Yeah, you. I’m talking to you. The schmuck
staring at a screen right now, feeling all
fucking proud of yourself for taking time
out of your busy day to read a poetry blog.
I mean, who the fuck reads poems anymore?
You do, you pretentious asshole. You read
poems and you pat yourself on the back
or more likely wink at your unkempt self
in the mirror in the morning and go “good
for you, you intellectual, you keeper of
things that would otherwise be lost, you
are a good person.” Well listen, there’s
a reason those things would be lost without
self-aggrandizing shitheads like you. You’re
not saving the world, you’re reading a damn
poem. You’re not making one lick of difference
to the fate of the planet or the human race
or the state of your black soul that is full
of false humbleness. You are not brave, you
are not a living monument, you are not the
gates that say Arbeit Macht Frie or the
sequestered scrolls of the dead sea. You’re
an asshole. You are staring at your computer
and letting me insult you. Do you have no
self-respect whatsoever? Goddamn, you idiot,
you are still reading, I know you’re still
reading, what the hell is wrong with you?
Are you going to let me keep taking dirty
advantage of your openness, your willingness
to slog through mountains of shit to find
gems, when I have explicitly told you
there will be no gem here? You do realize,
don't you, that you can walk away from your
computer at any point. You can close this tab
or walk to the kitchen or pet the cat or
donate your pocket change to the United Way,
but you won't, you'll keep sitting here and
reading, because that's how devoted you are
to the folly of this vision of yourself as,
I don't know, a savior, a willing martyr,
a certified fucking saint. No. You are a captive
audience and I can do what I want with
your attention because I have it, and
you can’t have this minute back no matter
how much you want it, and now you are
realizing that you have had to fucking
scroll down the page to enable me to
continue to call you an egotistical sucker,
you’re not even a passive spectator in
your own humiliation, you are actively
helping me prove that you are the kind of
starry-eyed simpleton who won’t step
out of the way of a moving train because
you’d rather believe it will stop for you,
or someone will yank you off the tracks.
No one will. You came here in good faith
to read my poem and at this point I've called
you a moron like sixteen times and you're
still assuming there will be a payoff because
that's how poetry works, but I'm dead serious
in telling you that is not what's going on, there
is no brilliant reversal that will make all this
reading and assault on your character worthwhile.
I'm just dicking you around. Now it’s two minutes
you can’t have back, they are mine forever, and since
you can see the end of the poem now you may as well
ride the damn thing out. Just know that I have wasted
your time while looking you straight in the eye
and saying "I am here to steal your minutes, fool."
I will deposit them in an account where they are worth
absolutely nothing, and of course I realize that
I have wasted my time too in writing this exceedingly
long proof of your gullibility, but you know what,
you chump, at least I’m taking you down with me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
oy--i'm upset that I feel I can't argue with this.
ReplyDeletedefinitely suggest structuring this as a justified prose paragraph.
ReplyDeletethis is pretty cool, since the proof is in the pudding that poems are meaningful and thought-provoking and emotive and conversation creators etc, and no matter how many times the speaker derides the reader, the only way to avoid the inherent efficacy of poetry is complete silence. some postmodernists understood this, so when philosopher HG Gadamer who loves art and poetry and believes in the social power already built into conversation asked the more nihilistic Jacques Derrida to debate him, Derrida famously refused: even speaking would have been betrayal. We don't have to argue with the speaker because by speaking the speaker is betraying and betrayed.
I'm a fan.
I thought this was very successful. It's rare to find a second person POV poem that I actually think is talking to me. Usually second POV reads as gimmicky or to a specific "you". But this, very instantly engaged me, and avoided being gimmicky because it rang so true. Also, I love the last sentence. My one criticism would be that I don't like the line "I've called you a moron like sixteen times," something about the word like and the hyperbole, seemed a bit out of place, since the rest of the poem felt so specific and biting, that line seemed a bit tame in comparison.
ReplyDeleteTim, you lost me, but I desperately want to understand what you are trying to articulate. Also, I'm interested in why you think this would work better as an indented paragraph -- I thought it was important that the speaker keep implicating hirself in the folly of poem-making, that the line breaks and end stops are still functioning in a thoughtful way, that a certain amount of metaphor and heightened language still make itself felt. Otherwise it seems to me the speaker is just an asshole, if the poem doesn't consistently function as a recognizable poem.
ReplyDeleteKeep talking to me, I want to make this one perfect.
I think(?) some of what Tim says is that this poem - in fact, any poem - does prove itself meaningful, even though it claims to be "just dicking [the reader] around." So, the speaker is contradicting himself, ultimately "betraying" his own argument b/c speech and writing cannot help but have some kind of an effect.
ReplyDeleteAs such, I personally think this needs to be in the form of a poem to make its meaning felt; I strongly agree with D there.
I have only good things to say about this, so probably not as helpful. Pacing: really works - like a good monologue in a play. Line breaks at captive/audience and worth/absolutely nothing are brilliant. "I'm just dicking...Now it's two minutes" such a solid line. Arresting, but immediately picks back up on the taunting and doesn't lose momentum.
Really engaging b/c implicates both reader and writer, speaker and listener.
Awesomeness. Longest poem and kept me captivated. DO NOT MAKE A PROSE PARAGRAPH.
ReplyDeletei suggest a prose paragraph because the lines are not being used for any additional benefit. the linebreaks jordan points out are cool, yes, but more often i felt the enjambments were arbitrary - this piece moves with the sentence, not the line. i imagine that's the point, but i see that the same way i see a writer trying to bring up the point of Boringness by writing something boring. also because the self-implication seems too overt and simple for the level of doublespeak this poem is working on.
ReplyDeletei guess i've been thinking in terms of books lately, prodded by Buffam because i think her book is so perfectly organized. i would swoon seeing a book of poems and then mixed in a prose paragraph of This.
jordan's comments pretty much get at what i was getting at with betrayal and all. you can't invalidate art by communicating about it, only by disregarding it. on the other hand, by communicating, you do not validate your own art. sort of like a rectangle and a square. wherever there is art, there is communication, but where there is communication there is not necessarily art.
so, yeah, im still advocating prose paragraph, but it's not my piece.