The Artist's Way

I wrote this more than a decade ago and it's just as true and false and not-quite-clever now as it was then. But because I'm ten years older I can appreciate the sentiment without having to justify the aesthetics: what I was trying to accomplish was accomplishment enough and it's still an accurate enough indictment of my own bourgeois Bohemian tendencies to be important for me.


And I do still have the lingering anxiety that any poem (or blog entry) that is easy to write can't be very good or worth very much. So I guess I'm sorry to waste your time, I'll be sure to pay it back later. You know I'm good for it...

Portrait of the Artist as a Damnéd Fool

Matt Quarterman

I want to live in New York. Sometimes.
I want to smoke the occasional cigarette
and drink sexy alcoholic drinks
like Jack Daniels, or port wine, or wine coolers even.
I want to be hip to the drug scene, get their point but not be part of it.
I renounce everything that is not poetry
down to bleach detergent and mature counselors,
houseplants, classical music, serene wallpaper,
portraits of sunsets, dolphins, the Grand Canyon
and all of the above in one colossal kaleidoscope collage combo.
Guitars are out, synth is out, pop is out, rock is out, innovation is in even if it's the same tired originality last year's stars did better.
Dirty rooftops are attractive to New Future chicks
in stretch pants and wife-beaters with bra straps miles long.
Sandals are in, leather is in, shades are in esp. if they're kitschy.
Dyed hair is in, wilder the better, spend the life you're wasting
on your hair instead of your life.
Use words that begin in meta- and end in -ize.
Discuss poets I've never read and artists I've never heard.
Fake it, because it's all horse frappuccino, Warhol taught us that.
NEVER, EVER, EVER write in rhyme or meter -
Dylan (Thomas, not Zimmerman) tried that last and look what happened.
If you're gonna compose VERSE, write lyrics that are ironic,
two-faced, mystically dada in a Rosencrantz and Godot way, that mean
nothing but ticket sales and kissing Carson Daly's ratings sweep.
I denounce my former way of life as unartistic and pathetic,
I am no longer "artsy" in the modern way, but "avant-garde" postmodern
style, but even more, looking toward the 00 future, sort of
Mayakovsky with e-mail.


I use the first person pronoun.
I am the first person pronoun.
I is the first person pronoun.
Compose "Best Of ..." collections of songs you wrote, poems you sang, paintings you screwed over and tore up on video.
Dream dream dream dream of sleep.
Hell no!, cynical?! I'm beyond cynical, cynical is blasé.
Sarcastic is trite, almost sophistic in the non-Greek way.
Disillusioned? I've become embittered by my lack of illusions,
I have nothing to hold on to but the assurance that I'm free of any restraint, anything to grasp.
Forget that this poem was a breeze to write, no trouble at all,
and the guilt which accompanies the thought. Forget you ever forgot,
or that Orwell came up with it first, or that you ever read the guy.
Forget that this is no poem, no Muse, barely a thought, more a
half-cocked blazing-Uzi death run down the trench of the straw men
I take down before breakfast.
Publish publish publish publish to write.