He never uses a word twice.

Articles went early. He's been a man

of sudden nouns and runaway verbs

ever since.

A specialist in the rare 

pink meat of language,

synonyms are his strength

though it weakens every day.

His speech has the strength of pastels

watering down the sky

to a color clenched in babies' blankets.

Meaning waffles into approximation. 

"Thin" replaces "flimsy" in a compromised clause.

He loses some implied movement

so he gestures.

we,

the poets.

the novelists.

the unemployed.

the unnoticed.

all of us writers

telling a story

with consonants and vowels

with rhymes, reason, and rebellion

at times philosophers with no equals

at time salsa-dancing with ourselves

on the fringes of sanity.

why you ask

did we choose this?

why starve, why fight,

why struggle, why write?

well, god gave us seven sins and seven virtues

but us mortals

as we cry out

screaming

speaking against the sun

blinded

by that bright coin-flip in the sky

six questions

is all we could come up with.

five fucking “w”s

and a lone “h”

but we?

we are the restless

we are the lustful

we are the unsatisfied

revolutionaries!

(in our heads at least.)

but it’s a matter of life or death

dream or die, motherfucker!

lest the wanderlust

eat you alive.

so we let god do his thing

chanting 'till his flashlight comes on.

i mean

we didn’t even exist yet.

and not like we could part the sea

or command the dusk to kill the day

so we waited.

we let him make giraffes and chinchillas

as he told them to fuck and make more

giraffes and chinchillas.

then we let him make us.

but that lazy fuck

didn’t finish what he started!

"sabbath" my ass.

so on the seventh day WE said,

—let there be words!

“ain’t no rest for the wicked” as they say

so on the seventh day

came the death of silence

murder by metaphor

because now

we exist.

the ones born to write.

born into this

oh vagabonds of vowels, we!

we are the madmen

wielding dictionaries

thesauruses

we are the innocent

the archaic

i still have each library card from my youth

as if they were something more

than just faded scraps of plastic

because now we have condominiums and timeshares

where the sun used to be.

so all i can do now

is try and answer

those six question marks.

those six marks of our mortality.

i suppose that counted

as an answer to “why” we write.

so now you ask

“who” are we?

“who” are the writers?

we are roses without thorns

we are the drunks, the drug-addicts, the unstable

we are the sober, the working-class, the average

we are the geniuses, the savants, the damned

we are origami roses

the insomnia and the empty pill bottles

the whiskey, wine, and cigarettes

where our thorns used to be.

so don’t fuck with us.

because papercuts hurt like a bitch.

please excuse the rambling style by the way

mr. editor.

and thank you not only for revising

remaking

rebuilding

this disjointed wall of words

but also thank you

because you spend your days

polishing the metaphors of madmen

making beauty

out of oh so many beasts.

helios, allah, yahweh, apollo, elohim, jehova

or just god i guess?

i’ll humor you today

and pick up where you left off.

as i’ve already done the “who” and the “why”

a portrait of the writer

my best attempt to caricature

this chronic disease of ours.

it’s warm

subtle

an ache in our hearts.

it’s a longing for that wonderful chaos

those few ravishing sentences

hidden

in the spaces between our emotions.

sick are we

from the cradle to the grave

with this pain that will never leave us

never abandon us

never betray us.

slow

dull

throbbing

a pain that hurts oh so well.

oh, and as you have probably discerned by now

i am not much for order

so humor me

i’m trying to do math with the alphabet here, after all.

as i multiply each word

upon sentence

upon poem

upon prose

then i add everything

to this A.D.D. of mine

to my carpal tunnel

to my cubital tunnel

but “where” the fuck

is the the LIGHT

that should be there

at the end of my tunnel?

“where” the fuck

have the words gone

when i needed them the most?

still, i can’t help myself

i love writing, i must confess,

though my nerves may burn

i’ll just use them to light my cigarettes.

because all i want

because all i've ever wanted

is for it all to equal something in the end.

something real.

dear god, the “when”

the when is torture.

i must confess for this piece alone

i spent a week holed up in empty rooms and stifling garages

making wishes to the genie of my ashtray.

hoping against hope

drowning the hours

drowning myself

in sleepless nights and menthol lights.

so i read.

and readreadereadreadreadREAD.

goddammit.

'cause fuck writer’s block.

it is a hangover like no other.

from nights spent binging

on cheap plastic bottles

of nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs

on too many shots of goddamn grammar

chased with glass after glass

of bitter prepositions.

but that’s all past-tense now

because it was all worth it.

i am now typing this with frantic abandon

the words have finally replied to my love letters

as Mahler sings in the background

as the crickets chirp in tune with the world

and the night—

ah, for once—

the night is beautiful.

so “who” writers are

“why” we write

“when” the words flood your very being, drowning you, Noah, and his whole fucking ark.

“when” the words leave you alone with three cars loans, two kids, and one broken heart.

“where” did they go?

“where” shall we elope to once we’ve found each other again?

there are too many things to say

about pens and paper

about typewriters and laptops

about laughter and whiskey

about the blood, sweat, and tears

about the many trite axioms and shallow metaphors

about rare moments of genius and wondrous masterpieces

about every fucking inch of our insides and outsides

about the letters

the words

the sentences

the stanzas

the poetry

the prose

the stories

the novels

the art.

because “what” we are not

“what” writing is not

writing is not anything close

NOTHING

like the facade worn by that final “h”

A LIE.

the biggest of all.

because it doesn’t matter “how” we write.

fuck.

that.

it doesn’t mean shit

how large your vocabulary is.

how numerous your synonyms, antonyms, homonyms,

or just plain old sins are.

how high your IQ is.

how low your self-esteem is.

how drunk, or high,

or stoned, or sober you are.

how much Shakespeare you have digested.

how well you have know the works of Frost, Hemingway, Ezra, or Steinbeck.

how—shit—IF

you even know who Gorky, Lawrence, cummings, Huxley, Thoreau,

or either of the Sinclairs even are.

none of it matters.

none of those things mean shit at all.

because “what” writing is

“what” the wondrous truth is

behind that scarlet “h”

worn proudly by the few

the writers and singers

and housewives and criminals

and actors and presidents

and six-figure CEOs

and even cold corpses six-feet under the stars

who have left their legacies on an 8.5″x11″ canvas

an unflinching immortality

wrought from their anxieties

their desires

their thoughts

their feelings

their hopes

their dreams

their despair

their pain

their bits of rapture

and fleeting fucking emotions.

their entire life savings!

all of it a toll.

the price to cross

this ugly, burnt bridge.

but jesus, man,

just tell us already!

“what” the fuck is on the other side?

“what” could possibly be worth any of this?

“what” does that useless fucking “h” stand for

if the “how” doesn’t mean shit?

“what”

“what”

“WHAT”

is writing?

well,

it’s the only thing

that will always be there to remind us

even through all of this shit

even if the sun explodes

even if the trees all die and the earth withers black

even if the wars of men reduce billions to hundreds

even if the reaper himself is driven mad

overworked.

death

now sick

of death.

even if the deafening silence of nothing

moves into the houses and suburbs

into the cities and sidewalks

into the streets and schools

where the cacophony of car-horns

and the laughter of children used to be.

and though most of it will be gone

most of it burnt and discarded

most of it torn and trashed

most of it used as towels and toilet paper

but most?

is never all.

and the writing that will still exist

will remind those few poor souls

those survivors of an unresponsive god

that the one thing

no crazed man

no ravenous beast

no apathetic deity

can kill—

is “hope.”