You Don't Have to Read This
by John Olson
I get it. Poetry is an effort. Language is an effort. Words are an effort. Reading words is an effort. A big effort. It takes energy. Attention. Focus. Who has that? Nobody. So truly. I mean it. You don't have to read this. If you're already reading this you can stop. You don't have to continue. Go do something else. These words excuse you. I excuse you. This isn't important. It's not going anywhere important. I have nothing to say. I have nothing to convey. Go make jello. Go fishing. Build a kite. Raise a kid. Have sex. Take a shower. Brew a beer. Bake cookies. Get drunk. Go to college. Learn how a differential equation can be represented as a linear operator acting on y(x) where x is usually the independent variable and y is the dependent variable. In this instance y is a finishing school, x is a perturbation, and the result is a Mexican hairless. But if you're still reading, if you've come this far, I'm impressed. You are among the truly committed. And by that I don't mean to imply that you need to be committed ha ha, but that your attention is quite amazing. I wish I had more to offer you. An image, for example. Picture Wyoming. There. I did it. I created an image. Wyoming. Do you see it? The hills? The buttes? The rocky outcrops? The ponies racing toward the horizon? The trucks barreling down I-80 toward Rock Springs? And to think. All I said is Wyoming. And there's Wyoming. Do you see how easy it is? To create things with words? But unless you can get someone to come and read the words you put down they just sit there. They don't go anywhere. There is no Wyoming without someone to read Wyoming. To imagine Wyoming. To see Wyoming in your mind. To feel Wyoming in your soul. Thank you. Thank you for reading this far and sharing Wyoming with me. Thank you Wyoming. Thank you language. Thank you words. Thank you syntax. Thank you logic. Thank you illogic. This has been rewarding. And now it's time to get up and do something else. Play a guitar. Get famous. Stand on a stage. Scream into a microphone. Hop up and down.
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You're lucky I was able to hit the fave button whilst hopping up and down. Now *that*'s commitment. *
Smart and poetic.*
Nicely self-destructing.
"In this instance y is a finishing school, x is a perturbation, and the result is a Mexican hairless."
Especially this.
The rhetoric is such fun, too.
I go for the drive and structure.
Love it! Thank you for writing this. You made me want to keep reading, to see where you were going and I was happy to follow. And I much prefer reading this to learning about differential equations.
I spent five summers in Jackson Hole which is In Wyoming, but not part of Wyoming, Rock Springs is Wyoming.
Wyoming to me is New Jersey with mountains, only all the o's and 0's in the road signs are full of bullet holes.
Writing is full of bullet holes and all authors' words sleep in libraries. *
This is a missive to the missing reader who is secretly not missing after all, who exists to witness the telling of something non-valuable in a way pleasing to the writer and bystander, who witnesses more than reacts as a performance-less audience. *
Metafiction has been something I've turned away from more and more lately, but this story works pretty well. I enjoyed a good deal. Thanks also, hoss, for sharing it.
The ending. Super like. **
I like the hopping up and down part, but Wyoming always makes me sad. *
I wouldn't know metafiction from metawhore, anymore than I'd know Schenectady from synecdoche. But I know good writing when it writes me, and this piece righted me tootsweet, John. Thanks for ballasting your words so delicately as to get me back on an even keel. *!?*
How can one not read this piece. Wonderful rhythm.*
I know, but I always do, whenever time brings me here. *