In class today Luis read his story
it blew us all away
a tale about an old man
living in a LA barrio
who used to believe in change
used to march for a cause
It got everyone right in the heart
and in the hearts of all their ancestors
The story was so full of culture
that even us whities felt it
That's when it hit
when I realized why my writing
never grabs people on such a deep level
I have no culture, I'm a jumble of whiteness
too far removed from Europe to have
any trace of my forefathers
I have no customary meals
I have no language diversity
no traditions at all really
Except smoking **** in the suburbs
and snorting coke in bathrooms
it's meaningless
and the culture I think I have is stolen
appropriated
My roots have been torn out
of whatever snow covered ground
they once belonged to
I feel empty, I feel like part of nothing
and Luis' ******* writing
made me feel like part of something
that I'm really not even close to
I loved it
I hated it
I wanted to rip it to bits
I wanted to read it ten times in a row
He made me want to give up
He made me hang my head in shame
I got home and put flame
to my last short story
I'm a cultureless swine
I'm boring
I'm boring
I'm
boring

Loneliness rests in my chest
garbed in drab grey
breathing salt water into my blood

Unfortunately
words evade me
unless depression drags me
into the mud
or despair threatens to swallow me up
so take my silence as a good sign
see my blank page as a message
that I am doing
just fine

how many times have I quit smoking
just to burn my insides out again
revert to a bad habit that cages me
in a pen
it feels like being loved
it feels like loving
deep breaths and a spinning head
it feeds a hunger
that has been long left unfed

I'm a wreck
it feels so real
in a facade
It's like breathing underwater

All my favorite writers
are vacant from this space
there is no trace
their heart felt out pours
crushed under a wave
of generic love poems
of fast writen mud
I scroll past
empty rhyme after empty rhyme
where are you?
where did my poetic friends go?
We broke like the last splash
on the shore of a dried up lake
These new words feel fake
to those whose souls I loved
I hope you are still penning
somewhere
I hope your ink still stains pages
and that someday
I'll read your names in a book
or I'll find you on a journey
and once again hear your words
that sent my heart
into a flurry

useless