December 6th

Nothing measures time

Quite the way

That I look back a few years

And cannot fathom being so head over heels

For anyone

Let alone someone who is a complete stranger now

I fear

I have yet to be house-broken

Or perhaps I was trained right

But went feral at a later date

Are my missteps something I am capable of correcting?

Or is my brain wired entirely wrong?

Was I doomed from the start?

Nature or nurture

Every failed relationship haunts me

And I hold onto that as evidence

When I start wondering if I’m a sociopath

Again

But if I never do better

Am I something better?

“Are you just going to write poems for the rest of the month because you think they are easier?”

No. I read this great quote from a writer, I don’t recall which one, who was asked something along the lines of what the greatest detriment to creativity was and the response, from the writer, was capitalism. And while I agree with that sentiment politically, the reality is that going to work keeps me in a routine. So instead of coming home and thinking about how I have to start writing soon-ish, I am already at home all day and then it was like 10 PM and I decided to watch Judge Dredd and about halfway through I realized I was fucked because I still had to write something for the day. And then when it was over, I thought how nice it would be to go get warm in bed and read a book for the first time in a while, but - no - I have to write something. Then, I spent like an hour dicking around on the internet because I didn’t know how I was going to write something short tonight because I know my stories just go off into endlessness and then I have to wrap it up quickly when its been like 45 minutes and I am sick of writing.

“Well, are you at least proud of this poem?”

Sort of. I think I had something there in the first verse and then I kind of just let it flow and it ended up in a different direction which is okay, but I think that first verse doesn’t match the others, but I’d have preferred sticking more with the direction of how it started. But then I wrote a short story about time travel then the poem about time travel so I feel kind of like a dork to write another poem about the passage of time. It’s not really interesting, but its probably the easiest way to evoke some emotion and get things going.

“But now that you’ve written two poems you don’t particularly like, will you stop and write more short stories?”

I cannot guarantee that, but I would prefer that.

“Here you’ve gone on longer writing this conversation than you spent writing the poem, why not put that energy all into a short story?”

Well, like I said the other day, it was like pulling teeth writing something straight forward and it only really started getting going when I just started writing an argument between the characters… And I guess the other thing is - and this is kind of embarrassing to admit, but - when I came up with this creative device of myself interjecting into my writing, I actually thought I had stumbled onto some creative brilliance and was so excited to see how great things would evolve from there, but then the next day I wrote a story without interjection and I realized that I employed this element way too early in the month and now I feel almost as if I am forced to include it in a lot of the writing or come up with something even more bizarre and fourth-wall breaking because just think about how terrible it would be to have this collection of short stories with a normal one, then the author starts arguing with himself in the middle of the second or third one, then the stories just carry on like a normal collection of stories after that.

“So you’re just to stop writing poems and write straight forward stories that don’t include large sections where you explain to yourself your own mindset while writing the story? That is exactly what I wanted and the only reason I interjected to begin with!”

Well, that’s great to hear because I was just thinking about how I was probably going to have to find a way to write myself killing you as the only way to put an end to this terrible ‘creative idea’ to lose this burden.