Three Hours

I’ve spent the last three hours sitting a in lecture hall contemplating the reason for learning. The people there were talking about intuition and instinct. I’m wondering when tuition is due and how much money I do not have to go towards it. Rent is due at quarter past three and I’m forty-five dollars short. My coffee I got two hours ago, paid in nickels and dimes, has boiled cold. The sugar is sticking to the bottom and the cream has floated to the top. The seminar leader is questioning my motives now, asking why I am here if I do not read. I tell him I am too poor to read. He tells me the library accepts no money and I tell him it accepts no checks either. My fines have gone beyond the range of monetary installments. I spent days reading on the romantics, digging deep into Michael Swift’s mind trying to uncovered the last stanza to that William Blake poem. He never knew it. He never knew it. He never knew it.

I gave in to his desires and spoke aloud a poem I had only ever read. I told him that Satan Was A Bus Station. He gapped and gasped and said I spoke the truth and made me into a martyr. I didn’t want to die, I am just a Poet! I do not believe in faith, in religion, in gods or demons. I believe in line breaks and enjambment. I rant and rave about white space and how to believe in something is to have a religion and mine is that of Carl Sandburg and William Carlos Williams. I do not believe in Jesus, Moses and the Messiah. I believe in the destruction of the best minds of my generation and the two roads diverged in the woods.

Not that he notices anymore. He is busy building the cross I am to be crucified on. He stands me up naked in red square and screams for me to tell the world who Satan is. I say Satan Is A Cold Fried Egg. He yells for more and forces people to stop and listen. My heart cries to be let gone but still it continues. Finally I break and scream I AM A POET I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THIS NONSENSE OF SATANS AND BUS STATIONS. I BELIEVE IN POETRY. I BELIEVE IN POETRY. I BELIEVE IN POETRY. And they let me down.

Later sitting around a fire created from a broken house we shared a beer and I explain that my classes mean nothing because a poet does not need education, she can write anytime, and a college degree will only give me more to write about.

They scorn and toss the bottle onto the fire. It pops and sizzles with delight.

At home, or what you can approximate to it, I find a drunken gay boy fiddling with Miles Davis and posting Polaroid’s of his penis on my door. Oh, my dear drunken gay boy, I plea, why oh why do you do these things. He tells me his heart was broken by Colorado and he needs to share his love again. I do not know why this means what it does. He spends the night on my couch and in the morning I was gone before he woke up.

I had class. Three hours of intuition verses instinct. The three hours of cold coffee paid by dimes and nickels. The three hours of wishing a poetic life was more poetic and less lecture. Three hours of knowing rent is due at half pass three and I am forty-five dollars short. The three hours of wishing I had more than a cigarette for lunch.

that is all.