SHUT THE FUCK UP

I love listening to poetry
I love being in the audience
I want their words to touch my life, to mean something to me.
But how can their words have a profound effect on the masses over the din of dinky, dimwitted dumbasses,
Who don’t know when to make like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and put a fucking sock in it?

And you don’t know what it takes to rein myself in and play the part of the perfect, attentive audience member as I take in snippets of conversation floating like free radicals around me.

“You see that show on the Fox News Channel?
O’Reilly? Hannity? Somebody?”

(…shut up…)

“I heard Al Gore gained 45 pounds.”

(…stuff it…)

“He works down on the railroad while she sits in unemployment.
They’re both screwed up.”

(…screw you and shut up…)

Whiiiiizzzzzz……blrrrrrrr….blleeennnndddddd….

(…turn the fucking capuccino machine OFF!…)

“Elvis is dead.”

(…drop dead and be quiet…)

“He hit something and hurt his kneecap. It’s all swollen up.”

(…shut up…)

“The worst part is that Damn Yankee.”

(…zip it…)

“The union, it’s too powerful. It makes me worry.”

(…oh really…)

“Dubya is a fucking Nazi.”

(…so are you, you fucker…)

“They murdered I don’t know how many people.”

(…and if you don’t shut up, I’m going to kill you…)

“Of course, it’s just because they’re rich. They think they can screw people.”

(…screw you…)

“My father was born in 1891.”

(…I have to bite my tongue…)

“No, no no, *this* one.
When you do that, you gotta go across the street.”

(…I shuffle my feet…I stare daggers… I cross and uncross my legs…I stare daggers…)

All you gotta do is just go up there and exhale.

(…All right, I will!…)

WOULD YOU MIND SO TERRIBLY SHUTTING THE FUCK UP?
I’M TRYING TO LISTEN BUT NOT TO YOU!

(8/26/2003)
(rev. 11-25-2008)

* I wrote this with being a group performance piece in mind. It's from the perspective of an audience member trying to listen to good poetry in a noisy atmosphere. The conversations snippets are actual snippets I've heard over the years in various coffee houses I hang out at. Oh, and I threw in the crowning glory: the sound of a capuccino machine/coffee steamer going off right in the middle of a reading.