I'm trying to write a poem about growing up or going through life or being a fucking 20-something or SOMETHING and NOTHING is going right. I've sat here for maybe an hour writing and rewriting the same things or slight variations on the same concept and I've gotten nowhere. How can I compare an oyster to an orange?
As a child, an orange is all you need. Your fingers dig into the pith and juice stickies skin. The sweetness sears into your hangnails and you eat it anyways. As a child, seafood seems made for grown-ups. Your fingers grow longer and nimbler and before you even realize it you've gone and cracked into an oyster and are pausing to consider the pearl.
All I know is that I look at my hands and think these are not the same hands of my youth. Every time I see them they are new hands. WHY CAN'T I WRITE ANYTHING GOOD?????????? Why can't THEY, these HANDS, write anything worthwhile? How am I ever going to make it?
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Hot and long legged. You make me sweat.
At what point does this devolve to incoherent rambling?
Waking up and having to pee is a lot like going through life. You become conscious and realize you have a need. There is no light to guide the way, just memory and your hand tracing the wall. Everything you are is spliced with the fear of stubbing your toe. How many steps until you turn left through the kitchen? How many poems until you look back and see your teens? I'm not sure you ever feel closer to death than you do in your 20's. This is supposed to be my prime. What a waste, what a waste. All I feel is fleeting time. All I feel is my life being sucked away before I get a chance to live it.
Your fingers dig into the back of a man whose soft body odor you find yourself underneath. It's not good sex or bad sex, it's just sex. You don't pause to consider the pith or the pearl or, in this case, even the penis. You go from oranges to oysters to Owen, and there's just sweat in your hangnails, just sweat.
All you know is that in one second you are waking up and the next moment you are peeing your pants.
