I found this post, unpublished, in my queue from last February.
It's hard to make it as a writer: hard to make the deadlines, hard to make rent. Hard sometimes to stay inspired when it seems the only text that's worth a paycheck is a tag line for mayonnaise or pseudo-reality TV. The poems I bleed splatter beneath my ancient desk like condiments on a Coney Island sidewalk, colorful but utterly useless to the masses.
Of course that doesn't stop me from painting the walls of my mind African Violet or the color of geraniums. The seeming mistake is that I attempt a diet of neon and spice, refusing to accept such staples as advertising. I not only refuse, but feel as though I am screaming, "People listen! You cannot eat potato chips for dinner! They are hardly potatoes (no matter how beautifully packaged)! And what of broccoli? Asparagus and artichoke?"
Words harvested for advertising's sake might as well be made of gold compared to the pittance from lead scratchings that weigh the same as my soul.
It's hard to make it as a writer: hard to make the deadlines, hard to make rent. Hard sometimes to stay inspired when it seems the only text that's worth a paycheck is a tag line for mayonnaise or pseudo-reality TV. The poems I bleed splatter beneath my ancient desk like condiments on a Coney Island sidewalk, colorful but utterly useless to the masses.
Of course that doesn't stop me from painting the walls of my mind African Violet or the color of geraniums. The seeming mistake is that I attempt a diet of neon and spice, refusing to accept such staples as advertising. I not only refuse, but feel as though I am screaming, "People listen! You cannot eat potato chips for dinner! They are hardly potatoes (no matter how beautifully packaged)! And what of broccoli? Asparagus and artichoke?"
Words harvested for advertising's sake might as well be made of gold compared to the pittance from lead scratchings that weigh the same as my soul.
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