1. None of you think you’re the target of this poem. Hopefully you’re right.

2. If you’re sitting in front of or behind the metal grate sticking out of the wall halfway back, you aren’t necessarily condemned here; it’s just that most of the time the bastard culprits are sitting there. Don’t ask why.

3. I don’t care what Susan’s boyfriend did with Helene at the party last night. I’d like to, you know? But I don’t—not at all. This doesn’t make me a prick, though, because I’d love to constantly exist in such a cloud of universal non-discriminatory empathy that you, the person you’re talking to, Susan, the boyfriend, and Helene all matter greatly. But can you see what’s going on here? Can you? OK, because I don’t think you can. So let me tell you. Idiots.

4. I’m listening to a word here. A word strung together with another. Then another. Do you see? No. Clearly you still don’t.

5. The words are arranged, accumulating, blended with caesuras [caesurae?] and sometimes added to notes, tones and guitar chords to make other kinds of things. These things we call “songs.” The first things? We just call them “poems” [“just,” hmph!]. No, don’t try to defend yourself here. Just shut up for once, for ONCE and listen. Yes, good. Thanks. Next:

6. I know your life is important and Helene’s being used and Susan’s going to be real pissed, but where do you think you are? Let me digress, you ungrateful wart. Once, I visited a friend at U-Dub. We went to see a movie at a mall in some ghastly Seattle suburb. It might have been the first Men in Black movie, but you don’t care, right? [Now you know how I feel!] Anyway, at this movie, all sorts of people, all throughout, kept talking back to the screen, as if Tommy Lee Jones gave a shit about them and their opinions, reactions and half-baked advice. I must say, I didn’t enJOY that film [note the ironic stress on “joy”?]. More recently, I bought the video and I enjoy it in the comfort of my own home, in silence. Yes! Ah! I see a dim watted light bulb has just begun to glow above your thick, self-absorbed wannabe-poem/culture-loving head. Do you get it yet?

7. Ah, OK. So you remember those times people turned around to you and looked for a few seconds? Yesssss…they wanted you to shut the fuck up!

8. Sunday, July 21, 2002, 9:45pm-ish. Remember that night? It might not have been you specific people, but it matters little. T.Paul, in between open-mic’ers, says, “Can you hear me in the back alright?” Whether it was you or not, the people didn’t get the hint. How sad for them—and us.

9. Because there’s this flowwwww, see? It starts with whoever’s at the mic, releasing their soul so it emanates out from the stage and begins to WASH over us all, transporting us from being mere audience members to being participants in art. Actual art. Yeah. And the soul in the poem or song is a lazy, grinning back-country hiker paddling a birch bark canoe along a placid lake of us. We’re the lake see?! We receive the paddle and guide the canoe willingly, cooperatively, interdependently through us. But you, in your self-worshipping, inconsiderate obliviousness, you’re on about Susan’s emotionally insecure, hence too much of a flirt boyfriend. And what are you? You’re rapids. Whitewater. Hell’s Gate. Niagara fucking Falls. Unwelcome, see?

10. So hey, will you PLEASE just shut up. Thanks.

Copyright 2002, Stephen Buckley
07.24.02