I need to write again,
push through the minutia,
tap harder on the keys, p
ull something out of me.
I have to grab each shard of broken glass
from each solid poem,
cut my tongue with it.
I want to provoke God and Satan
to fuck and fight and make up
and make love again, brutal love.
I want people to be judge and jury
on who I am as a person.
I want you to loathe me and love me.
I want her heavenly body all over me.
I don’t got what it takes,
but I type harder on the keys,
Like if I type harder,
the words will come easier,
Like a beer shit.
Like a beer shit,
Happy Birthday Bukowski!
What would you have to say, sir,
about the orange agent in office?
What would you say to our bumbling chief?
Truthfully, I don’t know.
Hopefully you would tell him to fuck off.
But then you might also just have a beer with him.
Say this world is rabid anyway, have a pint.
What would your IG look like sir Charles?
Wow.
What garbage.
I continue,
I continue like I can make a Marxist MAGA.
I forge on,
like there is a Sisyphus rock
that I can bear down my teeth,
grind, and cut like Caribbean Coca-Cola.
But I am none of this.
And you are not who you say you are either.
But I pretend that I am a writer,
With a big heart, or a big dick,
or a big wit, or vocabulary,
and really, I am none of those things at all.
I am trash on the sidewalk.
I am an Editorial in the 80’s
in some forgotten archive.
and this is shit.
And yet, I type on,
like somewhere there will
be a light.
Maybe in the rewrite.
I am no artist.
I was. I am not. I never will be. I am.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His new book is Train of Thought.