I am the unhirable.
I am those who fit between one job report and the other,
the taxes upon the poor that feed into
Congress who feed into
corporations that feed into
the pockets of rich C.E.O.s
I am chicken
feed I guess.

I am the student loaned out to banks
for a time, times, half a time.
I am profit.
I am not human anymore.
I am not even human enough to be called an ass.
I am asset.

“You are our most valuable asset.”

For I am the unhirable
as a man needing a pension
as a man needing a wage
as a man wishing to sire a child
by his wife
this as a white man who grew up among the trailers
of the Middle West.
Imagine how it will be for the next generation of
American Indians.

You will see my pain in the faces of the equestrians
those who slit their wrists from boredom with their
meaningless jumps and sidesaddles.
You will see the wrath of the universe in the
coming market collapse
that cries out, that groans, like the trees
like the seas
on behalf of me.
And mine.

I am fear.
I have suffered the sales of
ten thousand cans of Dr. Pepper
at the end of Spiderman’s web and ads on Fox
that go by the name “nighttime news”
beside the hurricanes, the riots, the disease.
I ham fear.
I prepackage new s.

I shod the hooves of the righteous
in the mettle of
privilege —
that bat-like blindness,
which hears but cannot see.

---

about 54 poems at 27 ::

After much deliberation, I decided to keep the whole tradition of doubling my age and writing that many poems in a year. You’ll notice that April Thirtyish has already passed, so I’m late in posting. I’ve gotten about half of them written and will begin posting this week.

I started this whole mess with 46 poems written at 23, most of which are still up on the site and many of which are awful. Those poems I wrote because I read somewhere that the best age for poetry is 23. I was turning 24 and had an existential crisis.

Then I got over it.

Suddenly I was 25 and thought, “Why not do it again?” So I doubled my age and wrote 50 poems at 25. Again, most of these are still on the site and I’m proud of one or two of them.

Now I’m twenty-eight and it’s almost a principle, almost an undeniable fact of life. When the wild Lancelot is in his native habitat and his age is in an odd year, he will be secreting poetry. I do this because poetry is important, because we must take an active role in the creation of new language or else our language dies.

That means I must write, I must learn how to create better poems even if I’m awful at it — everyone must because the fate of our culture’s at stake. For me, this year, that’s 54 poems at 27.

So I’ll schedule these suckers out and give it a go. Follow along with the category 54 @ 27.

---

image by Vinoth Chandar

Get free stories and courage in my updates ::