Blog Rage

Nope, I'm not writing another blog entry until you read my last post.  Every last word!  I treated you to one of my most popular poems, "Aspects of Dagwood," along with a faux introduction--the kind I might give at a reading--but very few readers have availed themselves of this opportunity.

I bet readers in China would love access to my blog, but they're not allowed.  I don't know that for a fact, but it's possible.  As if you care!  Bah!  Just look at yourself, lounging about on the sofa, Cheetos-stained fingers diddling with your laptop, free for now (as Net Neutrality is apparently dead) to browse my blog at your leisure & yet, you take this privilege for granted, throwing your freedom (or its pervasive illusion, to be more accurate) into the trash bin like a snotty Kleenex.  Or worse: a generic brand.

I'm not made out of words, you know.  I don't have a blog tree in the backyard, branches bowed low, heavy with witty words that I can pluck whenever I want to post something new.   As a writer, I have to work to put entries on this blog.   So if sometimes I reprint previously published poems, well, I thought you, my readers, would appreciate that.  Apparently not.  Apparently you have more important things to do than read poetry.  O, I'm so sure it's important.  Enjoy your porn, perverts!

Damn right I'm angry--& hurt.  (Gentle reader, not all of you are guilty, so I apologize for scolding everyone for the actions of a few.  Well, more than a few & the lack of action, to be precise.  But anyway, sorry.  You caught me on a bad day, a bad life.)

Know what else pisses me off?  Rejections.  Ok, I mean, it's part of being a writer & most of the time, rejections mean nada to me.  Just part of the routine.  As Michael Jordan would say if he were a poet, not the former superstar basketball player:  "I have more rejections than publications."  Isn't that a clever way to think about it?  Clever.  You miss more game-winning shots than you make, but when you make them, everyone likes Mike.  Especially (according to court documents) the ladies . . .

But sometimes, sometimes when I see the big clock running out, well, Jesu H. D. Cah-rist, I can't help but think I've dedicated my entire life to poetry & what do I have to show for it?  An uneven scrap of paper bearing a Sarah Palin-esque bridge to bullshit "thanks but no thanks," along with an invitation to subscribe to the selfsame rag (which you can't find at any bookstore or even on Google) in which not even one of my poems, in the little magazine editor's estimation, is fit to print.  Or maybe in today's high tech world, I get an email with a curt, "I've decided not to use your poetry."  That arbitrary.  Editors, by & large, if I may paraphrase Shakespeare, suck on donkey dicks.

One of the reasons I keep this blog is in the wild hope that I'll attract readers to my poetry.  Crazy, I know.  Like the devout, head tilted toward the heavens, the sky's lit but nobody's home.  Swear to Ungod, I feel like giving up--as if it matters, so few people read poetry anyway, much less mine--but no doubt, if my personal history serves as any indication, I'll go on, true & fixed as the North Star.

Because I'm fucking insane.  Et tu, Brute?

Comments

Riley said…
I have to say that I didn't appreciate being scolded. At the very least, move your acknowledgement of your most loyal reader to the front so I'll know not to take this screed personally. Even being scolded though, I read through the entire piece and am commenting. Does that make me loyal or just enabling?

That being said, I feel the same way about photography judges. Fuck em.
Matt Morris said…
I intended the scolding as a humorous mimicry of the hackneyed parental tongue-lashing usually reserved for spoiled kids who won't eat their broccoli. A writer chastising his readers for not reading him seemed totally out of place. The irony! But if the humor didn't come through, then I'm sorry. Andy, you're not only loyal, but just & enabling. Many thanks!
Matt Morris said…
However, the sentiments expressed are genuine in that those who don't read my blog or poetry need, at the very least, a good talking to, if not extensive psychological evaluation. Also, editors & contest judges who pass on my work really do suck, so yeah, fuck 'em.