Sunday, January 22, 2012

Hearts & Crafts

I want to tell Carly that this poem is for her. Hey Carly! This poem's for you! Thank you for the craft supplies!

I want to wear a suit of bubble wrap, so if I get hit by a car, I'll still be badly hurt, but I'll have something to do while I wait for the ambulance.

I want to smear my chest in glitter, so I can run out of the woods, flailing and shrieking that I was shit on by a unicorn.

I want me and my art to be stuck together like two bits of wood acting as the bread of a PVA sandwich. I want to treat my art like a lover. Play back and forth, always offering, never asking, knowing when to fuck and when to make love.

I want my poetry to read like footsteps on a path of drying cement, so everybody can know where I've been, and where I am, and when they reach me, I can tell them where I'm going.

I want to shut my brain down for 24 hours, so that just for one day, I can craft with my heart, and heart alone. So that just for one day, I can appreciate that everything I create; every poem, song, and painting is a love letter to art itself; so that just for one day, I can live without the critical eye that looks at my own creations and says "Well that's no fucking good."

I want to know what the poets know. I want to get closer to Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs. So I think I'll treat myself to a naked lunch on the road and howl when they come to take me away, ha ha.

I want to spend a year in a strait jacket, so I can learn to write with my feet and say "Yeah, that's right world. 4 pens at once. Try to stop me now, motherfucker."

I want to think up some brilliant new expression; something to lift the chins of folks who are having a hard time with life at any given moment. Something like "If you don't trudge through the sewers, how else are you going to meet the Ninja Turtles?"

I want to treat each step like it's helping the world rotate. I want to snap so loud that I can't type when I get home. I want to care less about money and treat each purchase like it's only ten dollars (Only TEN dollars?!). I want to laugh so hard that I ejaculate confetti.

I want to deliver quiet lines during big laughs, so the audience has to buy a book to know what I said.

I want to quote The Simpsons like it's still 1998 and relevant. I want to live, Marge! Won't you let me live!

I want to get five zeroes at a slam, because it seems more difficult to achieve than five tens.

I want a world where the righteous aren't so damn righteous about it. I want a world where everything goes up to eleven. I want a world where you get strange looks for NOT singing alone in public. I want a world where I can say Snooki, and everybody else will say "who?" I want a world where everything's coming up Milhouse. I want a world where everybody has a sex tape so we can all calm the fuck down about it.

I want to leave an audience in constant suspense. I want my audience to always be unsure of what I'll say next.

I want to...

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Damage

We're all a little damaged.
Everyone in front of me has some kind of baggage, some kind of damage, some old scratches covered up in fresh paint. Some of you have written poems about it. Some have shared it with a close friend, and some have never let it out. Some have forgotten it entirely.

But it's there.

We all know it so constantly that we fail to notice its effects on each other, like we're painted black and blue but we're only seeing skin tones.

The time was right, I thought, to talk about mine a bit.

Diagnosis: 9 years old - Everything is making this kid cry. A fetal ball was my fighting stance. Seemed like my only goal was making my weight match my IQ. Of course, these days, that'd be a good thing.

Diagnosis: 9 years old
Diagnosis: Can't stop crying
Diagnosis: Highly intelligent
Diagnosis: Can't identify with other students
Diagnosis: Major Depressive Disorder

Lucked out being the smart one - most kids couldn't spell the name of the pills I started taking.

I couldn't tell you how long I was in therapy. I can tell you that it happened Tuesday afternoon. Every Tuesday afternoon. And I can tell you that it was getting tense, trying to convince the more skeptical of my classmates that I was at a "doctor's appointment".

These days I laugh in the face of anyone who asks me if I wish I was a child again.

We're all a little damaged.

And some of us try to wear it like cosmetics - to show the world the empty glow of our hollow-eye-shadow.

I have a simple message to deliver - to anybody who will hear it.

Stop trying to diagnose yourself to be different. Being Bi-polar is not a fashion statement. Depression is not a buzz word that means "attend to me, peers" - It's sitting awake at a computer screen at 3am holding a fucking knife to your throat, eyes burning red, shirt collar soaked in tears cried out because you force yourself to keep going. You just can't bear to give anybody another reason to be disappointed in you.

You're accessorizing yourself in the choice methods of the suicidal - and while you wail for attention to your glittering malaise - another father has hanged himself with your necklace. Another mother has cut her wrists with your cufflinks. Another scared teenager has used your shoes to step out into traffic. Another human being has swallowed 30 doses of what you're selling and has died in foaming convulsion while all eyes rest on you.

We're all a little damaged.
We've been there. We've done it. We got the t-shirt.

But none of us actually want to wear it.