Collateral Brammage – Getting Serious

I’ve always created poetry and I blame it on Dr. Seuss.

His books captivated me, taught me rhyme, meter and flow.  I guess it is because I am an ape, aper, one who apes.  If I am watching TV, I can eight time out of ten, repeat a line from the television in just the way it was delivered.  OK, seven times out ten, well maybe three out of five.  Anyway, I have had this knack for as long as I can remember.  So I would put it to good use and make up little rhymes in conversation or on scrap-paper, I never kept any of it, but I created the shit out poetry as a youth.

Then when I was in college, for the third time, I had to take Comp II, and when it came to the poetry section I had a blast.  I wrote this, the first piece of poetry that I kept.

The Brink

Standing on the brink
Peering at my fall
Pondering my existence
Am I really here at all?

The many spikes below me
Glint the artificial light
Supplied by the camera crew
Broadcasting my gruesome plight

Found guilty in a court
By a jury of my peers
The Judge has cast his sentence
That which finds me here

But if you ask any man who’s married
If he’d do what I have done
You’ll hear a resounding YES!
I wish I done each one

All I did was kill my wife
Her rantings were mundane
And her constant pointless nagging
Was driving me insane

So I picked up the butchers knife
And I chased her down the hall
And I hurled that vicious clever
And I pinned her to the wall

I hacked and stabbed and sliced and diced
I cut her limb from limb
And stuffed her the garbage can
Right to the bloody brim

So I’m standing on the brink
Reflecting on my life
Do I really deserve this?
Just for killing my wife

So there you have it, my first “official” poem in all of its glory.  And what a work of art it is too.  When I was writing that in the campus center at Hudson Valley (Community College) I would write two lines and then laugh for five minutes.  It was a great deal of fun.  I don’t remember the grade I got on it though.

But the fun really kicks in when I perform this sucker, especially if my wife is in the room.  Everybody looks at her like “and you married him knowing this”?  But it is entirely a work of fiction, a lot of my poetry is fiction.  First of all, I was single when I wrote it, second, I had no control over it, it just came to me, line after line after line.  But I love this piece, it is truly in my top-ten.  Plus, it was the ember that caught a gentle breeze and slowly grew into a raging bonfire.  I am so glad that I tucked it away, and so thankful that I was able to find it a few years later when I actually became serious about writing poetry/spoken word.