writers
ClairE After reading lovely poetry
I realize I'm back
on_fire for it.
All that time missing the flow of
words, complaining to you,
learning you haven't written
for six months.
How hard it is to love you while you learn.
But today, although birds are not singing,
although drums are not drumming
and we are not making love
or putting cookies in
the oven,
I know the wonder in these things,
and the mood of that man sitting there
and what a moon of Venus must be like.
I know what_every_woman_knows,
and every man.
I'm blessed with that great gift again
and can't remember it's a curse.
Too bad my love can't give you
this fire.
I'll have to rest your head on
my breast instead and
let you nap,
four_years_old.
If only you could see the beauty in a piece of paper
and not hate me. 		020101
...
lo i love this

"For the young who want to"

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after that fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

-Marge Piercy 		020829
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three words with_a_word writers i_cry 050314
...
patience he said, "if you're not a writer, then i can't taste the bitterness of dr pepper."

i think he has bad taste in soda pop. 		050315
...
jane block 050315
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Shinnokxz writers are pretentious 061207
...
Questions questions. Yeah? What's their collective pretense? 061207
...
Shinnokxz that i'm going to sit down and read their books 061207
...
are very bitter people 061207
...
Questions questions. Why do you assume they write books with the intention that someone will read them? 061207
...
Sidenote : I write, and am not bitter. 061207
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word! but are you a REAL writer? 061208
...
the awful truth everything i try to write,
fears and hopes,
scribbled suicide,
will never make no sense to me
its through fucking cataracts i see

and morre frustrating
than all the gore of
wasted thoughts and
nights spent bored
is the itching ache
neath fingernails
when
want. to write.
but try. and fail. 		061208
...
Questions questions. What, may I ask, constitutes REALLY writing? 061208
...
Lets split hairs. Typing a novel is not identical to writing a novel. 061208
what's it to you?
who go 		blather
from