This is something I wrote more than a year ago. It's my way of putting things in perspective.
The room is filled with poets.
One poet writes a poem about the room. Another writes about the poets. The one who writes about the poets is crying. He is moved by the beauty. The people in the room are so diverse, every person with their own agenda. Some scribble furiously, others ponder, some sit, some stand, people pace, scream in frustration, the joy, the anguish, the longing, the sorrow, the passion, it’s all so beautiful to this poet and the more he thinks about it, the harder he weeps.
One poet writes about the crying man writing about the other poets. Of course, he doesn’t know the man is writing about poets, he just knows the man is crying. He saw his father cry once, just like the man who is crying now. He didn’t know why his father was crying, just that his father was crying. The poet wants to cry himself… but he can’t. The fact that he can’t cry makes him want to cry… but he doesn’t.
One poet decided not to write at all because he couldn’t think of anything to write. Instead, he runs around calling everyone who cries a * * * * * and scribbling on their paper.
One poet writes about a leaf and the cocoon hanging from it. She writes about the slender arc of the leaf and the bulgy shape of the cocoon. They’re at peace, both content with each other, an untold harmony between the two. One day, a butterfly will emerge and the leaf will be left with a heartless cocoon. Overnight, the leaf will die in despair, longing for its lover.
One poet writes about the suffering in life. He writes about the pain of the love. He writes about having his heart torn out. He writes about not wanting to live. He writes about slitting his wrists open. He stops writing when his pen rips through the blood-soaked paper.
One poet writes about how people can’t be happy because they think too much.
One poet writes about the inhumanity of man. The writing is incomprehensible. It’s the type of writing where if you ask the writer, “What it is about?” they say, “It’s hard to explain.”
One poet writes about how everything is bull * * * * . The world is unfair and she is young.
One poet writes about how life is good, but life after death is even better. A utopia in the skies fills her with hope and happiness. The world is fair and she is young.
One poet doesn’t write anything, but instead shoots himself in the head. No one knows why he shot himself in the head. The truth is that he was bored and didn’t feel like writing. So instead he took out his revolver, played Russian roulette by himself, and it just so happened that the bullet was in the first chamber he fired.
One poet pauses to see another shoot himself in the head, but she has more important things to worry about than some dead lunatic. She closes her eyes and goes back to imaging the fresh strawberries she would pick as a child. The strawberries, though dry and rough on the outside from having sat in the summer sun for days on end, bursts with the sweetest juice once bitten into.
One poet also writes about being in a strawberry field as a young girl... Except she was with a boy. She remembers the red strawberries, the red of the boy’s shirt, and the blood. The boy enjoyed it more than she did.
One poet writes about the night.
One poet writes about the color yellow.
One poet writes about a city flooded by tidal waves.
One poet writes about laughing and ends up laughing.
One poet writes about what he had for breakfast: a blueberry muffin and a coffee, both from Starbucks.
One poet writes about everything.
One poet writes the most beautiful sentence anyone has ever seen.
One poet writes about wanting to kill people.
One poet writes about her first kiss.
One poet writes, “Such is life!”
