so easy; to make fun of the internet poets and the webcomic artists and the fanfiction authors
i hear a man snorting into his beer about it on a tuesday night. i am waiting to pick up my boss’s dinner. i am waiting to go home to my own empty fridge. “that’s not real,” he says. “anybody can do that shit.”
once, i saw a description of modern art as “i could do that + yeah but you didn’t.”
so easy to sneer at self-published. at etsy store. at youtube singer. so often i see posts: “it’s not poetry because you hit enter”. “graffiti is vandalism, though.” “i don’t think that’s real music.”
i understand, you know. the desire to make it seem small. how easy to package art and never open it. to blame ribs or galaxies or whatever other internet trend. it is safer to live under the rock than to burn in the sun above it. i picture a life of poems they never copied out of their journals.
i understand. i laugh at my own work, but i will not cringe. it is worth it to love something so much - to love writing. it is worth it, you know. to be crushed, time and time again. it is worth it for exactly one moment:
i get a note from a young kid. “thank you for this. it helped me keep going.”
okay, then. this is why. this is purpose.
