Writing To Me Is A High School Band Poem by Roz Schick

Writing to me is a high school band
Often embarrassingly horrific with unidentifiable stains on their caps and beatings to their own rhythm
Not because they are creative but because they know nothing more than their own rhythms
Writing to me is a high school conversation
Doesn’t have much drive, not much depth but every once in a while you hit that one note
You get that one sentence and you see a person differently only to have it vanish with the following point
Yes I attended that party and it was the best of the semester.
I don’t write because I have much to say but in fact the opposite
I write about things which surprise me
Things which are unexpected
How about that cow in that pasture
Or the fact that you called me a boy wearing buttons on the wrong side of my shirt
I love gossip girl but I also love nuclear wars
I don’t want to be defined but I fear that is the price of being a writer
I am weird
I think deeper because I have a way with words
Everyone has a way with words only some of their ways are lost
Don’t call me smart because I can put some words on a piece of paper
And don’t ask me for help on your essay about identification
I am not a scientist
Hell
I am barely a writer
I only have luck when I lick once in a yellow moon
When his balls inspire me to write why he left me
I get with him but he has a big nose
So much to write about and often I forget that a mirror is in front of me and I can see myself
Better
If I only focus behind me
Writing to me is like a college class at a liberal arts school
Nobody can follow but we all keep up the conversation
No animal obesity but what about those animals which eat on their own terms?
Gone too far with that one, let me bring it back
Writing to me is anything but a visit to the gynecologist
Comfortable, enjoyable, misleading and unexpected
I’d love to say I could have a baby but my ex best friend is pregnant and her boyfriend is short
I’d like to say that I keep in touch with people I like but I’d be a liar
I hate liars and hypocrites
Don’t let me list the things I hate
Because writing to me is listing things I hate
And although things is a placeholder it can hold the place of just about anyone
Or
Anything
Planes, paper mashies, people pooping, plenty of food
All P words which send a shiver down my spine
Paper mashies make me uncomfortable
Writing to me involves nothing more than some painted fingernails and a bleak sense of understanding
I find the less I understand the more my writing means
The other day I come across a boy and his mother
He tells her he doesn’t want any more corn starch
I cannot imagine what he would be doing with corn starch but that’s when my mind runs out
He’s building a fort with nothing but baked sweet potatoes lathered in the starch
He’s planning on setting a world record for the most corn starch eaten by a human in twenty-four hours
He’s planning on murdering his mother with it, but not too much. Just the right amount.
Writing to me is naming a baby Martha and Phineas
Writing to me is attending a funeral and seeing someone you know collapse with their hand in their stomach until they can’t speak, purple in the face.
Remembering the first time a boy cried in front of me.
Writing to me is remembering what you used to call a sophisticated dress
High-necked but now replaced by something tight which shows the shape our dead mother left us
Don’t tell me what writing is
I know how to imagine a sailor trapped on the top of a palm tree on a two by two island
Somehow miraculously staying afloat in a mass of sea
Can you make a joke?
Writing to me is a complete joke
HA!
I know how to laugh at myself better than anyone. I know how to laugh at myself better than anyone!
Writing to me is remembering the first time I leaned against a tree and you pecked my mouth
I felt slobber dribbling down my lips and then my chin and I take my glove
Put it back on your coat
Writing to me is showing you my poems and you tell me you couldn’t read any others
Writing to me is a lie
I can lie about the color of your hair and everyone will believe me
I am in control
Writing to me is a complete baled
It is possible to be horrible but it is also impossible to tell when someone is horrible
Tell me your opinion
I’d like to add it to my bulletin board of ideas
I’d like to gain five pounds
Live in a wooden log cabin
End a poem abruptly.