It's an unspoken rule that somewhere out there
there's a sea of ill tempered, cantankerous,
curmudgeonly men. These men are writers.
It would be both a lie,
and not even half the truth.
Today I tried to sell my dream,
and found it's worth roughly $14.50.
I wish about ninety percent of the world would
die in some type of plague or world war,
and just leave me in peace.
I could spare too many people I know.
My phone shut off abruptly.
The internet is out.
I'm roughly forty dollars in debt now,
and I couldn't pawn my life's work out of it.
Handed a gun I would promptly
shoot myself, because if I wanted to ****
everyone I don't care for, I'd run out of bullets.
My narrative isn't even especially unique.
It's summer and I'm trying to pawn an instrument,
and now ebay has killed the value of everything.
Harlan Ellison is complaining that writers
work for free, but he never had to pawn
a supposedly $700 bass to get told
it's worth $70 on ebay.
I want to fight most people I pass on the street, physically.
I want to choke them and try crushing in their faces.
Hypocritically, I'm a pacifist.
I live in a world where children starve to death,
and have been for centuries,
but you can pass an animal hospital and overhear
people saying they "care about animals more than people."
WW3 looks like an honestly
enjoyable prospect from here.
I want to collect my fifteen dollars and get very drunk.
Hypocritically, I don't drink.
It's summer and I want to wreck a stranger's car,
and flip off a police officer. Spit in someone's face.
Anyone's.
I want all those animal lovers to die of pancreatic cancer
while their lovers get shot in the throat in a ditch somewhere,
******* themselves and crying for their perspective gods,
or parents, or homes, or saints, or whatever.
I just want them to be crying.
I'll be rotting in a cell somewhere or dead too.
Hey, love, it gets darker from here too,
but at least I'm still alive, right?
Hey, sister, the will to live is a fire
that now engulfs me as I try
to ignite the atmosphere.
Hey, father, go **** yourself.
Hi mom!
No meter. Still no morals to these stories.
I'm alive in a generation that doesn't
even like talking about itself sincerely.
I'm writing to you via the public library,
a love letter to anybody who feels ashamed
for feeling desperate. Just remember, most
great writers didn't have the internet and
the ones who don't use it,
are just dinosaurs now.
Burn their bones for fuel.
Solidarity,
Austin Heath