Sure, I’m happy you liked it.
That’s the point, right?
Somebody claps and you pretend it means you deserve the stage.
But I feel like a thief.
Because I am not just writing.
I am reaching.
I am reaching for the kind of hunger
that made Bukowski a throat with legs,
the kind of fire
Wanda Coleman carried like a second sun,
the kind of tenderness
that turns Andrea Gibson into a siren for the living.
I take a little of each,
rub it into my lines,
and hope it passes for truth.
I steal voices the way some men steal cigarettes.
Not because they need them.
Because it’s there.
Because it makes the hands feel busy.
I am an old, privileged white guy
with clean enough hands
to notice the dirt under my nails
and call it depth.
But, none of it is earned.
Not by me.
Yeah, I’ve got my own pain.
Everybody does.
“Trauma is trauma,”
the therapists say,
and you nod like that settles the bill.
It doesn’t.
Because the stories might be mine,
but the sound of them
feels like somebody else’s mouth.
And I know it.
But I write anyway.
I call it art.
I call it honesty.
I call it the only thing I can do
that makes the day less empty.
But some nights it feels like fraud.
Like I’m wearing a coat off another man’s back
and acting surprised it fits.
So yes,
poetry is cheating. Still.
Jan 5
Jan 5, 2026 at 9:07 PM UTC
Sure, I’m happy you liked it.
That’s the point, right?
Somebody claps and you pretend it means you deserve the stage.
But I feel like a thief.
Because I am not just writing.
I am reaching.
I am reaching for the kind of hunger
that made Bukowski a throat with legs,
the kind of fire
Wanda Coleman carried like a second sun,
the kind of tenderness
that turns Andrea Gibson into a siren for the living.
I take a little of each,
rub it into my lines,
and hope it passes for truth.
I steal voices the way some men steal cigarettes.
Not because they need them.
Because it’s there.
Because it makes the hands feel busy.
I am an old, privileged white guy
with clean enough hands
to notice the dirt under my nails
and call it depth.
But, none of it is earned.
Not by me.
Yeah, I’ve got my own pain.
Everybody does.
“Trauma is trauma,”
the therapists say,
and you nod like that settles the bill.
It doesn’t.
Because the stories might be mine,
but the sound of them
feels like somebody else’s mouth.
And I know it.
But I write anyway.
I call it art.
I call it honesty.
I call it the only thing I can do
that makes the day less empty.
But some nights it feels like fraud.
Like I’m wearing a coat off another man’s back
and acting surprised it fits.
So yes,
poetry is cheating. Still.
Imposter syndrome, artistic influence vs theft, privilege, shame, honesty, why we write anyway.
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