I am unimaginative and I can prove it:
When I read Hemingway, I write about Hemingway.
And when I read Bukowski, I write about Bukowski.
And when I read Capote, I write about Capote.
And when I read Plath – Well….
I always write about Plath.
Anyway, they say it was my good taste that got me into this game
of writers and suicides and screaming bad words into my pillow
late at night when I can’t find enough cool air to breathe clearly.
I think it might be just be some poor judgment. Who wants this?
Writers are all poetic. So I want to be that. So I want a handprint
in the solid stars of reader’s minds. I could be a story too you know.
Nabakov, Dostevsky. All those greats are so much greater than me.
I’m not sure if it’s good taste, or a poison. The trains all move fast -
so quickly that I can’t see them going. I just sit silent on hot benches
writing poetry about people who don’t exist and drugs that I haven’t
taken. I don’t have enough experience to be a poet. Maybe I should
shed my clothes and fuck the next guy who gives me a strange look
from the edge of his secret eyes. It’s not like I have enough gut to care
about anything that meaningless anymore. Remember how wonderful
it felt to read Fitzgerald? Do you remember the way his sentences stuck
to the worst parts of your gut? They were so glistening and stitched with
some invisible thread. So what is this shit then? Maybe it’s been too long
since my last sober night. Maybe I should drink myself into an early grave.
Maybe I’m making my dad too angry with all this premeditated failure, so
I should scream “FUCK YOU” until he sends me to sleep on the streets. I
have never thought too much about it all before. Men with guns rule the
world, and women with pens sit at home feeling sick about all the killing.
I don’t have anything significant to say about it that hasn’t been said yet
by smarter poets than me. By Frost and by Ginsberg. Some nights I think
the dead poets took all the best words before I even had a chance to be
conceived. And now I write hybrids of prose and poetry while the world
whips by me from the window of this dirty train. We all have pretty dirty
footholds on the earth. Mine is turning to mud and I’m slipping. I don’t
deserve to die like a poet. A poet’s death requires a talent for writing and
a talent for dying, but no gift for living. There’s a graveyard where Sylvia
Plath is in ashes and poisoned lungs. Hemingway is still holding the final
gun, and Capote is washed up and drunk. I want to hear the coffin close.
I’d like to join them, but before I can die like a poet I need to live like one.
The older I get, the loser my grip on reality is. All the colors are getting
darker, and the death of a poet is a true one. I can finally see that. I hear
them in the clicking of my old typewriter. Maybe I’m going crazy, but
maybe they know me. Maybe they want to be with me. Bukowski deserved
a poet’s death, but cancer beat him to it. On his tombstone they carved
“don’t try.” I always say I’m not ready to die. Instead I light candles and try
to summon the spirits of that graveyard of greats. I hope one night they hear
me and answer the call. And from the grave, Steinbeck will laugh at me and
say, “Oh, you foolish young poet. Hold on a little bit longer. The masterpiece
isn’t something for the young. You have enough taste; just hold on longer.”
And Bukowski will call out like a drunk and say, “Stop trying so hard, dumb
bitch. Keep working that meaningless job and see if you can learn something.”
And Sylvia Plath will just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.
—Hannah Beth
