Bad Bad Bad

The Genitals of a Fat Man..... That’s what I wanted the title of tonight’s post to be, and I have a poem entitled just that, an awesome poem that totally wowed the large lesbian in the front row. Given her square proportions, I feared it might have caused offense, but it was just the opposite. She came up after the reading and said, “Righteous. That was righteous.” It’s true. That is one piece of seriously righteous laugh. The genitals of a fat man was just what I wanted tonight, too -- don’t hate me, I had to say that -- but I couldn’t find the damn poem.

I kept looking, and what I found was.... oh, who knew I had written (and kept!) so much bad poetry. There is a folder entitled Angry Woman Poems, the less said about that the better, and poems with nipples “like seeds ready for harvest.” College; I hang my head in shame. I found a piece that starts out with the poet as a “bay lady” (read: wild horse), moves through the imagery of attempts at taming, and concludes, “You’ll only ride me bareback.” That one, God help me, made it into the quarterly literary review of the community college where I studied creative writing. In my defense, I was twenty. There’s also a poem entitled Voyeur, which is about looky-lou’s watching a house go up in flames, so get your damn minds out of the porn site.

I kind of liked a poem entitled The Personals, which I wrote in response to a bit of graffiti wisdom:
"All you need is love [crossed out]
money [crossed out]
Jesus [crossed out]
a good fuck.

When you’re doing without all four, it’s a tough choice."

Here, here! (Did I say that out loud?) I’m tired, people, so you’ll have to excuse me. I’m tired and all I really want is to write and I would happily give up food, water, sleep, and more just to do that, to write the whole night away. I would, but I can’t.

Simply put, the body has limits. And though I am loathe to admit it, I know that as physical beings we are much simpler than we imagine ourselves to be, and to forget our simplicity is to cause ourselves harm. I know, for example, that there are three things that can cure nearly anything that ails us, and those are food, water, and sleep; anything worse usually responds to ice. The body needs what it needs. Or to put it in Marine language: eat, sleep, shit; repeat. All the rest is window dressing.

So tonight I’m watching a movie instead of writing, because while writing winds me up, movies wind me down. I’ll drink some water, do a little deep breathing, and if all else fails, ice cream.