Corey Ginsberg

A.D.D. Ars Poetica      


 
 
Call up the Word document and stare at it for ten minutes. Look at the ceiling. Look out the window, and think of all the things you'll do as soon as the essay is written. Check your email, read your horoscope. Go back to the blank page and wait for inspiration. Be patient—give it five more minutes; you can't rush these things. When the mental constipation refuses to pass, resign to make dinner, but to think about the essay while you cook. Pride yourself on being a multi-tasker. Set the oven mitt on a burner while scraping the charred black remains of the Rice-a-Roni from the only skillet you own. Contemplate the idea of what constitutes adequate narrative arch until the mitt catches fire. Resign to not think about writing till after the alarm is done going off and the neighbors have calmed down. Have a drink while you wait, maybe three. Go back to the computer. Type quickly and passionately for eight minutes about the nature of physical reality in relation to the world that the unconscious mind perceives, and than wane philosophical until the vodka buzz wears itself down. Stand up to stretch, then chase the dog around the apartment. Hold him down and dress him in a miniature shirt that says "Life's Short: Hump Everything." Take pictures, upload them, and send them to your friends. Watch the dog ride his ass across the carpet, back and forth, back and forth. Don't stop him. Return to the blank screen. Type your name in the top right corner. Put page numbers on the document. Save the now not-blank piece as "Failure." Check your email, check the news, organize the desktop items on the computer screen. Now that that's all taken care of, you'll be able to write. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply. Crack your knuckles, toes, knees, elbows and neck. Find your happy place. Zen Master it. Look up people on Facebook, people who you despised in high school, who never knew your name but still managed to make you feel deficient, ugly and unwanted. Cultivate a new hatred for them, and take a secret delight in studying their posted photos and convincing yourself that they're all pregnant drug addicts with severe personality disorders. Tell yourself that you'd much rather be a writer than an asshole, as if the two are mutually exclusive. Think of a witty title for a book of essays you most likely will never write, then plan the cover design. Try to learn a little Spanish and form absurd, incoherent strings of verbs and swear words. Justify doing so as "research." Make a list of your top five favorite names for a baby boy. Take a personality test to see which character on Sesame Street you most closely resemble. Write the creator of the test hate mail when you receive Snuffleupagus. Build an origami fortune teller and write obscene words on it. Call your best friend and force her do the same, then read each others' futures. See how long you can hold your breath, just to test if the little black dots can offer any oracular insights into the writing process. Wait for the headache to pass, and then do it again. Commit to writing a paragraph, even if it's garbage—just one goddamn paragraph. Type all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy thirty-eight times. Make a list of all the places you've thrown up while hung over. Call up a new blank page and conjugate the very "to be" in French. Congratulate yourself that seven years spent studying this language really paid off. Maybe a pancake will help you think, make it easier to concentrate. A creative pancake, you say aloud and laugh at your own cleverness. Write this in bold on the white computer screen in front of you and type next to it—"Possible Essay Topic." Come back to the computer forty-five minutes later covered in syrup, riding the downward wave of a sugar high. The panic sets in: get on the floor next to your desk and rock in a fetal position, hands linked over knees, eyes glazed like a Krispy Kreme. Convince yourself that you're washed up—that you'll never have a good idea again and it's really only a matter of time before you're living under the bridge on I-95 in that refrigerator box your parents always joked you'd end up in. Cry hysterically for six minutes, then start a one-person conversation just loud enough for the neighbors who are sitting on the balcony to hear, because they don't think you're weird enough. Run your hand over your tattered copy of Welcome to the Monkey House and ask yourself: What would Kurt Vonnegut do? When you're able to peel your defeated frame from the filthy carpet, get the jar of peanut butter and a spoon. Eat half of its contents while staring blankly at your chipped toenail polish, then decide to start a cleansing diet in the morning—a healthy, integrative lifestyle approach that will put each part of your life in balance and make you happy and whole. Eat the rest of the peanut butter so that it can't tempt you in the morning. Try to remember the state capital of Alaska. Anchorage, right? Or is it Juneau? You better Google it right now just to be sure, then you'll be able to focus. Check the weather forecast for Miami for the rest of the week. Check the forecast in other major cities for comparison. Look out the window and watch the palm fronds wave at you in the light spring breeze. You can hear them whispering, singing. Hello, crazy lady, they say when they sense your heavy stare. Wave back at them, but then mutter out through the crack in the window, I can't talk to you now, I'm busy writing. 



