I want to wipe the sin off me—that’s what I think.
Too many people turning inside me. Too much time. If only I could wipe off the sin. So many years of living, and all of that sin sticking to me: broken vows, corruption, anger, sloth. If I could wipe off the sin I could, I feel, believe again.
Believe in what?
In the month of March, which is a tough month because it is the end of winter and winter is bad, I discovered, in a file on my computer, 36 bad poems that I had written in 2017. I had no memory of writing these poems but I thought that they were good and I wanted to write more of them. I thought I would do 200, after Anthony Clark (who invented the 200 bad comics challenge a million years ago). To make it harder I said I would do them in two weeks. I almost did that but I did not thanks to a stressful trip that I took in the middle of this journey. Anyway, they have already been posted on this website, but here are all 200 poems I wrote in March together with the initial 36.
too sad to think
I am too sad
but I am writing poems
poems don’t need thought
a poem about economic insecurity
economic insecurity sucks
there’s a moth
always crushing your brain
tips for managing yr workload
throw your task list
into the garbage can
no one will ever notice
a crisis for office managers
dave said he couldn’t work Thursday
but shirley booked Thursday off
well, someone needs to be here
You thought you were rid of me. But I had a head start. It was only right to continue until I had written 200 in this year. Now it is truly done.
psyche
I’d be betraying my friends and my poems by ending this with
bad Christian allegory—and I’d also be short of 200
since the first thirty-six were written in 2017
2017
an interesting year
which I remember now
for a “couple things”
“a couple things”
a relationship, finally ended
a hundred emails
another relationship (more emails would follow)
purgatory
writing these has been a kind of trial
and I’m not sure if it’s these poems or the weather
but I feel better than when I started
climbing the mountain
like I’m having the word for “sin” wiped off my forehead
by the brush of an angel’s wings, each poem is helping
somehow
the discovery
when I found the first 36, just last month
I was searching my hard-drive for a poem
I wrote in 2013 about “having a bad attitude”
the poem about having a bad attitude
was written after attending a craft workshop
in a museum in the middle of the country
attended by just me and two twelve year old girls
committed to my art
she looks at me from the couch
gets up, saunters over
but I’m writing these poems
committed to my art 2
with determination I turn back to the screen
she walks back to the couch
and hugs the dog
an owl sends me a “flame email”
it takes me three hours to download
it’s a 3D model of a rat, partially digested
in the centre is a message on a piece of paper: “fuck you”
a golden relationship
Fawn says “from a distance your relationship
seems ‘golden’”—which means, I think
that it casts a certain reflection and has a particular atomic weight
the cafe is packed
initially I can’t find a seat
I squeeze in between a stroller
and some guy watching “Rick and Morty” on his phone
