Please buy my book.
I don’t want to sell
electronics forever.
As my old boss said
more than once, being
an electronic sales rep’s
the hardest easy money
in the world.
Easier than what,
I wonder? Putting
your kids through college
selling chapbooks
at readings? Maybe
if you’re Billy Collins
you can hustle up
a couple of bucks
with a few turns
of the well-worn
phrase, but the rest
of us are still left
sucking hind tit.
Harder than what,
I wonder? Bluestone
slabs quarried
in the Catskills
by a bunch of guys
who can’t hear
each other think,
but feel when
the Beaver Kill
beckons and drop all
to go fly fishing?
Please buy my book
so I can close the cover
on this graphic novel,
buy a Cuban cigar
in Havana and make
like a Hemingway.
"Tough titty," said the kitty, "but the milk tastes the same."
ReplyDeleteMike, do like Billy Collins did and toil in obscurity your entire life, so that finally, in your fifties, someone like the Librarian of Congress calls you and says, "We like what you do." Keep toiling at what drives you, no matter what, no matter that it brings in little or no money, no matter that you have a day job, no matter that what you do seems to matter to no one; do it for the love of it; be true to yourself, like Billy Collins. And then you will have earned the "few bucks hustled up with the turn of a well-worn phrase," though, to be honest, you and I both know that's not what Billy Collins does.
What he does is write about something that is so obvious that it is NOT obvious-- until he writes about it-- and then you want to smack yourself upside the head (go ahead: I give you permission) because YOU were too lame to think of it first. That's the reason why people hate Billy Collins. Because he pointed out to you something that SHOULD HAVE BEEN obvious to you-- only it wasn't, because you were too busy holding your nose in the air and all you were looking at was empty space.
Billy Collins would never have tried to "make like a Hemingway," btw. Perhaps that is your mistake. Blaze your own friggin' trail!!!!
feel ya... i keep telling folks to support my literary habit before i end up rifling through their wallets late at night in walmart parking lots... they only have themselves to blame!
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