When faced with a terrifying and daunting task ["literature"] I am fully capable of laying myself down and falling straight to sweaty, immediate sleep, which is what i did today, at 5 pm, for twenty-five deep, dreamful, sunny, luxurious, sultry minutes.
Walking around the lake earlier today at a pace designed to deliver me from my fears, I was reflecting on the motherfucking awfulness that next week I will have to return to my full-time job. I complain often about the awfulness of Being a Poet and Having a Full-Time [non-academic, okay?] Job, and it has not been lost on me that there are Some People who Don't Like It when they have to hear it. It is distasteful to suggest that one might prefer to stay home reading and thinking and writing all day, and even more impertinent to suggest that one should not only have to Wish To but should Get To! It was not implied, but stated directly to me once [by a friend with a trust fund and no day job] that perhaps I thought that jobs like the one I had were "beneath" me. Listen up people, I'm a poet! NOTHING is beneath me. Our labors are the lowest of the low, the lowliest.
I was the cleaning person for a stockbroker lady two years my junior for six months once, and it was more manageable in polite society to articulate the scrubbing of her toilets than it is to squeak up, "I'm a poet." But if you're reading this blog, you're a poet, and you're already on your hands and knees and you know it. You've written this post fifteen thousand ways come and from Sunday.
[But don't believe the hype! the heart is always right!]
3 comments:
Yeah!
I went for a backpacking trip last week, and let me tell you, ten miles on foot through barren cliffs in the ninety degree sun with little food and less water was easier, yes EASIER, than sitting in this office chair for forty hours a week - which in itself is easier than operating the goddam scanning machines that whir and clank and click two thousand times a day, until our pedal-pushing legs go numb and our page-turning hands begin to shake, Parkinson-style, at the age of thirty five; which in itself was easier, yes easier, than working two part-time jobs on different sides of the bay and stripping until midnight in a dank and musty club, not to mention the lack of regular meals or money to pay rent on the attic nook called home...not that i have any complaints, no, because I'm a poet, for fuck's sake, and have no right to complain, as the lowest of the low I should be grateful for the tongue in my mouth and the ears on my head.
but I Don't Believe The Hype! The Heart IS Always Right!
Sometimes I don't even believe that trust-funds even exist: I think they're an urban myth, like albino alligators in the sewers or sustainable development; who ARE these people who trust in funds? do I know them? are their foreheads branded by flaming insignia that i have yet to decipher? What Is Going On?
judy j i think i love you
p.s. if you're at a poetry reading, don't spit far. you'll hit one.
I like to hear people (poets) complain about having to work. It encourages me.
I was once asked by a co-worker what I did in my spare time. When I mentioned poetry, he audibly said, "I think I'm going to lose my cookies." But other people have actually expressed respect.
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