Thursday, May 2, 2013

Pretense for a Pretentious Writer

Once upon a time
Because that's how all good stories begin
There was a man
Who was struggling to write
About life and love and liberty
And all the in betweens
That never make the final cut
He had plenty of ideas
But they never left an over-filled voice recorded
Because when played back
They sounded like someone else's babble

He sought inspiration
But couldn't be bothered with love
Too trivial an endeavor
It would certainly sully his prose
So he looked elsewhere

He sought meaning in the laundromat
Watching rows of machines
Waste water that someone somewhere
needed much more than he needed clean socks
But he still didn't bother with high-efficiency
It only took that much longer
And he had inspiration to locate

He looked for significance
in the starry starry night
But never learned to paint
So it stayed an image
Forever escaping his capture
And reminding him of his literary inferiority

Because he's a great writer
He ended up at a bar
And amidst a cacophonous din
Located a gaggle of amusement
A friend who said the same word too much
Another who drank to quick
And before he knew it
He was forced into their lives
Away from the solitary society
That a couple gin and tonics would create

He sat alone, pondering the meaning
of a mostly wasted night
There was no epiphany
so he just threw words on a screen
Wishing a typewriter wasn't so damn heavy
But secretly enjoying the backspace

The words taunted and teased
Not making a whole lot of sense
He at once realized a lot of little things
don't add up to much.
Until thrown into poetic verse
Even just a few nifty line breaks
Can turn a rant into a poem
And someone
Somewhere
Somehow
might think, hey that's pretty good
And he lived to dream of a publisher
Acknowledging his wonder

The End