My wife bought me a 30g iPod for my birthday this year and I have been trying to fill it up. The first and most obvious choice of music to put on it is one of my musical heroes, Rollins I simply refer to him as “Hank”. The former lead singer of Black Flag and the current front man for the Rollins Band this guy is as intense as they come. A muscle bound tattooed musical and performing animal, just listening to Rollins makes me want to break stuff. Rollins is an actor, singer, musician but what really makes me a fan is his writing, he is a poet and a story teller. It seems a lifetime ago whilst staggering out of St. Andrews Hall after a Rollins show placed with all of the normal concert swag was a neatly stacked pile of books written by Rollins. I was shocked, I was in disbelief, I had to rub my Guinness soaked eyes to make sure it was true…..Poetry???? Poetry written by Hank??? This was too much, this could simply not be true the guy who looked and acted like he could rip your lower intestine out through your ear wrote poetry??? It was true and I could not dig my money out of my pocket fast enough. It was several years later that I learned Rollins had a similar experience which caused him to publish his work.
Get in the Van was the book and I have read it a thousand times if I have read it once. I am a closet poet never really comfortable with the fact that I wrote. I have hidden it and when asked I have denied the fact that I actually did it. For a long time I would write using the name “R.E. O’Kirby”. I felt like it was in some way it would make me less of a manly man if it ever got out.
Last year I self published a book called Lawrence St. A short collection of some of the darkest stuff I have ever written that deals with the invisibility that people feel. The kind of darkness that makes mothers send their sons to intensive therapy sessions as a teen. There is one printed book in existence and the feelings of shame still plague me, I have never advertised the book and only a few people actually know of it. It’s collecting dust in my desk somewhere under a stack of cancelled checks and diving magazines. Perhaps one day my grandchildren will find it and say “Damn the guy that looked and acted like he could rip your lower intestine out through your ear actually wrote poetry?”
If your intersted you can find it here:
http://www.lulu.com/content/441180
0 Responses to “Closet Poetry”