i don't want to be a ballerina (edit, with alternate title)

[tim slum]

just trying to write my rocks off a stiff drink


so i've been putting off this decision
and it feels like a 26 year intermission
i've been running 'round this rye field
full well knowing it's no longer Holden
with his hands clasped to the scruff of my neck
and holding me back
from the inevitable embarrassment of
following fictional lemmings off misleading cliffs
and bleeding the adolescence straight out of my existence

buried in any institutional cubicle
adorned in standard-issue florescence
i would pledge my allegiance
to the big bronze-bull-nuts
that hang off Georgia street
and flap like flagrant scruples
constantly canoodled
in the groping hands of the blind
just trying to find our way through
this full load of capitalist bull

and at the head of this manic hand-parade
flailing his serrated shepherds crook
like a crazed baton twirling maestro
and stupefying his horde with the sweet primitive sound of
"bow down to your overlord"
yes, in this corner
the only begotten son
our brother, the final rent reaper
Jesus, the holy bloody christ


and here i am
muddling around in some confounded stupor
searching for what remains of a
shattered alabaster rabbit
swept up into the dustpan of ambiguity
and about to be lost forever
into the vacuum bag of my ego-mentality

all i ever wanted
was to tickle the dangling toes of angels
sitting on clouds, like park benches in heaven
with the warble of my intoxicated loveliness
like beer, lapping over the edge of my glass
to overcast my fingers in the shame of my inhibition

but this is no decision
just some hand-spoken wit
written under the guise of undiscovered poet
but, what should really read more like
lost in my parents basement, 26
with a fondness for blended Scot's whiskey

which is precisely why
i'm rooted in this convoluted pile of dirt
naked, like a baby, wrapped in a blanket made of honey-milk
far too comfortable to break this suckled tit,
this spiked white fence
i tip-tap-toe across the top
as though, it is a chain gang of steel erections
just waiting for an awkward ballerina like me


thank you thoke for the suggestions. i agreed, the questions in the poem didn't work. now they are gone. also, i am not sure if it helps, but i moved together two of the stanzas. i wrote this as a slam poem and some things are not conveyed on the page like they would be when performed; perhaps, adding to some of the confusion. I admit that the problem with a lot of slam poetry is if read it apears either like babble or whining, and i wish to over come this. with this said, you pretty much nailed it. it' s just another poem about not wanting to "grow up" especially with dreams of being a starving poet. as a general rule you don't have titles for slam poetry, but it seems to help in the written world so i just took the last line of the poem a made tidy little book ends. bad idea i guess, so now i've tried the totaly everything and nothing at the same time type title.

[thoke]

I can't say I fully understood this. But I enjoyed getting lost in the big first two stanzas. I'd like it if you shoved some of the smaller ones together to make them bigger. The questions seemed to break the spell for me. Maybe "Here am I" would sound better than "Where am I?": but here am i/muddling around in some confounded stupor. Like I said, I didn't fully understand this, bit confused by the ballerina motif. But I got some meaningful impressions of reluctantly coming of age and... stuff. That's about all I have to say.