I’m Sorry

Tesla made Mark Twain shit his pants.
That was a line that is true but that
I thought would be a good idea to put into
a poem.  Now that I did and see what next sentence
it lead to, I see it wasn’t such a good idea
after all. Because this is now like something
one of those 19-year-old prodigy-writers-who-are-
not-actually-in-any-way-prodigies-but-who-get-published-
and-being-“19”-it-means-something-different.
They are the anti-prodigies, because what they make is anti-good.
This is what we’ve come to, not that it’s unexpected.
Youth over age over all. Why Zachary German? Why David
Fishkind? There are probably others in this category
that I’m not keen to. Not hip to. Not “with it” enough to
know, though “with it” enough to know to be “with it”
I wouldn’t say “keen to,” but not enough “with it” to know
what I would say, and not enough “with it” to have stopped
putting scare quotes around with it until now. Tao Lin.
He’s another. But he’s now too old, an old fogey. He’s what?
Twenty-seven? This is not a poem and thus it is less of a poem
than Tao Lin’s poems but still as much of a poem as the poems
I’ve read by Zachary German and David Fishkind. I’m 22.
I hate that I’m typing this right now. Is this the honesty that, for people
who don’t think their work is horseshit, is one of the positive features
of it? Because this is absurdly easy. Not that art can’t be easy. But this….
There is a difference between this not-poem and one of theirs. See,
David Fishkind’s poems are like “I wanted to call her, but I couldn’t at the
time / so I texted her instead. And she didn’t answer / until 2:00 AM. And
I didn’t see that she texted me back / until 3:00 AM.” Is that better
than this? This is more bitter than that. Less blasé too. Really I’m
only still going with this because this is something that I’m writing instead
of what I ought to be writing right now and because I’ve had these
figures on my mind and because I thought what the hell, I haven’t
posted anything on my blog in forever, even though I really shouldn’t
post this, because unlike Zachary German who said in the interview
I just read something to the effect of “I write exactly what I want to read,”
I never would want to read this. Yet I have. And now you have.
I’m sorry.