Writing Poetry for Class

By Julian Taub,

When the angry ram is thrust at my door
And the days of doom creep forward
My mind crawls into a fetal position
And starts playing Russian roulette
With the paper
But always draws a blank.
Then, in the chains of futility
It paces here and there
Astrally projecting itself
Onto grand conquests
Lovers’ hearts
Or the journey
Of a lice-infested vagabond.
Again to no avail
For when my mind breaks
My pen does, too
And I run out of fuel
Like a novice pilot flying solo.

I look at my paper in disgust
The unfinished, broken-sentence dreams
“It could be so good, except-
I need to work on it-
Intensify the imagery-
Make it scan better-
Rhyme would be nice, too.”

FUCK!
Why can’t I just pull a Dante
Out of my ass?

Tell me, what do they have
That I ain’t got?

Well, wait a second,
“Maybe I could turn it into-
A prophetic epic
An orgasmic ballad
An anti-Bush limerick.”

Tension with no remorse in my daily life.

I sigh in stifling defeat
And dream of the perfect poem
Appearing on the page
One that will quake the souls of millions
Squirted from a carton of
INSTANT KICK-ASS POETRY
With the words
“JUST ADD INK”
Scrawled on its side with graffiti.

Julian Taub, a native New Yorker college student, lives in the East Village. He is a part of the NYC Slam scene and has been performing his poetry at clubs since 2007.

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