I Write Hell
I don’t write many pretty things. I write dead things,
Things that smell. Rotten things! Shit things! Hanging
Flesh things from Hiroshima! Things that look like
Holocausts, emaciated Stars of David, my take on human
Religion, my take on human lungs and human tongues.
I write ugly things from hell. I write about heroin and
Mothers putting babies in microwaves.
Real things flowers can’t touch.
Don’t write about these things.
They’ll put your mind in hell.
They’ll make you piss on God.
I was pretty; some people tell me I’m still pretty.
Some people tell me to “Have a nice day!”
Give me a smile, them 10 percent.
I wish the world was more like “Have a nice day!”
Plath seemed to think so from time to time. I seem
To think so from time to time.
I wish everyone would say: “How do you do?
Have a nice day!” Sometimes I feel like the God
Of Judges, saying: “Dumb asses!” At least in a poem,
I can write: “Have a nice day!”
I could leave out the Ak-47, the mortar, the hydrogen bomb.
Even when I am God, I can’t get over my own world.
I write hell. I kiss Hell and I penetrate.
I hand out free-will like AA coffee.
As a waiter, a man told me to “go fucking die”.
I politely smiled and said “Thank you. Have a nice day!”
I meant it.
Biography: Derek Keck is an Ohio poet and a student of English Literature at Kent State University. His writing, though crude and at times chaotic draws heavily upon the postmodern and confessional poetry movements of the 1950s and 60s. His poetry is inspired by the works of William Blake, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski and W.B Yeats.
