The Don't Try Cry

I see the question all the time, 

“What does it mean to be a writer?”

Almost always asked by those that

have just born their brand new

death grip on the pen and who are

staring done at the blank page

filled with excitement believing just

like the jumpy young colt that

having a savage jockey on your back

won’t be a brutally long trip.

Maybe I’d have kinder and softer words for these

“authors” if I hadn’t spent the last two decades

asking myself the same damn question they have

every day. But I bitch like a toddler whose

cartoons are suddenly silenced after the sixth hour.

I’m no Chinaski. I haven’t truly earned my right

to howl at the micro-meteorite's impact my words

have had on the world. I never endured

my back beaten into hamburger with a razor strap

by my father.

I haven’t lived hard times with women who only

feel combat emotions and wear their years across

their faces like shattered asphalt at an old truck stop. 

I haven’t vomited up last night’s radiator fluid whiskey

only to rise from the busted toilet seat and grab a

stale beer to drink into blackness. I’ve never been

one more lost job or my final unemployment

check away from sleeping on a cold park bench.

Hank would probably laugh at my coward’s cry

and chalk me right up there with all the battle green

newbies stumbling through the maze of

words spinning through their heads. 

Some days I think during my fire-walk

I’ve fallen flat on my face.