If I hurl vitriolic gobs of hate-filled angst
at the speed of aborted thought
down the ink-blood edge of an angry pen;
take as my heroes those
who defined life as the bitter sentence
terminated with the punctuation
of death by misadventure;
hold up as great art
the misanthropic, grotesque
and deliberately misunderstood –
sex-as-violence-as-power-as-reality …
if that is the depth of my understanding,
the thumbnail
on the whole of everything there is to know
that I swear
is the end all and be all of knowledge;
if the only tones of voice I know
are the pitiful scream, the pathetic whimper
and the cruel mad homicidal howl,
am I an artist, a poet, a Musician?
Or am I just another mongrel drone,
discouraged by my own impotence but unwilling
to invest the effort necessary to grow beyond appearances,
clawing desparately at a piece of society’s entrail
wrapped in a sugar coating of shit,
because I refuse the possibility
of a rose?
Your angst is not new.
Your mediocre nihilism is not exciting or stimulating.
Your voice does not carry a tune,
speak to the world,
or resonate with the gods,
no matter how bloody you make their hands.
It is crap.
Don’t make it into a sandwich
and pretend that it is satisfying.
Fertilize a garden, instead.
15 OCT 2002
