this is a poem I wrote earlier this year; I just found it on my computer

i can write poetry

i can write the things that everyone

is so enamored with

“i wish i could write

that sort of stuff, and make people sentimental”

bullshit.

that sort of stuff

isn’t any good at all

you just like it because you think

that pretension is

the same as appreciation

—-

i’m going to start slowly

just a short work to 

make you think that i’m

worth something

i am.

i am going to write an epic poem

i am going to make virgil and homer

and milton wish that

their work 

was not even archived

by the

us constitutional library

what horseshit.

—-

fuck

all the people who think that

they are better than everyone else

i don’t care if you are black or white

or hispanic or asian

you are just the same as me

except i am better looking and fuck

more girls than you do.

—-

so you see

here i am having written three verses

in blank verse

it’s not like i don’t know my poetic styles

because i took literary studies as a freshman

and you can’t tell me that shit didn’t stick

i analyzed and proselytized myself for

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

when in reality 

i’d rather just drink beer and 

jerk off

—-

they say when 

any author writes his first book

it’s an autobiographical one

(who “they” is is a different matter all together

i’m just going on what zach klein told me)

i say, when you write your first collection of poems

they better damn well be autobiographical

because what else do you have to write about?

—-

like when juvenal said that

it is too easy to write about 

achilles—

fuck him—

i believed it

and when i’m sitting in class only learning

about things that i don’t even care about

well, 

that’s just stupid.

—-

maybe you’ll remember

about the time when you tried

really hard to 

speak about poetry

(and that’s a shout out to virgil and milton—

did you catch it? it doesn’t serve a purpose

but i guarantee your english professor

will be impressed)

it sucks.

just do your best to 

make shit up

and you’ll probably be fine

a primer on freshman english