KALAMAZOO MI 2008
I don't
I won't
I hate
I can't write poetry
This stinks, sucks, hurts, gives me a headache, stomach ache, so sleepy, I just have to close this book, this article, this idea and put my head down to drool on my desk.
I need a pass to the office, to the bathroom, to call home, to go home, to escape this expression of emotion.
I cannot stand the thought of my tears, family, fears, friends, problems, ideas and imagination walking and talking across the page into your ears and eventually through a delicate process of using ladders to climb walls into that little mouse running out of breath on a wire wheel of your dreams.
Dizzy with similes like spinning on a tilta-wirl at the county fair, the imagery of funnel cakes with cinnamon and sugar, neon lights and 4H barnyard exhibits of cows and pigs swirling and blurring.
The greasy smells and greasier carnival workers offering cheap purple stuffed animals that fall apart before you get home and lessons in alliteration:
Calling out Corn Dogs, Carmel Corn, Come catch a glimpse of the bearded lady (noun) dancing (verb) slowly (adverb) and (conjunction) she (pronoun) doesn't care what anyone thinks.
After all of that I read the mind mystifying lyrics scribbled with dying ink pens and dull pencils onto wrinkled white lined paper.
Stories about what it is like to be something you are not, and what it means to to feel war on the streets, courage to rise above, love of a family, hate of a family, bravery, ignorance, cowardice, freedom, slavery
all told through the eyes, ears and voices of poets
