Poetry Boys by India LaPlace

They know they’ll reel you in with those carefully spun words,

Words that read like music and make you swoon.

Words they use to build themselves up in their own minds

So they can carelessly compare themselves

to all that they’ve romanticized.

Bukowski.

Kerouac.

Burroughs.

Ginsberg.

Go ahead and fancy yourselves a “new beat generation.”

String those words together as well as you can manage,

At least they’re pretty on a printed page.

They’ll make you blush.

Those smiles, that spark in their eyes,

They wear their costume – dark demented soul – so well

That you’ll fall for how they fall for you,

How they just can’t live without you,

They’re in love and they know it.

You’ll fall for how they watch you

Because you’ve never noticed a red flag in your life.

Animal-like. Almost primal.

They’ll play up their sob stories

Because it’s so much easier to play a victim or a martyr,

To tell you how unfair their lives have been

Then it is to tell you that they’re fucked up.

They’ll cry about how things didn’t turn out.

The dreams they never chased, never really worked for,

Surprise. Those didn’t pan out either.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

A few reworded quotes, a couple of lines

Read just the right way, in just the right voice.

Their picture, their video masked with just the right filter.

Deep. Tortured. Begging.

Please, please choke on this regurgitated shit.

There are men who write poetry who aren’t

Whiny, unevolved, poor little poetry boys,

But those men are poets,

Not boys who slide into your messages with:

“I’m drunk.”

“I’m horny.”

“My wife/girlfriend

Doesn’t love me anymore.”

“I’m sad so I can go behind her back,

But she belongs to me.”

“Sure, I’m messaging some cute young thing,

But that bitch finally found happiness

In a real man’s arms instead of

Worshipping and appreciating the ego that is me.”

Poetry boys spin their words with their pens,

Their typewriters – if we’re going to get real hipster about it –

Because real words, substance, gets stuck in their throats,

And they haven’t faced themselves in the mirror

In god knows how long.

They want you weak at the knees with your legs and heart open,

So they smile those smiles, wink those winks.

“Let me fill you up so I can fill up all the parts of me

That I haven’t already drowned out with booze.”

Because all the real artists are alcoholics, right?

             Previously Published at HST and her chapbook Sad Discoveries

  India LaPlace is kind of like if a dive bar and a dumpster fire had a human baby. She is a poet from the United States and a single mom who is aspiring to be a person with self discipline. Associate Editor at the sensational Horror Sleaze Trash. Generally pleasant, naturally cynical. Easily won over by a good book and a twisted sense of humor. You can find her on Instagram: @indiabrittany She still loves Louis C.K.