In my childish mind

When first embarking on my herculean task

Of finishing my very first novel

I had seen a need to write

“First Person Omniscient.”

Write it I would try

With lots of exposition.

 

However, I realized later on when writing it

By writing first person omniscient

I had created an unreliable narrator.

Namely, my own narrations

About a nowhere.

 

The same questions posed to me

Were the same questions that destroyed

My nowhere.

 

And my nowhere was as good as this nowhere

I speak, where my foot is on the soil.

It was as real

As flawed…

And I had failed to write my Firs Person Omniscient

Because I hadn’t even understood the nowhere I wrote about.

Later on, other characters would

Which is why I’m proud to have written that cumbersome novel.

One Thousand Pages about a nowhere

Where all radicals would love to live.

And live they do

To see their radical veins of conservatism

Get destroyed by the very powers

They adhere to.

Those being the elixirs of worldlust

And desiring to change what didn’t need changed in the first place.

Only, power becomes the liberal

And radical becomes the conservative.

 

My advice to any radical reading my epic failure

Is to know that we are not able

Not even close

Not even if we wanted to

Able to write in First Person Omniscient.

Not even when dealing with a fictional world.

Weave, o mind

Throughout my words

To draw from them succulent honey.

 

Such drawn vines

Of sap from apricot verse

Drawing down the cheek

To see wisdom,

To have eyes opened.

 

Open eyes, open.

Let the sweet, tart sting of the liquid

You taste—my apricot verse—

Open eyes

To realms of symbols

To realms of make believe,

Which draw the puckered lip

Closer to an arcane.

Drink deep,

So kiss the sweet knowledge

Of my verse’s love.

A prisoner stood on the gallows.

The rope hung beneath his neck.

Guilty of the crime he committed

Its penalty was a 500 dollar fine;

But the gallows were strung for him.

 

He began his speech:

“Here is why I’m a bad person.

“I have cursed God in my thoughts.

“I have hurt people I loved.

“I have destroyed things other people loved.

“I have said hurtful and bitter things.

“I have cursed others.

“I have manipulated others.

“I have falsely accused others.

“I have troubled my household.

“I have accused my brother.

“I have hated.

“I have made others sad.

 

“If I inherit vanity,

“I will completely understand.

“Lay my burdens in the mud

“I do not declare my sin like Sodom.

“It is not a prideful thing to me.

“It, rather, is my vanity.

“I deserve to go to hell

“But I won’t.”

 

He said this so all of us could understand

Why we need to be forgiven.

One of the three most evil men

In modern history

Smiles, like he were a good man.

 

His book—like the same books I write

Leaf paper, black ink, what he thinks are profound insights—

Lays before me as one of the greatest ever written.

A man who starved 100 million;

A man who murdered 100 million.

 

How our words can kill.

It is why poetry deradicalized me.

I

 

My Strange Slips

How I rushed… rushed…

In a rush to get famous

I had rushed.

I set my plant with strange slips.

Poem 73 jumped to poem 84.

 

The harvest is ruined.

 

So, I took the book down.

Nobody bought it…

But I took the book down.

Ten poems… ten poems too few.

Had I been purchased

Who knows the cost?

God’s grace.

 

Though, to be fair,

When I had seen there were ten more poems

To write in my book…

I was elated that there was more work.

But such strange slips.

 

This is why I need a helper.

This is why I need,

Absolutely need,

Just one person to help me.

Not a person to write.

Not a person to edit.

Just a person to look at these pathetic things

And help me organize.

 

Ten new poems to me are a joy.

I don’t feel burdened to write them.

Rather, I would enjoy to write more.

I secretly, secretly

Wanted to write more for this piece.

But strange slips. Strange slips.

I set my plant with strange slips.

Though they are mine…

All mine… And yet I still set them with strange slips.

 

Because I am a writer relegated to relieving

My relatable rank upon ruminations

Of how desperately wroth I’ve become

And the fact that my books do look like crap.

Though, I do want them on Amazon.

 

I need someone to help me.

Someone to put them in their proper places.

Someone to organize my mess

To put things where they belong.

I have a mess right now.

 

A helper. I need a helper.

Because my life has been spent

With so little help

And I need to relegate my ridiculous work

To the status it need be…

Which is respectable.

 

I just need one person to help put this mess and disorganized

Grouping of nineteen works

Into something right.

I tried to get copyrighted, and wasn’t allowed.

So, I guess Amazon.com is my poor man’s copyright.

Stupid as it may sound.

But I need help in this one thing,

To make my books look pretty.

 

II

 

I Actually Enjoy Writing

 

My greatest fear

Is that someone is changing my words.

