words on words in poetry

Everything you’ve ever read
some weirdo just like you just
wrote those words down once
it isn’t something magical
just because it exists on paper
it isn’t necessarily true
just because it has persisted
it’s just something some
asshole just wrote down once
this is what learning how to
write really teaches you.

It’s so disillusioning
it’s so freeing
it’s one of the most important
things you can learn about being
a person and it is entirely
indirect to the act of writing.
It’s all just made-up
the greatest ideas ever crafted
the goddamned dumbest drivel and
all the mediocre propaganda
space-filling piffle in-between.

Some man or woman wrote it down
it was just words on a keyboard
or on paper or whatever and
to a certain extent it made an
idea irrevocably real to some.
To those who’ve never thought
enough about writing to remember
that all writing is just writing.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Something some weird just like you
put down into form one made moment
then history decided to make it real
or not real or half real or not.

Writing is beautiful
writing is arbitrary
writing is as mercurial as the gods
writing is as ephemeral as the breezes
writing is as eternal as the seas
not just your own writing
or the writing of your contemporaries
from the cuneiforms of Gilgamesh
to the last text message in the future
right before cell phones become obsolete.
Some person just made that all up.
That is so wonderful liberating.
That is so awful terrifying.
Someone just made that thing up
now it’s on you to decide
what it does or does not mean.

Then you get to make it up yourself
and someone else then gets to decide
again and again and again and again
for as long as there are people
and as long as there are words
as long as the world turns.
Just some weirdo.