Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Poets?

I told myself I would write everyday. Today is a day, so I must write, even though I am not in the mood. I have read in so many reliable places that writing every day is the best way to be a better writer. When I put it that way, it sounds obvious. I want to say practice makes perfect, but I hat cliches. I also hate them. Sitting at a coffee shop as I am doing now can be inspiring, but it can also be oddly irritating. The coffee shop - home turf for the "creative" types - is always bustling with people like me, people who think they are different, who think they are the ones who are going to "make it" in whatever dead-end career they happen to be aspiring to. Even right now, I can look in front of me and slightly to my left and see a woman typing a screenplay. I want to go up to her and say, "I am better than you. Stop trying." She may be much better than me, but I want to be the only one in the coffee shop working on my craft so that it doesn't seem so difficult to get ahead. Yesterday, a group of - OBNOXIOUS - young show-offs sat in a prototypical coffee shop circle, two on a couch, one in a recliner, one cross-legged on the floor, all surrounding a hippy-looking glass coffee table, and talked about things at a volume that made eavesdropping a necessity, not a desire. They were all "poets." I was irritated that they were calling themselves "poets." If they were really "poets," they wouldn't be sitting in a coffee shop talking about it, they would be - well, I don't know where poets go. The point is, I could tell they weren't accomplished "poets," they were just people who try their hands at poetry, then sit in stupid hippy circles at coffee shops and brag loudly about the latest reading they went to. Then they watch loud youtube videos with no headphones and piss off everyone around them. I am writing right now, but do I consider myself a "writer?" No. I haven't accomplished anything deserving of that title. If I walked around telling everyone I was a writer, I would be pretentious. The coffee shop "poets" need a lesson in humility. What is poetry, anyway? Here, I can write poetry on the spot:

Here I sit to write words
They do not spell, they say
To whom is not to know
For to find the meaning
would be to know too much
And this is why
sense is lost.

Yes, that took all of 30 seconds, and it makes just as much sense as any poem I have ever read. Maybe I should become a "poet." I could just make shit up and mush words together in a way that sounds "poetic." This whole prose thing is tricky because it has to actually make sense, follow the laws of English.

This is really not as satisfying as it was yesterday. Hopefully tomorrow I will be more inspired.


3 comments:

  1. WELL... MAY NOT BE SATISFYING TO YOU BUT HAVE SOME SATISFACTION IN THAT IT IS IMMENSELY SATISFYING TO THIS READER!

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    Replies
    1. I'm glad it is satisfying to you, because these are going to be in abundance as I force myself to regurgitate whatever pointless thoughts run through my head on a daily basis.

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