(Almost) Awesome-

You know how sometimes you write something
and you’re sure that it’s just fucking awesome?
You’re sitting there and all at once
the words just poop out of your fingers
and stain the pages with your brilliance?
When that happens to me
after I’ve finished I sit back,
satisfied and satiated,
and I want to puff a cigarette
like Bogie when he gets done fucking Bacall
for the first time.

And I am drunk with the glory of it
and I want to take my brilliant piece
and share it
and email it
and Facebook it
and blog it
and go down to the street
and accost some innocent passerby
with it.

But some inner voice deep down,
the same voice that could have spared
me that wicked hangover after
last saturday night’s party,
that one little inner shred of common sense
that hasn’t been mercilessly bludgeoned to death
by my brilliance,
that little voice says, “wait”,
and just this once, I listen.

And so I plant the poem away in my desk,
like a sunflower seed in a
paper cup filled with peat moss,
like the perfect Christmas gift,
October-wrapped and hidden
on the top shelf
of the back hallway closet,
and I sneak a peek every once in a while
all afternoon, just to reassure myself
that my brilliance isn’t going anywhere.

And then I get up the next morning,
and I make myself make coffee,
and check my email,
and put the dried dishes in the drainer away,
and feed the cat,
and then,
then-
I collect my poem
from its safe place,
and I look at it
in the fresh day,
and I read it over,
and I think,

“What the fuck?!?!?!?”

Yeah-
you know how sometimes
it’s like that?