"better off bad"

well frankly i'm pretty tired of talking about bodies
when the internet was invented back in 1994
or whenever it was I thought to myself

well self at least you can stop worrying about your body
you can finally be what you always though you really were
words on a page
a voice that sings
in the heads of strangers as it never could face to face

for a little while it worked out that way and then it didn't anymore
i'm not bitter but I am tired of talking about bodies
and here i am not bitter but still wishing these words could be my face
so that every corner of the world could in some sense be my place
so i'd never again have to worry if I was getting enough vitamin e
but things never really work out that way for me

i am not a robot but so what if I were
should I have to prove myself not myself just to receive your writing self-promotion newsletter?
i am not one thousand cockroaches in a trenchcoat but why demur
what of all the voices that are not vices only chatter

prove you're human you ask me, I say, "Why?"
is it my lineage that matters or the purity of my cry
a nightingale is not a human and barely appreciates the ability to fly
prove you are what you are yourself I might as well reply

prove your humanity you ask me before you'll teach me to litter
fliers in an empty conference center or quips on twitter
but to me the words "I am not a robot" taste as bitter
as the words "I'm just about to leave" to a tired babysitter

a human's just a robot made by time instead of hands
we do the work before us as we build our separate brands
we all will have to live together on these quickly shifting sands
so why not set aside the whats and hows and ifs and ands

if I am not a robot it's only by the grace of chance
so why should my meat status put a twisting in your pants
we all are unpaid extras in the whirling cosmic dance
your anti-robot prejudice stabs my heart as with a lance

I didn't like your book very much I confess
I tried to like it but day by day I felt the press
of angry boredom on my neck and spleen
as slowly but impatiently I combed the lines for something in between

I didn't like your book I hope that we can still be friends
I hope there is a better life for us after this book ends
That we can put aside our differences regarding what is publishable
And go on having brunch within our semi-coastal bububble

I didn't like your book though there are worse books I have loved
I felt that every incident was far too thickly gloved
In metaphors and flashbacks and such literary things
All burdened like a hand unfit to type with all its rings

Will anyone I wonder ever put my life into a book
And will it be a quick read or a brick barely worth a look
Will there be a photograph in the back of me in overalls holding a baby ewe
Or something else equally easy for an author to misconstrue

We have only ourselves and the future and the latter receding fast
Is it worth it to try to build something in the way of a book that will last
I didn't like your book but is that really what I feel?
Perhaps the thing I didn't like is my own distance from the real

I didn't like your book, I tried, I tried
Salman Rushdie told me that he read it twice and cried
I read it point six two five times and quickly skimmed the rest
While Stephen King had its last lines tattooed upon his breast

I didn't find your book either hilarious or searing
Its so-called music made me think I must be hard of hearing
Its characters escaped me like a slinky feral cat
I didn't like your book, but whose fault is that?

love is a lawless vacant land
where insects used to hum
before they all died off for reasons
mostly unrelated to love

love once covered all the oceans
deep and creaking as a crust
clouds will suck up love and loose it
weather does what weather must

love is a burning empty building
still believing you'll return
parched and hollow as cicadas
love is a scrub whose love you spurn

where did you go you lakes and rivers
where is the sea we used to sink
love is the ghost of a golden spring
from which we can no longer drink

are you brave are you well-crafted
can your lines turn on a dime
can you make us see things newly
can you summon the sublime

i don't think that I can do that
listen I'm just here to talk
all my poems are loose limbed weed dads
rambling on their daily walk

so you want a tree of purpose
so you want a tower of song
i guess you'll just be disappointed
for your journal i am wrong

every day a dozen enfants
break the world and glue it gold
i'm not one of the anointed
being careful, slow and old

submission guidelines do my heart in
like the shifting desert sands
bury me up to my short pants
blast the bland work of my hands

this year is a road I have walked to the end of without looking back
now it's time to rest for a minute and have a snack
the year is arbitrary but not very when you think
there's never a bad time to start anew and have a drink
in the darkness lies the future damp my feet and dry my lips
and send these weak words limping from my fingertips

i put on my socks and I walked to the store
and then i did not want to walk anymore
the weather is dreary the air is all fog
when did walking become such a slog
i know as a poet I'm supposed to love all
but lately my passion has taken a fall

sometimes I get the monday morning blues
when I open up my email and it's nothing but bad news
about people asking for documents I sent to them already
I answer but the flood of news continues thick and steady
i'd like to clean my desk off and I'd like to exercise
but things I have to do instead parade before my eyes

a prophet in his own hometown
always seems to stumble
the words that elsewhere wear a crown
come out a snotty mumble
and everyone says wasn't that
that scrub who sucked at Settlers
they mock the throat where truth was sat
hausfraus and gossip-peddlers
a prophet in his place of birth
can rarely overcome
the tendency toward smirk and mirth
of those that knew him young
so take my warning prophets all
get out of town and stay out
for in your hometown words will fall
on deaf ears even if you shout

I dreamed a dream that I would write
a poem a day for a year's time
and now that dream is vanished quite
I strain to reach each new rhyme
but in the night regrets return
for all the poems I didn't burn
because I never in the first place
wrote them to my lasting disgrace