How to Start a Poem, if not a Painting By John Greiner

I can’t send out an email now,

I can’t give you a critique

 of your poem.

The mere fact that I’m writing

about poetry in a poem

is an irksome absurdity.

I should be driving a cab,

but I have a fear of driving,

or prepping for the night shift

at some seedy hotel,

but I’ve already done that

and it filled me with pathetic mutterings

that no one cared to listen to.

I’m here and there are plenty

of someones who will want to

think nothing of me

and they will think nothing of me, 

so that’s something.

That’s a cocky dumb shit line

that some wannabe liar would end with

to make themselves look Bukowski.

Such bullshit artists

who have never read Vallejo,

or Ruben Dario,

or Lord Byron,

or Percy Bysshe Shelley,

or Bill Knott

and on and on

and only a bullshit poet 

would name all of those names

in a poem,

so here I am.

I wanted to paint a painting 

this morning.

I woke up dreaming

about painting a painting.

I went out into the streets

to capture the inspiration

to paint that painting

before it was even sunrise.

I had to watch that the cops

didn't think that I was some 

sort of nutcase

drifting around so early in the morning

looking for God knows what,

maybe the sunrise.

Maybe the cops are right.

Maybe I am some sort of nutcase.

I tried to keep a low profile.

There were a few true pervs about.

I came back with a thousand

brilliant ideas on nothing

and spent the day jerking off

both literally and figuratively.

John Greiner is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer living in Queens, NY. He was educated at the New School for Social Research.  Greiner's work has appeared in Sand, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Valueand numerous other magazines. His chapbooks, broadsides and collections of poetry and short stories include  Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), The Laundrymen (Wandering Head Press, 2016), Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014),Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012), Shooting Side Glances(ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell’s Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010).