I'm no longer writing for myself

...and it's making the process harder.  I feel like I've come a long way from the old days, digesting rap basics and reading good poetry, coming up with clever one-liners that never got that girl from the diner pregnant-- at least not by me. And now (!) I've come up with extended metaphors to fit the expectation of my current collegiate station, not in any discernable way better a poet than that enviable existence named Mayer, but certainly digging my teeth into the stereotypical styles.

Haven't done badly by them. I've got my admirers still, no longer enamored and now simply intimidated by my sheer intensity. I've got those bright stars still, those selfless artists I look upon who conduct their art with just enough empathy for we the huddled fanbase to make them seem real, just enough aloofness to prove they're really the artists in the room.

I've got most of a poem which, if I was writing for myself, would have concluded in the classic, hilarious explosion of masturbation that came with all its kind; which, if I was writing for but only one of the people I have in my life, would have come to the cool conclusion they love in their stories; but since it's more about me than it is about them, since it's about favoring everyone equally for their best features and forgiving them for their worst, since it's about people who don't even know I'm a poet it's unfinished. It's sitting in the notes section of my phone begging to be whipped into an erotic frenzy, begging for redemption and for damnation and for clear decision.

It's poetry. It's designed to be defined by the reader; it's words formed Rorschach: what you see is what you fear is what you love is what you hate. I can't sleep, because I hate to sleep, because sleep is the cousin of death and because I spent the better portion of my youth attempting to be dead on the most Magellan of terms.


I wanted to send a photograph to bentolman for his epic new painting of the cutaway building. I wanted to he in the room with the couple doing it doggie style, the head count making it sufficiently ambiguous to never know for sure which one was me (somebody's gotta hold the camera). But that's not my lifestyle, nor is it a discussion point.  People in general have a certain set vocabulary, a cache of learned words with which they can reorder with little effort to describe every emotion, every desire, and every need they will ever have.  Realistically, you can't have what you can't ask for, and this lesson has been brewing for a long time.

I have such an attachment to my insomnia. I'm unemployed, I'm enrolled in college, I have no local family, I have no reason as far as these things go to keep a normal rhythm, a rhythm which long ago I came to peace with having difficulty maintaining in this "normal frequency". I'm not allowed to speak at night, the people are all sleeping; I'm not required to speak at night to get my ideas across. I can just think. I can just write. I can just do the things I like the best without immediately feeling guilty. Later, once I've passed out in the middle of the day and extended my leave of absence from the company of the general population, I feel bad that I acted so selfishly, but in the heat of the moment I find clarity and peace.  For some weird reason I feel like I can't think during the day, too much to think about, too many things to start and try to finish. So much laundry, and infinite supply of dirty dishes, so many chores ushering in the banality of adulthood, I can't help but hear the dying scream of my childhood as it dwindles with time.  I used to have it in spades, oodles to use as I saw fit, and my father saw to it that I did. I could sit on the couch all day, or practice some new skill I'd decided to cultivate, whatever.  The world was at my fingertips and now, it's at my throat.