I'm No Kinda Writer by PW Covington

                  Nicolas Henderson CC



I'm No Kinda Writer


I’m a shitty writer.
And an even worse “poet”.
I’ve been at home, alone, for almost two weeks, and I haven’t written a single line of poetry about the pandemic, not a couplet about toilet paper, not a verse about dry coughs or shortness of breath or ventilators or hospital ICU’s.
I haven’t shared my very original cliches about the walls of Plato’s cave, or about nature reclaiming her realm...nothing at all about human frailty and financial uncertainty.

Not once have I screamed out into the digital abyss about how unfair any of this is. I have not written a word about the children I chose not to create, nor about the isolation and community that things like this create or force upon us. There has never been anything “like this”.
I have not written a poem. Not yet.
Poetry in times like these (there have never been times like these) is for poets...and I’ve never really made that grade, never felt truly welcomed or embraced by “the poets”. I’ve never particularly wanted to.
I write poetry for the guy at the bar, his back turned to the stage, the guy that got as far as English 1301 and hated every fucking minute of it. That guy has more important things on his mind, right now, than poetry. And, he probably should,

When I write, I need the highway, the tail-lights, the sting of hard liquor and the caresses of soft lovers. I need smoke and laughter and back-alley intrigue. I need airports and ferries, night clubs and protests. I don’t want to “make up” a single, fucking, thing.
I need YOU and all your tales of woe and wonder. I want to steal them and move them quick.

I’ll take your words and wrap them in what  most would call the impossible, and hit the road, to hock them; troubadour-style,  at the next beer joint or bookshop that will have me.

I thrive on neon and gas fumes, but I have learned the value of being still, and in my place, alone.

I’ve sat for years in the same locked room, before...spent months on small boats at sea. Sitting and staying has never felt like peril to me. My home, wherever that  has been, has always been my sanctuary...a place to be WITHOUT having to“be a poet”. A rest from the road, an escape from applause and empty platitudes, a place to ponder the unwritten regrets of past disasters and to look up from my adobe courtyard at the airliners and airlifters and mountain finches and leafy boughs moving, and just be. A place to disconnect and breathe...not always easily, but always just for me, free of scripts or expectations.
I’ve always insisted upon the liberty to simply be.
I have not been writing poetry.

This is the thing that will define us. Writing about the virus will simply be called writing. There’s no need to force or push anything. This is reality, and reality has always been my muse. Reality is all I’ve ever valued in a writer or their work.

Try it, Live it. Become it...then, if you MUST, write about it. Let the reader decide if they want to grab their shit and jump in shotgun or whether they want to take your words as the rambling of a lost, ill-fated,  vagabond that somehow found a pen.
The book is $10, either way.

The next week will be especially difficult. The novelty of social distancing will wane, and real deaths, of real people, will replace the daily frustrations of retail shortages. Toilet paper will suddenly become the luxury and option that it truly always has been...and haven’t we all been running from our own shit, long enough?
Things will get really fucking organic and human, this coming week.
Just like the Zen master that sent his bereaved disciple through the village , seeking a cup of rice from a home that had never known loss, death will touch us all.
It is not time to write a poem....not about this...not yet.

EVERY poem written from now on out will be about this. Even the most veiled or deconstructed. Every word published, for at least a generation, will test positive for corona exposure. There is no need to rush anything; the storm will rage and heroes will rise and evil will take advantage of the circumstances.
But, birds will sing, dogs will bark, and the sun and stars each in their time will rise and fade.

I’ve never cared much for play-by-play commentary...not while actually LIVING the thing is an option. Live first, feel it all. Take reality and twist it up like a Rubik’s cube...someday, when you can put it back together again...or after decades of trying, and, again, if you MUST, write about it, but make it good, okay?

Talkin’ to myself here, because nothing can compare to the sheer power of what’s happening to every human soul, right now. I do not want to cheapen any of the horror or inevitable communal self-discovery that this human fermata, this pause in structure, is bringing and will bring.

When was the last time you really sat and spent time with yourself?
We will run out of distractions...I have not yet felt the need to create new ones with my pen or poesy.  

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PW Covington writes in the beat tradition of the North American highway.
 
He has been invited to share his work from San Francisco Beat Museum to the Havana International Poetry Festival in Cuba. He is a Pushcart nominee and his latest book, North Beach and Other Stories was named an LGBTQ Fiction finalist in 2019 by the International Book Awards.

Covington lives in Northern New Mexico, two blocks off of Historic Route 66. Follow him on Insta @BeatPW.

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