big trouble in little me

a poem that needs work is simply a poem that needs work. different perspectives, different motivators, different tenses, whatever it needs can usually be identified and utilized, especially within a workshop perspective. common protocol is to preface your critique with something positive in order to basically encourage encouragement and lay your beef out as articulately and objectively as possible.

that's a poem that needs work. a shitty poem is a poem that is finished. it can't be helped. a bad poem is done before you even start and the finished product is what slid out your ass. you can't take a pile of shit and make it beautiful. you recreate the god damned venus demilo or david, but guess what creep, it's still a pile of your own shit. now instead of just dumping it in the toilet and flushing it away, you've been playing with it for an afternoon and need 18 showers and have ruined a pair of jeans. also, you're that guy everyone knows to play with his own poop.

i wrote a shitty poem for class today. worst part is, i liked it. i was happy with it. i was excited to share it and hear what others thought. i was glad that this was the first poem i was bringing to this association of colleagues that i have been thrown into. now, i'm disgustingly embarrassed and ashamed and questioning why the fuck i'm here. is it because some undergrad press published a chapbook? is it because of my letters of recommendation? is it because i sent a fruit basket into the grad office to thank them for their help?

i'm terrified now. i'm embarrassed. i'm completely paranoid that everyone who i thought was my new friend now thinks i'm a fucking joke. i want to quit.

i'm also a giant fucking baby. it's the allen way. you'd think i'd grasp that idea by now. with 25 years of destroying myself over and over and over again in any venue of skill and then rebuilding and reconstructing to at least a relative mastery, you'd think i'd be able to restrain these feelings of inadequacy and shame when failing so miserably. but i guess that's all a part of it; where the motivation to bring myself above is born from. vengeance, basically. revenge against myself for this injustice i have brought on the nation of jeff. if i quit, the terrorist jeff allen, wins. i really am my own shit-fiddlin' worst enemy.

i miss some people. there was always this awkward and eager respect within my past poetry communities. i haven't been involved in a circle of writers in a long time. i know that i've effectively destroyed every bridge to everyone who's ever known anything about me as a writer in the past, and i can accept that, and maybe i don't even deserve the right to even say that i miss them, but i do. i know every one of us is a completely different person now and whatever we used to have is very incontrovertibly past tense, but i think that makes my missing that much more... poignant? effective? useful?

probably just pathetic.

i don't know. it's the only thing i really miss about the educational institution of millikin. and maybe that's how i need to look at it so i don't take this hulking failure and turn it into sobbing. jesus christ i'm terrified.