i got home from work and my headached so i turned off all the lights and laid back on my bed, propped up two pillows and decided to read poetry, maybe find inspiration

this is something i don’t ever do

i’m always shy around poets and reading their works

they are brillaint with pen and paper, dramatic flairs and swoops and whirls

they paint portraits with phrase

i, on the other hand, am clumsy and have no eye for color

these paradoxical labors i punch out of language have neither the finesse nor beauty of those i consider true poets

i can only assume it is because a poem is the reflection of the soul, a piece of the creator carved in granite and proudly on display

my soul is a stark honest reflection of me, shattered, tattered, battered, ugly

no more capable of spinning a fine yarn of traveling through the snow covered paradise, or describing a virginal smile than they are of scribbling frantic pleas for help while wallowing in filth, kicked like a mongrel and left to dry in the texas sun

and i realized maybe pretty isn’t in my wheelhouse because i refuse to let it’s sun shine down upon my scowling face

maybe the dour thunderheads are my vision of beauty

something lying under the scabrous face of a junkie whore turning tricks to any one with a less than discerning palate for enough singles to score the next fix

that is beauty through the tint of desperation

and honestly, between you and i, bukowski is the only poet i really care for besides homer

the pentameter scheme, the lilting softy at the end of a stanza as if questioning the reader’s devotion, that isn’t my thing

i prefer the bubbles of gas breaking the surface of the moss green waters, the slithering of serpent on branch or sinuous slide into the scum of the alligator that doesn’t disturb the surface over primrose and vanity

i understand the poignancy of suffering more than the elation of content

maybe i’m just not cut out for this, not cut from the same cloth, cut off from the realms of perfect sunsets and the kiss of dew on the opening blossom of spring

perhaps i am more the brown stain on a verdant field, the rust colored rorschach on the by the hour motel mattress, the knife scar marring the wood, the cigarette burn on the carpet

and as i laid back reading these declarations of love and life and questioned everything i knew it hit me

maybe the world needs uglied up a touch, without the open sore dripping pus onto the pristine white tablecloth everyone would lose sight of purity

i damn well cannot be like them, as i feared i might try if i read their works

couldn’t, wouldn’t, dare not dream of it

my lines are repulsive, convulsive, acidic little hate etched stretch marks on the drooping breasts of beauty

i wish i could have a bottle of wine with good old chuck, maybe meet the red haired temptress that always caused him dismay and sneak off for a quick one with her while he screamed out the window at the vagrants in the courtyard

he could teach me the finer things of betting and losing at the track while i pilfered beer from the corner store

chances are we’d hate each other at first glance

and that would be fine as well

i’d steal the ribbon from his typewriter and trail it across los angeles while laughing maniacally as i swerved down the boulevard, drunk on hubris and insane on meeting a hero

he’d pen another genius ode to brothels and that red haried minx

sounds like more fun than hanging out with the stuffy self assured types so insistent that their structure is impeccable, they were like byron or whitman or frost or thoreau, the second coming of the great bard or some garbage of the same ilk

scoff at my rambling prose, barely poetry more screaming from inside an iron maiden, fearful of tetanus or rabies or being bitten or smitten by incurable love and other soft and comforting things

noses in the air as the stench of common trash like me pollutes their breathing space, my words tainting the language they make love to while i sloppily kiss it’s neck and beg to be made it’s bitch

small pink books of poetry and mindless dribble while mine is printed on rolls of toilet paper in pox ridden airport restrooms

their words written with quills and framed on the walls of colleges on pristine vellum while mine are smeared down the brown nicotine stained mirror of a cockfighting ring slash gambling parlor in the wilds of panama

or maybe i’m just tired and hurting

stricken with incurable sadness and unable to stomach anything else

throat dry and filled with unswallowed aspirin like a human pez dispenser or the sloppy cover up of marilyn monroe’s murder to appear like an overdose

but still i struggle to find some kind of meaning to it

unsatisfied with each uninspired piece of drivel that falls limply from mind to screen

looking for a whore with more than three teeth and a strong backhand

looking for love in all the crawlspaces, following the trail of cockroach carapaces like discarded candies left by a benevolent god

searching for meaning but only finding half digested peanuts and kernels of corn, no truth, just dysentery and epinephrine needles to ward off hives