the wannabe automatic writer

when he was younger

he jammed out on the guitar, bore a fro &

then graduated from brown---

following this, him & his hippie gal got married,

popped out a few rug-rats &

sooner than later he was at grad school,

then the ph.d & then

writing papers on meticulously fine-tuned

areas of literary theory

at the corner of where philosophy met with it in

a new postmodern paradise

free of the restrictions that modernism posed &

free of the comfort that it brought to those seeking

well-thought-out stories,

bringing with it the death of the meta-narrative

as well as a thousand other aesthetic flip-flops,

reversals & complete toss outs---

he sat in his little office at his little state university

teaching english courses &

weaving philosophy &

actually interesting works

whenever he saw possible,

inspiring those who grew as bored as him with the everyday

mundane reality of the university &

in his spare time,

when all the students had gone &

he didn’t have to be home yet to do the family thing,

he labored at the pc

trying to find a way to write automatically---

something that would surpass or at least impress

someone like william s. burroughs,

whose work he adored---

and with every few hours stuffed into a week

where he tried to focus on inventing some kind of

new writing,

he simultaneously forgot that with the meta-narrative

went the origin of authorship,

as derrida himself declared &

so to this day

the lone one sits in his little cage trying to break out

by writing with his spell check or

some other dreamt up attempt at

carving a place amidst those that are studied by history,

unlike those that historically

study.