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BOB HOLMAN
YOU
CAN'T BE A JERK & WRITE GREAT POETRY
you can't be a jerk & write great poetry
no you can't be an asshole & plumb the
depths of the spirit
you can be clever, you can be accurate as to
form
but it's simply yr jumbo ego on the line, that's
right
yr vision will ever be clouded uh huh
& yr ideas will always need sharpening
like a kid at the pencil sharpener
whose point keeps breaking over & over
as the kid grinds away & the pencil
just keeps getting shorter & shorter...
so wake up, you turkey romantics
& stop treating everyone like shit
yeah, you can't be a jerk & write great
poems, lissen to me now
you can't treat other people like shit & not
pay for it in yr art, it's true
I mean, what do you think, the world's at yr
service,
existing solely in yr brain,
waiting adoringly for you to etch a line or two in
some porcelain
while meanwhile yr friends & lovers run away
at yr hideous approach?
wise up, senor y senora saps!
before I start spilling the delicious venom
I relish the thought of yr beatific (ha) eyes
searching the corners of yr mess, searching
for a thought, any thought, something
to fill the hole of yr deserted imagination
Help! I'm being held prisoner by everything I
say!
Breath itself enough to die from!
I was born an only alphabet!
It was all a pipe dream where you smoke the
pipe itself & not the
tobacco, or, as some smart Belgian once said, having
smoked his
pipe, & painted a picture of it from memory,
this is not a pipe.
Only he wrote it in French so no one would
ever know.
there's something to be said for it
but you don't know what it is
there's something that's the point of it
but yv got it all
wrong
yr standing on the verge of it
but yv forgot which
direction yr going
you don't even trip over yr own feet anymore
yr so busy bouncing on yr head
the director shouts, "Rolling!"
& you tumble right in front of the camera
understand, yr impulse was right
it was just too fast
you can't be a jerk & write great poetry
STRONG CURTAIN