Laugh at Yourself First: BURN

Read BURN, and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

If you're here with me in Binghamton, you were probably in the crowd of six people that saw me read BURN a few times in the Oracle Phoetus days. It would have appeared on our debut album, "BOOZE, BOOTS, & BOOBS, which remains in perpetual limbo due to the restraining order Brett Tribe placed against himself. We played punk rock shows and poetry readings, and considered ourselves Literature's greatest band. I once sat through a poetry reading where a girl ascended the podium with her laptop computer, and introduced her work with, "I wrote this yesterday and it should probably be revised." I would have figured that out on my own by listening.

While I still love the Internet, it has created a world where a person can write a poem about their cat at breakfast, publish that poem on a website by lunch, and still have another ready by dinner. I've seen people publishing a new book of their poems every week. This astounds me, as some of my worst took days, or even weeks before I finally gave up. You understand when you read the books, and see it's mostly the same poem. An illusion has been created that poetry is easy. Some people still say they enjoy mine, and I hope you do as well. I don't write poetry these days, and I don't read poems either. I cringe at the thought of reading poems from my favorite authors, so the one you have handwritten on a folded napkin in your back pocket probably isn't going to change my mind either. If you've enjoyed Print is Better or Laugh at Yourself First, I hope you'll consider buying one of my printed books at lulu.com/tbstarlight. You can download most of them free beforehand. Dollars Per Hour is funny.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com