Lunch Poems

I feel bad about that post down below.

I was at Lindsey's house reading an issue of Mrs. Maybe and I was reading Brandon Brown's poem "Columbus Day" I was really moved by it, the honesty of the piece. The language of the piece. I consider that poem to be, in all seriousness, great art. Why? Because it made me think honestly about my life and it made me want to make art. Lindsey was in the shower, so I went out on the stoop to smoke. There in my head I conjured up a little paragraph, about my life, about Frank O'Hara, about how I just haven't been doing anything lately. I went through my paragraph in my head twice, reworking it. It was wonderful and full of magic in my head. I sort of rushed back inside of the house and sat at Lindsey's computer. I wrote it out. But I didn't have it the same way as I had just had had it on the stoop. The theme was the same. But somewhere in my dash from stoop to computer my perceived magic of the language had fallen apart. I looked at the words on the screen and I knew that I had gotten it wrong. I was kinda pissed.

The piece was about how I read Frank O'Hara's Lunch poems on my lunch break at work. And what a bummer it was that I was having my lunch break around the same time that my friends were meeting up and being social. I think what I wanted to convey was that the bummer was actually that here I am at 30, working the night shift and living a very uninteresting life. Or maybe I'm just revising my own thoughts and those thoughts didn't show up until this morning. But let's just say that was what I wanted to say, then and now.

My hat is off to those of you that work your 40 hour a week soul crushing job and still keep your soul intact and make art or something art like. I'm not very good at it. Or haven't been lately. I come home from work and I'm tired and my feet hurt and I just want to sit around. Not think. Not move. I think that part of the reason that I enjoy 'studying' film is that so I can sit around all day watching movies. And I can sleep very easy thinking about all that I accomplished.

The poem that was so wonderful in my head and so mediocre on the screen, wasn't very honest. I haven't read much of Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems. I play this nasty trick on myself daily. I keep a copy of it in my apron while I work. And then I get ready for lunch and during that time I will go to the computer and type out the poems and begin getting myself out of my unstimulated funk. I will learn what these poems mean and see what if any purpose they can bring to my brain. I got the idea to do this from Dana Ward.

But what actually happens is that it's lunch time. I take my apron off, I clock out, I smoke, I get my lunch from the break room, I heat it up in the microwave, I take the elevator back to the sales floor, I go to the office, I get on the computer, I read about celebrity gossip, I look at the clock, and count the minutes until I have to be back, I realize that I have ten minutes, I realize that I forgot again about the Lunch Poems, I feel angry at myself, I clock in.

Oh and on a side note, why do I have to wear an apron at work? I'm not cooking food. There's actually very little nastiness that could harm my garments.

So, that's my current relationship with that book. And it's sort of become a symbol for my current life. This thing that's right there with me at all times that I just forget about, that goes to waste because I subconsciously don't want to deal with it. Is it fear that I won't understand the text? Is it a fear of pushing my brain into somewhere dark that I don't want to go? Is it a fear or trying and then the presumed failing? I'm not sure. I'm just fairly certain that my action/lack of action is fear based. And isn't that terrifying?

But there's no time like the present to get yourself unstuck. So, I'm awake, sitting in my pajamas, drinking coffee, and writing. It's not a big deal. But it's good and it's what I feel like I need to be doing. And I'm telling myself, "You've got to write today, because you are, at some point, going to get old and your brain's going to only work well enough to realize that you've have wasted your potential, but not well enough to do anything about it. And your bald. And you're wrinkley. And you smell like cotton balls."

See that fear. I just flipped it on you. Topsy turvey. You're working for me today.