 
 
 
 
Dear Thomas Kinkade,                     
 


 
I don't want your Heaven, your
 
heavy-handed brush strokes, 
 
your pre-packaged, pre-framed,
  
pre-pubescent idea 
 
that life can be distilled
 
into a god commodity and then sold 
 
for twenty million a year.
 

 
You give us the Hour of Prayer,
 
Gingerbread Cottage,
 
and Night Before Christmas—
 
feeble attempts to impose
 
your little slice of truth using
 
the primary colors and a spectrum 
 
of smiles.
 

 
I want art without training wheels,
  
ten shades of black and then one.  
 
My mind craves Real, not Perfect.
 
I want the death, destruction, and beautiful
  
chaos your pastel palate can't completely cover.
 

  
I'm tired of being slapped in the face
 
with your born-again, bourgeoisie blues 
 
in five thousand shopping malls.  It hangs 
 
crookedly over the fireplaces 
 
of a million broken homes.  It coddles
  
us, caresses us, and threatens to turn us all
 
into vapid, feeble-minded drones.
 

	           
What will become of you—the self-labeled
 
"Painter of Light" in a pagan world 
 
that craves eternal nighttime?  Will you
 
be remembered as the Christian Coalition's
 
Shining Star, their prodigal, 
 
Bible-thumping vampire?  
 

 
Maybe, hundreds of years from now,
 
when we understand the danger 
 
of worshipping ghosts, history will remember
 
you, on a small corner of a fifth-grade textbook,
 
as the Greatest American Cliché.
 

 
I'll admit: it's tempting, sometimes, 
 
to lose myself
 
in your purple plush fairyland world.
 
It's so easy on the eyes, the mind.
 
I can see myself strolling 
 
on your slightly sloping hills, 
 
sitting by your babbling brooks, drifting off
 
to sleep in a field of gently blowing bluebells.
 

 
I wouldn't last a second there.
  



 





Bowling in the Bumper Lane		


 
 
I. Seven-Ten Split


 
	                                                                                                                                 
It's hard to lose grip
  
on a game we've only
 
just learned to play 
 
poorly. 
 
 
 
Even with our feet disguised
 
in red and blue, our soles
 
still ache. All day. The awkward
  
shuffle, quicker and quicker,
 
until each toe craves brown. 
 

  
This is the dance. 
 
 
Two pins left standing
 
at opposite sides. The hardest
 
shot of the game, you insist.
 
Your eyes are lead. I send them 
 
for another pitcher
 
and some cheese sticks, the only meal
  
we both can digest. 
 

  
While you're gone,
 
I position myself in the lane
  
and hurl the spinning orb 
 
directly down the center. 
 
 


 
II. Spare


 
 
My palm opens into a cup. Eleven pounds 
 
and pearly white, I take my chances 
 
on the only one I can carry and hope 
  
my calloused hands are up to the task. 
 
 
 
The heaviest globe
  
my fingers can grip is lighter,
  
still, than the heaviest I can imagine.
  
  
 
Pins fall all around us, but you don't
  
even blink. Instead, you point out
 
that I've been keeping score backwards,
  
marking only what's left standing. 
 
Eternal optimist, you say, and I award you a ten.
 
 
 
Your second shot is better, a zero.
 
But you seem let down. I suggest
 
that you shouldn't internalize 
 
the spares; perfect is an illusion
 
created by the shadow
 
of our second try. 
 
 
 
 
 
III. Gutter Ball
 
 
 
 
What makes 300 the best?
  
An arbitrary construct of a mind
 
riddled with gutter balls and impossible
 
shots. The standard has been set. 
 
 
 
I've never been a 300, and wouldn't wish it
  
for you, either. Maybe "best" is a strong word, 
 
one that dresses us in silk
 
though our bodies crave cotton.
 
 
 
When I gravitated toward the bumper lane,
 
you nodded and shrugged. Safety 
 
is an acquired luxury that has wrapped itself 
 
around our sweaty hands. 
 
 
 
And now, ten frames later, you glance
 
away, unwilling or unable to 
 
to watch my ball roll into the gutter
  
at the last possible inch.