Writer 29

Jesus was thirty before he did
anything with his life, so I guess I’m
golden for at least another six months.

I’m sitting on the front porch steps in a
nightgown at 7a.m., smoking and
sipping black coffee from Wil E. Coyote’s
terrified head. I spilled a full pan of cold,
soapy water on myself while making breakfast
and the way my belly makes me hunch when I sit,
I fear the heat of the sun won’t reach the soiled spot
on my chest. I fear the spot will never dry and I fear my
pale breasts may smell like gray dishwater forever.

Three elementary school busses go by, one
right after the other, and I worry that the
children will yell something out the windows
at the crazy lady in her nightgown, like I
used to do when I rode the bus. But they don’t.
They are subdued, probably half asleep or
madly finishing their math in the half block
they have left before they reach school. I miss
those worries and wonder how many packs a day
I’ll have to start smoking before I hit 30
so I’ll feel like a real adult.

I’ve got writing waiting for me in the cool
dark of the house. It scares the hell out of me.

I’ve got a total of 16 bucks in all 4
of my bank accounts combined and later
I’ve got an appointment with a kind old
government worker at Vocational
Rehab that will be the highlight of my day. 



My housemates have a silver coffee press full
of opium tea cooling on the counter, but
who am I to throw stones? I’ve got a half-eaten
bag of Doritos hidden behind my five inch
thick and useless-since-college Italian to
English dictionary. I’ve also got a
tattoo my mother doesn’t know about—
an eight pointed star between my shoulder blades—
and somewhere on my coffee table that’s cluttered
with fast food wrappers, half empty cans of Coke Zero
and about 25 empty cigarette packs,
I’ve got a ring my mom sent me—a silver
bow that came with a puppy card out of which
fell her kind words—you know I’m proud of you—
and a check of emergency relief funds
I had to ask for because I drug my feet
too long about selling my violin last month
and all my attempts at getting a real job
have failed.

I choose to believe the Universe is telling
me that I am meant to be a writer because
the only time I ever get called in for
an interview is when my resume is a
complete work of fiction.



The kind old government lady I’ll be seeing
later told me that the kind old government
might pay for me to finish college because
I was born albino and near blind.

Some days it’s lucky to be me.

One of my housemates put faux crab meat
in the pasta salad that was meant to be for
everybody. I bitched about it for an hour
over the phone to a busy friend because
it’s easier sometimes to bitch about
crab-flavored floor scrapings screwing up my
dinner plans than it is to write.

Sometimes I think I might be leading Howard
Hughes’ life backward—the crazy, white gloved,
Mormon-heavy, hairy, unbathed and phobic
part first—the legendary stuff, I hope,
later.



Nothing to be done about it. I’m a poet.
Fuck.

 Saying fuck a lot in my work
makes me feel like a big man. 



When I was 16 and at CalArts’ summer
art school, a fellow writer wrote a 30 line
poem using only the word fuck and
recited it to 75 teen angst
riddled writers in the same breathy
affectation used by the guy with the
perpetual sandals, plaid and bucket hat
when he described how his father’s skin
looked like chicken teriyaki.

I imagined Chris—that was the fuck poet’s name,
though mostly in my memory I refer
to him as The Fuck Poet—I imagined
him being inspired to write his opus in
the red-lit and angry graffitied CalArts film
and photography basement, perhaps sitting
with his zebra print notebook on the dusty
flecked linoleum at midnight under the
picture of a bleeding Jesus that had I hate
fuckin’ artsy fartsy misunderstood people
scrawled across his thorny forehead.

When I studied there, I imagined myself
sneaking down there one night too, while my RA,
Stoned Andy, dropped acid in his closet-sized,
cow print painted room and my two teen-writer
roommates giggled about the dancers’ eating
disorders while sitting on the floor in lotus
position and sucking peanut butter from
nacho cheese Doritos in a cloud of smoke.



I imagined myself sitting under the
weeping eyes of the red-lit and scrawled-on
bleeding Jesus, and, haunted by the angry
graffiti, composing my best work just like
The Fuck Poet. Just like Tim Burton, who had
studied in that basement in the 70’s
and whose anticlimactic graffito was
rumored to be somewhere near Jesus’ holy
right hand. I’d be just like the barefoot, fuck-spouting
bohemian I always wanted to be.

But I never did sneak down there that summer.
Mostly I just stayed in my room with my giggly
stoned teen-writer roommates, snagging the
occasional Dorito and enjoying
my contact high while consuming one shitty
ghost-written VC Andrews novel after
another, and thinking how I could have done
such a better job—my day’s worth of work—
a sad knockoff of The Fuck Poem—sitting
half-finished, half-crumpled and deeply
anonymous amongst the other clutter
of my unlit desk. 



But that was a million years ago. Fuck, I’m old. 



Fuck…fuck…fuck
(said slowly, deliberately, in disbelief)



Down to my last cigarette now. I’m sweating
and a surging line of ants has made it all
the way across the porch by way of the great
white barrier that is my naked foot.
I break the line, brush them off, accidentally
drop ash and burning paper on my bare skin.

Time to go inside.

Time to shower.



Time to write.

Time to be Howard Hughes,
backward.

Amen.


note: I originally wrote this poem some time ago. I have now lived the full miracle-span of Jesus’ life and find I am no less full of the same white-gloved angst that inspired this work. It never really goes away—and I’m at peace with that because one thing I have learned over the years is that my best work is often the work that is least wise.

-M.