I don’t like poems. I don’t want to be a poet, but I want to be among them. I want my words to sing songs of a long lasting story and make the readers weep or, if they like, express their dislike in liquid anger form.
I want to be a poet but I don’t want to wear a scarf or a beret. I like fedoras and the power they feed to my head. I want people to notice me, not my hat. I want to be a poet but poems don’t want me.
I want to be like Neil Gaiman. He has a way with words like no other. He understands that a button can be a death warrant or a sign of true power. He understands things, Neil. I want to be like Neil Gaiman because he makes me cry for a silly man dressed as a bat.
I want to be like Neil Gaiman because he can give objects a voice and you want to hear it.
I don’t like when I write poems and create a rhyme scheme. I don’t like poems where all the words rhyme. I don’t like sonnets because they are songs that I don’t care about. I cannot stand Shakespeare because He/She/It abuses a poet’s power and got away with it.
I hate when my stanza’s are sloppy and I don’t like that I know what that word means.
I want to create. I want to destroy and rebuild and destroy again and again. I want to abuse the word, “and,” and get away with it. I want Joss Whedon to read my work. To raise an eyebrow and say, “hm,” or laugh or cry or throw it away. I want him to read my work and respond.
I don’t know how to end this poem. I wish I knew I wish I knew. I wish I could be clever. I wish there was a lever I could pull for the answers. I want to be famous but all the ways that I find are the same. I need strangers to like me. To read my words and and and I don’t know.
I want strangers to know my name. I don’t want to know theirs. I want them to want to want me to. I want my sentences and thoughts to make sense to more people but no one else can fit inside my brain.
Perhaps it’s silly to want these things. Or all things or any thing. Perhaps I won’t be famous and live in a gutter with my delusions and voices of the people I create that no one else will ever meet. Perhaps I’ll destroy my mind in the process of trying to write the perfect poem, story, novel or script. Perhaps someone will read this to the end or maybe the middle or the first sentence.
I want to try. To try to write a poem that I can believe in again. To try to win that Oscar, Emmy or even a Tony or whatever a Saturn Award is. I like the planet Saturn, so it could be a good to get one. I want to. I want to try going out with a big BANG and cliche. People need to know my name. I will make the films, television and comics better. Hell is the absence of hope, vampires are demons in stilled decay, zombies will feast on the flesh, sex is a metaphor for toast and I love you more than the Moon.
I promise I promise I promise the worlds that I create will have law. Law that binds everything together. There will be consequences for every action. The hero may not always be flawless or flawed. The villain will not be obvious.
Please please please trust me. For the best. For the worst. For the words that you can’t utter but want to read and sing in your mind.