I know a guy who’s one of those big time TV writers. Family-values type drama with a serrated edge, that’s his bag. If he wrote the Brady Bunch it would be much the same except Mike Brady would have a colostomy bag because their old dog chewed out his small intestine while he lay passed out for nine days after putting out a Valium® fire and inhaling the fumes. Valium is quite flammable. They used to fire the old trans-Atlantic steam ships on raw valium if they were attempting a record crossing. The practice was halted after the Titanic fell asleep (it’s the fumes are the problem) and hit an ice-berg.
But me, I don’t write like that. I don’t have any stories, can’t think of any. Not the kind with traditional subjects like people and places, a plot. I could write about a bucket handle, or an ant’s left back leg, or the particular odour of a particular winter afternoon in 1988 (light, clear, a little like soap). And two pages is getting wordy for those sorts of things. How anyone writes a whole novel or play or TV series or progressive rock concept album, I cannot grasp.
If you make it short enough and obscure enough you can call it a poem. I’ve written hundreds of poems, but I don’t get poetry. Can’t read other’s poetry, it’s like hearing someone describe to you their dream. It’s only interesting to them. I read a poem once in university called “Ode To A Grecian Urn”, pretty straightforward, you’d think, obviously the guy had a thing for pottery. But no, turns out it’s not about Grecian urns at all. No, it’s all symbolic and shit.
So who knows what the fuck it means except the guy who wrote it and maybe not him either. A lot of poets were opium addicts or homosexuals, both of which can be prone to absentmindedness. This is also the reason they don’t get to be president. Ok, that’s not true. There are other reasons too. When you call up Gitmo to see how the torture’s going, you don’t want any flowery bullshit, you want facts and figures. Save the iambic pentameter for when you got to explain wars and such.
But me, I don’t write like that. I don’t have any stories, can’t think of any. Not the kind with traditional subjects like people and places, a plot. I could write about a bucket handle, or an ant’s left back leg, or the particular odour of a particular winter afternoon in 1988 (light, clear, a little like soap). And two pages is getting wordy for those sorts of things. How anyone writes a whole novel or play or TV series or progressive rock concept album, I cannot grasp.
If you make it short enough and obscure enough you can call it a poem. I’ve written hundreds of poems, but I don’t get poetry. Can’t read other’s poetry, it’s like hearing someone describe to you their dream. It’s only interesting to them. I read a poem once in university called “Ode To A Grecian Urn”, pretty straightforward, you’d think, obviously the guy had a thing for pottery. But no, turns out it’s not about Grecian urns at all. No, it’s all symbolic and shit.
So who knows what the fuck it means except the guy who wrote it and maybe not him either. A lot of poets were opium addicts or homosexuals, both of which can be prone to absentmindedness. This is also the reason they don’t get to be president. Ok, that’s not true. There are other reasons too. When you call up Gitmo to see how the torture’s going, you don’t want any flowery bullshit, you want facts and figures. Save the iambic pentameter for when you got to explain wars and such.
I wish I was a gangsta rapper
I wish I was a hip-hop star
I wish I was a short sharp jab
That went a bit too far
I would cast my head in gold
I would cast my feet in clay
I would catch me all them sinners
Come round on judgement day
I wish I was a bill collector
High on life and rum
An inter-dimensional corrector
Doer of things un-done
All the world could follow
My antics on TV
Watch me fix the fixers
Balanced on my knee
Until I grew weary
Indistinguishable from insane
Encouraging bacteria
To feed upon my brain
I wish I was a gangsta rapper
In a gold plated car
A super techno DJ
Admired from afar
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