as i lay here naked in bed, the works of true genius to my left, a cold wall to my right

the empty bed feels like it is a football field, the derisive voices of real authors mocking my feeble works from the stands

the fan blowing across me, sending little bumps of gooseflesh up and down my legs and arms

i feel the eyes of my heroes glaring at me, willing me to put on some pants, or to write something worthy of them

i just glare at them, my legs crossed, right arm behind my head, watching the ceiling for any trace of sudden movement as i ignore the words and their sultry songs

kerouac calls out and asks what i think i’m doing, butchering the language and i can hear de sade and verne snort

mind your own business, you’re dead and i’m still going, haven’t even hit my stride yet, one day i’ll wipe my ass with your works and they’ll call me a genius

of all of them, only trotsky nods in approval, the rest just bitch and moan from the shelves and ask for wine and women

i do my best to shut them out, the literary bastards and their cutting remarks

put on some pants you heathen, there’s ladies present dostoyevsky weakly shouts and a fit of coughing soon follows

where is the satire, the depth, it’s all so trivial, so meaningless bacon calls out from a pile on the floor

i began to tap my fingers on my freshly shaven skull, let the rhythm bounce the sounds of bukowski getting riled up and screaming about who the red head is fucking while he’s stuck sitting next to chaucer who looks uncomfortable by the whole conversation

twain ignores them all and starts talking about riverboats and the american dream which sets hunter to laughing again

all of you just shut your goddamned mouths for a minute and let me think, i’ve got a headache and i need three minutes of peace to collect myself

but they ignore me, they always do, snorts of derision and laughter as hemmingway somehow drunkenly falls off the shelf and lands face down on thoreau

how’s that civil disobedience for you, bet you never got that much action in walden did you the coked out voice of king sings

all the while pynchon just furiously scribbles away in a notebook and tolstoy does his best to be above it all

leave him alone boys, can’t you see he is about to write the next great poem about the affect of the fan on his manhood hollars ginsberg

murakami smiles and shakes his head assuming something must be lost in the translation

and i lay here with nothing going from finger to page, restlessly tapping my toes to the songs in my head as they mock me for my pedantic and prosaic lines

who am i kidding really, every good line was written by them a hundred times over and they are right

i just roll onto my side and let them all take a long look at my ass while i gather the blanket and decide to sleep and try again in the morning

ignoring the catcalls from them and sending my love to you before sleep pulls me under, that’s all that matters to me anyway

they can have their jokes and banter, they’ve already cemented themselves in history, and i feel like i only write to let you know how i feel

we all wrote to attract the eye of love you fool, some of us just had the talent to do it, neruda shouts and i flip him off before shutting off the light

london howls like a wolf and that set them all to laughing and arguing again as i fold the pillow over my head and try and sleep

as i fade into black i hear poe and lovecraft whispering to each other and i do my best to not make their words out, it’s safer that way