I actually enjoy writing these things.

I enjoy it, I am strangely satisfied when my work is there

Finished, on my bookshelf

Devil may care how they got on my bookshelf.

I don’t.

But, I am satisfied when the work is on my bookshelf.

 

However, supremely, my poetry is like John Lennon’s.

It touches on our darkest fears

And in doing that, like a Loony Tune

It relieves them.

 

Whether it is that we are secretly rich

And that an Alter Ego is storing our money at the Zoo.

Whether it is that we all live in a Submarine,

That the reality we suppose to be real isn’t.

Or, the very scary one, that we are Jude the Obscure—

Which I haven’t read—

Who needs to find love,

And because he cannot,

He becomes Paul Atreides.

I feel relieved from the pressure.

 

My deepest fear is that someone,

Call him the Prince of Tyre,

Is stealing my words and changing them.

Hence how we get Brittos and the Giant Soul.

Hence how we get Maddok sailing into Death’s jowls.

Hence how we get the theme of the Doppelganger in my work

And the Dream Machine.

Some latent fear is in us…

The latent Schizophrenic fear

That the reality we presume to be true isn’t.

 

It is why I am writing high art.

Why the Beetles wrote high art.

Why Rock and Roll and Classical Poetry

Can both be high genres.

Why Science Fiction is among the most literary truths.

Why I can feel completely at peace writing this

Knowing that my work is mine…

Why I feel someone stole it from me?

I don’t know. Perhaps…

And a very purposeful perhaps…

It is because I don’t know why anybody would reject it.

 

III

 

Mental Orgasm

 

I don’t mean this to be vulgar.

My only experience with sex is in dreams.

But, I feel something like the relief

I’ve felt in dreams.

All of the psychical doubt.

 

Maybe I am a horrible person.

Maybe I am Maddok and not Brittos.

But, I am not.

 

IV

 

I Was Told Not to Sell Out

I will not sell out.

I will not sell sex.

I will be honest.

 

V

 

Cross the way,

I see what is sad.

I had titled a poem with “Orgasm.”

I had just disputed with the priest.

Yet, I do not repent of it.

Why? Because it is honest.

Bear me these ten simple poems.

They tell the story of my last few months.

 

Notice the pale candor

How I think I am going to die soon.

 

VI

 

The Dream of the Serengeti

 

In my dream

You most beautiful of women…

I had felt similar to what I feel right now.

I guess this is what those dreams means.

 

VII

 

The Final Curtain

It is pulled back.

Oz is revealed to be a dream.

 

VIII

 

My next one, after this one

I will make one of my more complicated verses.

Why? Because I want to summate these feelings

Into something good.

For whatever reason, it feels the nightmare is over.

 

IX

 

Schizophrenia, schizophrenia,

How I write this, but it is already published.

There are kings, and queens,

And elves, and orcs,

And doppelgangers and all sorts of nasty things

In my daydreams.

 

Today, though, I awoke from it

To see it was just a dream.

If only for this short instance.

I hope the feeling of waking up lasts.

 

I had stood, to rush through ten poems

To fill my book.

But I do not want to rush.

Rather, I want to take my time writing.

I enjoy it.

Right now I am antsy.

I want to get this job over with.

But I am angry with Jesus for nothing

Nothing… this little trick I invented

To place my fear, of the first thought

A little device, to relieve it with the conscious thought.

To relieve it, and somehow it does.

Like taking a s_____

Which is not a cuss word in German.

 

I will not forfeit Christ.

I will not let Him go.

Christians claim, “Oh, King David

“He is so nice! A murderer, an Adulterer,

“A rapist, a villain!”

Then they say to me,

“My! How dare you use a naughty word

“You villain!”

 

I dare not say that the David of the Bible is a villain.

I dare not say it.

But, when I hear Christians say,

“Be our king, oh David!”

Who they truly call out for is Saul.

For, they want David because he murdered.

And they condemn me because I used underlines and an S.

 

X

 

I relieve myself in this poem.

It is all over.

Nothing more, nothing less,

I will not relinquish my Christianity.

I will say “S____”

And I will not steal.

I won’t say it with words.

I’ll even blank it out

With cute little underlines.

 

I am not a prince.

I am not St. Jude.

Get it through your heads

Christians… that I am not even a theologian.

I am just a humble, useless writer.

Who has done nothing but dispute with the priest

My whole life.

Rightly, I do think it is a sin.

I had disputed with the priest.

I feel like such a wrongdoer.

For that, I am liable to die.

But, today, I relieved myself

In this poem of all the vulgarities in my personality

After having apologized to T_____.