Dear Reader, I Dream of You

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The Author

An author is a person who created (or is creating) a written work such as a book, poem, or article. more »

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Here I am, so many years later
I am not ashamed of what I write, or the next day, as I am now
Of what I read of myself
The book has taken on a life of its own
Three years on and a little longer still

Dear reader, I dream of you
Slow water in a land without rain
But the realer you are the farther into fiction I sink
What can be born into a world of shame
You cannot walk in one dimension
And fiction is no cemetery
No one will read something you don't believe in

So you do what you must, you must what you do
I've divided myself into two
A cut across worlds
The author and the narrator
While they can't face each other
They can intuit each other's presence, a kind of correspondence
And me in the middle, fully exposed
Which feels ugly because it's true

I press on
Because if I don't, who will
Is the refrain I keep returning to
To which I turn myself

The noise in my eyes is now deafening and even if I try to wave away the noise
Still deafening

I've no other choice
I refuse to live in a culture that values attention over significance
A culture predictably trending toward a singularity when 'art' and 'ad' will share no distinction
When artists become self-obsessed ambulatory advertisements of themselves
Who create content, not art, as quickly as possible
To be liked or followed
Even though that's what I'm doing now
You are not artists you cartoon gurus
And there is nothing authentic about instructing people how to live their lives
When behind the screen you're no better than the rest of us
Being liked by screen addicts is not an accomplishment

I want to scream but instead I say this to myself, indoors, in silence, to no one
Another moon, another morning spent wondering when
So tell me what choice do I have
Participate in a world I have no interest in
Or remain king of the world on my hefty throne of yawn

Mic in hand, Ableton recording
I want to stand tall and soliloquize my torments
I want to ask
Who will be the heroes, the real artists, in our seizured new world
Who will rip rhapsodic and speak out of line when all incentives point to promoting the line
I'd love to be the one, a new kind of literary hero, romantically rooted in the past
Yet relevant now
But I don't know how
To break through and make myself heard
I'm losing hope, I don't have faith
Literature is dead
Nobody reads

But still--if I imagine a world where I can't write
Or--imagine a world in which what I've written won't be read
Because no one will care to read it
A world fast approaching
I would inhale all the drugs and never wake up­

I guess that's my fight, it's why I'm here on this metaphorical stage
I'm no poet, no hero, I offer nothing new, no original ideas
I stand crooked and crippled on the shoulders of giants
But maybe I can remind you of something you've forgotten
Perhaps that's my contribution

It's embarrassing for me to say this
I want to sound more intelligent, be less direct, less obvious
I want to be your philosopher king and in one clean stanza deliver you from stupidity
But I'm not and I can't
Words do mean something
In fact they mean everything in a world where everyone has a say

Will you take me in your hands, earmark the pages, write in the margins
I hope that my failure to be original, to be a serious author
To say nothing of my failure to be a good person
Can serve as a model for serving no model at all

Write or perish
Read or abort
Save yourself from feeling incapable
Perhaps it's the ultimate act of service
An antidote to universal deafness
If you want your voice to matter
Do yourself a favor
Do us all
And shut the f*ck up

It's better to say nothing until you have something to say

 The easy, fast & fun way to learn how to sing: 30DaySinger.com