I have always told myself that at times we all must feel like an asshole. A dick. A douchebag. A cockmonger. A shitbag. An asshat. The terms seem absolutely endless!
Now generally, I say generally and not as some rigid absolute, I try to behave myself. I attempt to act the modest sonofabitch who is a bigger fan of self deprecation than egotistical empowerment. More often than not I try to be the way my momma raised me. Right? Sounds reasonable. Be generally kind to one another, open doors for people, actively try not to step up to someone and simply start screaming "FUCK YOU" in their faces repeatedly until they either hit you in the face or run away. I keep my lid on and try to have it fastened into place.
But fuck me is it hard sometimes. Have you ever found yourself reading through hate posts, just vicious, racist, purist visionary diatribe composed of completely vapid rhetoric devoid of logic? You know that reaction of just unrestrained disgust and your hands start moving before you brain is firing synapses? The YouTube posts where you catch your better sense by the final period, realize that the text wall is futile and by clicking post the troll has won? This, this is nothing like that.
This is best described as my trying my hardest to shackle myself to not being the troll. The entire internet fad of "don't feed the troll" that usually applies to someone other than yourself? Well I find myself hungering to be the bridge dwelling toll master. Why? Well I guess sometimes I just feel the dire urge to be an asshole.
Seemingly I have a weakness. It's called bad poetry, it's called bad writing, it's called the self-absorbed notion that "You too can be a unique visionary artist who has a right to do what you please in the expression of the self!" Bullshit. Absolute, tawdry, bullshit. To back up the train real quick, when I say bad writing I don't mean generally incomprehensible prose. No, no, no, I would never be so judgmental as to feel an urge to split into someone over their attempt. I mean those pieces of writing that clearly think highly of themselves. Those that wrap themselves up with sentimental and flowery language in an attempt to sound sublime. Or at least to sound artistic enough to get the hoi polloi stirred up with some sort of romantic notion that an honest to God writer types amongst them. That is bad writing. People talking about "lips like petals that taste of sweet nectar," the "ivory necks that curve like elegant arches into her honey'd hair." Now, to be fair, this is more noticed in the general internet vision of poetry than prose.
In any event. Stop it. Please. I know this is hardly the forum to make any demand. Hell, no one follows whatever I blither out here. This is mostly an act of catharsis. A desire to vent this, perhaps only for myself, before I stomp through various threads raging like a loose cannon.
Before I do find myself getting blazed with hate from some spectral internet stalkers I'll give a brief, brief, defense of my irate nature towards this. I just finished reading poems that challenged in length some of Shakespeare's more infamous soliloquies. These rambling, juvenile, flowery, ethereal, desperate, faux-artistic verses that lacked an absolute beginning, an identifiable destination, and a general purpose. This wasn't feeling lost like my first time reading Keat's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" where I found myself asking "What the fuck?" before "wtf" was popularized to make it a less offensive annotation. This was just worthless confusion as to why an individual would post this with some semblance of pride. In at least one case a thread was filled with multiple pieces of verse from a single person that seemed to be a lesson in general degradation of attention and skill. Perhaps it didn't help that the thread was named in a fashion as if to suggest that all writers are hopeless romantics.
All writers are not hopeless romantics. Hell no. We're lonely, we have bad posture, we're socially awkward, we're confident, we're happy, we're terribly depressed, we're suicidal, we're in love, we're asexual, we're everything you can damned imagine because we're not some collective whole that can be so fucking easily defined. Writing isn't something that crosses down any set categorical lines so cease with romanticizing it as though everyone who can put word to page should have their cocks getting waxed or their vajayjays getting stuffed. And personally I'm exhausted seeing people still trying to play the game that simply because they've gained a moderate vocabulary, with a questionable amount of mastery, they are artists who express such pain and anguish that they are entitled to love. Fuck them.
Is this hypocritical to an extent? Fuck right it is. But at least when I write something so utterly self-absorbed as to reflect my own emotional trials and tribulations I stick it in a blog that no one fucking follows.
---End hate---