I don’t know how to write poetry
I just try to rhyme things and it feels so empty.
Pushing together words to fit to the beat
And imposing my will upon something no one will read.
Is it art if it is just a man rambling
About nothing at all, just aimlessly scrambling
To output content onto the internet?
Look at that, I’m starting to get upset.
I want to be seen, and felt, and heard,
But the need for validation is a painful allure
That seems to constantly escape my grasp.
Some laudatory exaltation is all that I ask.
It satiates a masochistic desire
To evoke from the viewers a feeling of ire.
I want you to hate me, berate me, conflate me
With all your ideas of a false god, deflate me.
Talentless, unworthy, utterly misguided
Is what they say. But to be spoken to is all I’ve desired.
Mired in a morass of self-imposed deficiency
Confirmed by others with a greater proficiency
In everything that I would like to do,
But, cards on the table, I’ll never pull through.
Too little time and too much on my plate –
To be an artist, it’s just not my fate.
I can look at a plant and describe the ways
Of how it reminds me of the simpler days
When I was a kid and there wasn’t much else to it,
Just running around and being inconsiderate
Of everyone else who were trying their best
To give me all they could at my behest.
I could look at the sky, the celestial orbs
In which I am easily, readily absorbed.
How they spiral and spin so far away,
Harboring new secrets with each passing day.
Like the times I spent huddled alone,
Afraid of the world that they would not condone
Who I was when I was deep in the bottle,
Trying to find answers while being coddled by
Parents who loved me and wanted to help
But this illness had sheltered me inside my self.
I would talk of a wolf who howls at the moon,
Trying to define the ceaseless cry which looms
In the night sky like a drunk who tries
To put down the drink for two years in the guise
Of being a “sober” guy but still acts like a dick
Cheating and hurting and making everyone sick.
Crying to the moon, the lunatic, ready to fall
And when they’re about to kill themselves, they get a call.
A sobriquet soon will replace the whipping winds with lands so bucolic.
They will say, “I’m Wes and I’m an alcoholic.”
Open the first chapter of any book and see
That you’re about to be taken on a long and arduous journey.
You have no control of where it will go.
So, let’s go for a drive and to where I don’t know.
The road to the end is challenging, yet
With easy stops along the way I can bet
That in the end, for all that it’s worth
A lot of goodness will be unearthed.
In the between, I can use this time
To offer a hand to those who can’t find
Their way to cross from bridge to shore,
Afraid of what they might find, for sure.
I was scared of what people might see
When they looked at the insecure little me.
But I took that leap and put myself out
To allow for others to know me. I doubt
That there aren’t people out there who will be annoyed
By a person who’s life was once uselessly deployed.
But a person who uses that trauma to sublimate
A life of only which in dreams they cultivate
Art can be found in the littlest things,
Even if the writing in the poem is just strings
Of words smashed together without purpose or poise
And seem to be a bunch of discombobulated noise.
It’s where those words take me and how I get
To the very last word of the last couplet.
The detours and routes which whisk me away,
Show me that all I really have is the words I wrote today.
