Your Stop Here

I don’t know what is wrong with me but I am avoiding a writers conference that would help me become a better writer and I would rather take a nap. I am in my room doing homework rather than forcing myself to attend the workshop. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I feel all sorts of out of place and a little restless because I know I am supposed to be somewhere right, now but all I want to do is sit and think a whole lot of blank nothing. I don’t want to put the time and effort in to engaging in other peoples work, yes I enjoy some of it naturally, but it’s hard to listen when it sounds like crap. And why should I listen to your poems when I don’t care for them? What makes you so special? Your words so profound? Your mouth so delicious? That I should pin my butt cheeks to the cushion of this atrium seat and bleed at my ear lobes with the crap you call poetry? I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Perhaps I have grown tired of pretending to be a part of something that everyone else is pretending exists. What is there to a pretense but looks and clothing? Fabric and skin with no pulsating veiny flesh beneath? I will have no part in robotics. I know what is wrong with me: I discovered. I discovered that poetry is not something to be shared between people for the sake of sharing it. It is a piece of the soul that will touch those it wishes to touch, you cannot force this beast nor hold him back. You cannot shackle his brawny neck or tame down his delicate fur – it will stand on end if it so pleases. It will shock you with its bristly warmth despite the humid weather. Stand not in his way; He is beyond your contribution. Your measly song through the microphone will not stir his slumber. He stirs your soul. I will not sit and listen, forcing myself to pang through the black tar that sticks to the bottom of my sunken sneakers, the gravely stench you call talent. Will not my eyes be drawn upwards with the passing of the beast, his unwavering, stately, bristly, clawing; intent on gluing me to my chair and making me forget I am even sitting in the atrium? I will travel with the poem if he so permits me the ticket. Until then, I refuse to board this unwarranted train.