Motivation (an essay)

From the beginning I have been aware of how trapped we are in our own experience with only the crudest methods of sharing that experience with another human being.  I have longed to know how my experience compares with those of others.  I used to wander around at night looking at the lights inside other people’s houses and wonder what it was like to be them.  In daily life we have few chances to get to even the shallowest of understandings with other people.  It is only through literature that I have been able to get a sense of what life for someone else might be like. 

I have always assumed that there are others in this world with similar desires.  People who need to know that they are not alone in their desires, in their dreams, in their responses to life. To help those like me who need this reassurance and are curious about the internal state of others I have always tried to be an open book to people even on a trivial level.  I feel it is my duty to tell people what I really think about things.  Practical considerations dictate that I try and temper these revelations to suit the audience.  Truth can be a brutal thing and I do think it has to be revealed with discretion.  On a deeper level I have tried to imitate what others have done by writing down a bit of what passes through my head. 

I don’t have the time, imagination, discipline to do long form literature.  Poems are more condensed and you can hold the entire work in your mind at once.  I have read poems that have radically altered how I felt about things.  Reading Bukowski showed me that a poem could be about simple things, scraps of everyday experience written in simple straightforward language and still be powerful and transformative.  This is the kind of poetry I aspire to.

My poems come when they come.  I have an experience that somehow connects the dots for me.  Much of the initial work is subconscious.  Sometimes only a line or two present themselves.  I have lost many poems because I was unprepared to record this first tid bit.  When I have some time and start to write the rest comes out.  I do rewrite a bit.  My subconscious isn’t good with grammar.  Occasionally I get clever and throw in literary devices or allusions I have picked up from reading other people but that is just window dressing, just bullshit to show off how well read I think I am.

I read to try and understand what this thing call life means.  I write to add my evidence, my experience to the pool of collective human consciousness. Those who read me must make of it what they will. I wish you all the best of luck in figuring out what is going on.

Besides I am old and can only masturbate once or twice a day so I have lots of time on my hands.  Ha! Ha !