had seized her brain, had made her a prisoner to some unknown warden. It occurred to her that she was excreting poetry. She, the shittiest of the shitty poets, for the first time in her career, was excreting her first shitty poem. The others, as shitty as they were, did not come with such toil. They came not from the ass but from the mind, with complete comprehension of their creation. She could not even read the words of this current monstrosity, did not believe she would understand them if she could. This was a chemical reaction, an explosion of thought, volatile. She feared she would never write again, would be incapable, rendered useless by one malicious shitty poem shitted maliciously.

Oh God oh no it can't be She sat back, the words no longer pushing through her. A restoration of clarity overwhelmed her, forced her backwards through time and space. She read it then read it again then read it a third time. no no no She e-mailed her to her brother, waited anxiously at the computer, her daughter crying downstairs while the boys sprinted to their hiding places. no no no 

When his response arrived, her worst fears were realized. Miss Emily Meyers, shitty poet extraordinaire, had written a good, nay, a great poem. All hope was lost. 

Monday, May 21, 2012

The Indisputable Divinity of Ray Allen as Jesus Shuttlesworth and His Father Denzel

I had written you, yes you, a wonderful short story for this particular post. Irreverent, sure. Blasphemous, maybe. Wonderful, most definitely. But as you can see from my italicized used of the past tense, that tale is no more. It has gone the way of my pens, my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, my iPod, I think maybe a dog or two of mine, and it is now lost. This is the penance I pay for scribbling my short stories on whatever random piece of paper I find laying around and shoving the results into my pockets without any semblance of a thought. My organization has always been ... well, I have none, but so far, it has never brought upon a tragedy of this magnitude.

GONE! My work all gone, and all I have to show for it is this self-deprecating blog post and the pocket lint I retrieved from my pocket instead of my story notes. I could recall only the title, those words forever engrained onto my skull, and a sentence that began, "As he stared into the bear's eyes, convinced that this creature was convinced of his edibility, Jesus raised the basketball..."

The rest is fog, indiscernible and maddening.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Letter to My Black Half: A Rebuttal

Dear Colored African-American Self,

I received your letter, and it only furthers the point I've been making since 2008: Obama's election has given you an unbearable sense of pride. All of a sudden, we're listening to Outkast, we're watching Spike Lee films, we're seeking out Cornel West interviews on NPR. Where was all this black pride in high school? When you were listening to Pinkerton and crying about girls on full blast instead of Bun B and crying about girls? I apologize for the attempts on your life ... that was perhaps a little too far and unwarranted, but the ego has gotten to be a little much. Your civil rights aren't even a century old yet, and already they're being shoved in my face. Need I remind you that, without me, we wouldn't be half as employable.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Letter to My White Half

Dear Self of the Honkie Variety,

Listen. We need to talk. Don't worry; we aren't splitting up. Unfortunately, that is not an option for us--I have consulted a number of specialist. No, our burden remains to carry on, to deal with each other's faults as Dr. King would have wanted, and that is why I have chosen to write you.

It's the racism, Sean. At first, you would just crack the occasional joke about whatever stereotype you happened to conjure. A "I bet you want some of that fried chicken" or "Shouldn't you be able to dunk" or perhaps even "Use your magic negro powers," which I did not even know was a stereotype until you brought it up, would come gallivanting out of you mouth whenever the situation was "appropriate," and I could live with that ... if it had ceased there. But then came the attempted lynchings. After the first, I thought, surely this was another joke. Then twice ... three times ... four! and I got suspicious.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Screamales: A Hazy Retrospective

Hello all. I've decided to try something new within the established Kittens in Ties format. The goal is to write reviews on things ... all sorts of things ... in the form of flash fiction based on my memories of said thing. This week's review is of a concert I recently experienced: Screaming Females at Queen City Hall. We'll see how this goes ... 

Power chords ran through his veins like demented gerbils psyched out on pharmaceuticals running through an infinite loop of tunnels encased in a glass cage. He could feel the dissonance of the guitar solo inching up his spine, and it was only 7:30, several hours before the show would even start. These were feelings drawn by expectations, already bobbing his head up and down amidst the rhythmless soundtrack of street noise. It would do for now. He knew the songs well enough that he didn't need musical accompaniment to get amped up. Instead, he needed only silence ... his mind would provide the rest.

Of course, now was not the time for premature headbanging. Now was a time for action.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

A Doodle of the Devil Blowing Bubbles

Every picture needed horns, and he wanted to be the hand that distributed them. He realized his realm of influence in that regard had its limitations, but his elementary school made a habit of telling children that they can accomplish anything they put their minds to--no matter how improbable. As a result, he earnestly believed he could sketch horns onto every political figure in every textbook, onto every portrait of every composer reprinted in every program for every concert band performance, onto every smiling child on every box of girl scouts cookies, onto every author's photograph on every book jacket wrapped around every book in every library or bookstore, onto every poorly sketched stick figure in every bathroom stall in every truck stop across the country. For now, he would have to settle with this particular program, content with defacing this idle giant as that gentle beast gazed over a landscape somehow meant to signify the accompanying piece, but eventually he would need to expand, would need not to regulate his art as a means of contending with boredom but as a militant expression of disdain for a horn-less society.