I don’t really write poetry. I can’t. Or I don’t. To write something and to then proclaim it as a poem is too much for me—I can’t shake the feeling that all the world is saying in unison, “It’s so amateurish.” But once in a while I have impulses to write something. Below are some scribblings towards a poem which I wrote a few months ago but forgot about until I discovered them while leafing through my note book recently. I was feeling frustrated by some chattering women at the table next to me, by boring work and boring work mates, etc. I lost interest in making it into something after the mood has passed.

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My inattention as the words
bubble steadily from your wide-eyed face

My nodding head and wandering eyes
to hear you review the important
external customer testing items

My finger-picking at calluses,
the rubbing at my palms
secreted beneath the papers on my lap
to hear your put-on, shop-talk earnestness

My contempt at your proximity to my solace

My anger when you confound my routine

My annoyance at your hopeful come-ons
when my own go unlaunched

My stopped ear to regain my internal dialog
from the din of your commiserating whine

My turning head to find reassurance
that surely there is a better spot

My paralysis in the face of a
litany of hollow possibilities and a shrinking world

My rocking body, twisting ankles, and bouncing feet
to exhaust the overflow of your inexorable stultification

My gnawing jaw to strip the simpering sheathe
from your impotent tongue

My audible dread to hear your unwelcome and needy phone call

The tilt of my head to flag my expansive indifference

My concealed dismissiveness of all that you care about

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A little harsh, eh? hehe

I’m reading Jean Genet’s novel “Our Lady of the Flowers.” It’s a little rough going, but getting better. It was written in 1943, and it’s a very queer book—queer in all senses of the word—full of rough, dark, crude imagery, sexual imagery, shockingly harsh in its joyless yet poetic language. It’s very much a war-time novel, or so it seems, populated by transvestites, pimps, and prisoners. I’m not far enough into it to say much about it yet. The transvestite character—Divine—says regarding a desire to shit: “I’ve got a cigar at the tip of my lips.”

Sometimes I think gays are better able to let themselves go sexually. Of course it’s just a prejudice, but sometimes when I see a guy taking it up the ass with such total … abandon is the only word… I think at that point how he is holding nothing back, has no inhibitions whatsoever.

I’ve been without things to keep me occupied this week. Yes, I have a little reading to do for work, but that’s really anticipatory, not necessary. The project hasn’t begun in earnest yet. I have things to read, but nothing too interesting, and consequently I fall asleep almost instantaneously upon opening the book. I even have a to-do list, but I can’t bring myself to do any of the tasks. Yes, I should gather together materials for my taxes, but will I ever be able to muster the energy for this one? I should burn CDs to rid my hard drive of some of the mounds of porn (see a previous blog entry re mounds of porn) gathering dust, but even that holds no appeal. I think I want to find a friend or two who has the same interests as I do—classical music, art—and I want to make stained glass pieces immediately. Mostly I want to be put into a deep, shoreless, rocking sleep and to wake up some days from now, tired, and ready for even more sleep … after a hearty meal and satisfying pee.