My Glorious, Glorious Pain
As you know,
the ability to create great art
is only granted to those who have experienced
great pain and sorrow in their tragic lives.
And I wanted to be a great artist.
So I threw away all my clothes that weren’t black,
and then took all the black clothes,
and dyed them blacker still,
so that even the ‘regular wash, tumble dry’ tags could feel my sadness.
Then I sold the rest of my possessions,
and used the money to prepay a year’s rent in the most squalid hovel I could find,
I was going for Kafkaesque but actually ended up with something more Dickensesque,
very Oliver Twist,
it was perfect.
So I maxed out all my credit cards on a years supply of canned dog food then locked myself in the hovel, boarded up the windows, and shot out all the lights.
And I pined.
Longingly.
With regret.
In the dark.
And ate dog food.
And when I got bored,
I grabbed a dull rusty fork,
and stabbed my wrist repeatedly,
until it was bleeding,
and I wept and bled for seven days straight.
And as my pining continued,
my arm turned gangrenous,
I supplemented the dog food with whatever bugs I could find,
and drank myself to sleep every night,
with vanilla extract and a chaser of salt water,
and I longed for the sunlight,
but didn’t have the strength to open the windows,
and I didn’t want too,
because this was perfect.
Far too perfect.
And at the end of the year,
credit shot and kidneys failing,
I emerged and wrote it all down,
in this poem,
and as you listen to this poem,
which represents the greatest art I have ever created-
I hope you hear my suffering,
I hope you feel my pain.
My glorious, glorious pain.