Death

I had breakfast with a poet friend of mine, whose name I will leave out. She was mad at me because I have been busy and unresponsive to emails. If I am slow to answer your emails this month, please don't think I am being a jerk. I am a jerk in so many ways, but I don't do it by not answering people. I am actually just slammed like a door on a Jehovah's Witness.

Plus I've got this huge reading that I am doing next Monday. You should come.

Two friends of mine died last week. I am a little broken about it. I am pretty upset that is. We'd drifted apart, but I still feel a loss. My uncle, the only uncle I know, is sick with the big C. He has three months to live. Cliché. His name is Jack, too. Cliché. Life and death are both cliché with capital C's. It's weird to me that so many people I know don't know a lot of dead people. I feel like death is always around me. I used to have a friend in Germany who was a lot like me. His name was Jake. He was American. He was a great friend to me. We both knew a lot of people who were dead. The living people I know who don't know any dead people are probably going to be the next to go. Well, after my uncle Jack, who won't see August. Lung cancer. My grandfather, Jack's stepfather, died of lung cancer. My aunt, his sister, my grandfather's step-daughter, killed herself when I was very young, right before my grandfather died after having not smoked a cigarette for eighteen years. Jack hasn't smoked for twenty-five years. My biggest fear is getting sick in America. When you're in America, no one cares about your pain.

Your pain is something that makes me want to write poetry to understand. My pain is like a sliver or a silver cactus needle. It doesn't really hurt. It's just a foreign thing hiding out in my body that makes me squirm. You like to watch me squirm.

A poet in Washington sent me a youtube video of slugs having sex. In the bar next to the slugs having sex was this video, which is one of the creepiest things I have seen in my life.



I wish things were different in poetry. You have convinced me, dearest readers, to hate Billy Collins. I never really liked him anyway. The more I read what he says about poetry, the more I think that he needs to catch cancer in America.
I don't really mean that.
I mean that he is a bad spokesperson for poetry because he doesn't really care about poetry as an art. I don't think he thinks it's an art, but a masturbation technique. I still agree with some things he's said, like poetry should have an audience that includes non-poetry people, but I hate him now, otherwise. I still don't think he's worth bashing, though.

I am sorry for this long post. I am rambling. I hope that the ambulance sirens outside my weary little flat are not for you, poetasters. I hope they're not for anyone who loves poetry.