Very Professional Stuff

I Will Build a Deck (Poem)

I threw my laptop out of the window

Shattered into millions of stanzas, line

breaks, Friend requests, blog posts, cat videos

Gigabits, megabits,  poems and porn

I will never write another damn word.

I’m sick of constructive critiques

I’m sick of writing in broken rhyme schemes

Sick of drunk artists at parties talking about Nietzsche

Sick of people saying you have to be depressed to write poetry

Sick of feeling inferior to Shakespeare, Frost, Elliot and Keats

And I’m certainly sick

Of iambic pentameter’s bullshit.

I need something more-

Something that if my computer crashed

I wouldn’t lose my life’s work

And so like every great writer before me

I looked for an answer in the bottom of a stiff drink

And finding one I quickly ran outside at 4 in the morning

And screamed

“I’m going to build a fucking deck!”

Yes! To hell with heartbreak

I’ll have hardwood and hammers!

Who needs philosophy, and prose poetry

When you have a pressure washer?

And I promise a circular saw, and cedar has more structure

Than any damned song or sonnet

My friends will scribe

about their sappy, stupid love-

I will install a hot tub.

And when I finish this deck people will pay pilgrimage

I will grill sirloin steaks, talk trending stocks, and watch Fox.

The neighbors will look out at my lush lawn

and lean on the treated wood railing,

and they will treat me as they want to be treated.

My parents will pour themselves a port on my perfect deck

Admire the wood work, the fire pit

And they’ll be so proud that I’m no longer a poet-

At night I’ll lay on my deck,

Staring-no longer at stars

 but at my wood screws.

Listening-not to sounds of rain

But Top 40 radio

And I’ll be so proud I’m not a poet

So proud that I took a power drill to my prosody.

Took Black and Decker to my diction.

A miter saw to my muse.