This Poem is Useless

i was reading a book, it was a collection of essays and in this one essay i read this writer write about how useless he felt writing was which didn't make sense itself, writing about how writing is useless, but he went on to write about how literature and art and dancing were utterly useless. i was instantly offended i read waiting for him to take it back or make it somehow understood in a better way i was disappointed and outraged but i reasoned to myself that if i was outraged there must be some truth in what i was reading because the world could go on without art, in a way, maybe but how is architecture not art how are the buildings not art even stability was created by an artist everything is art how the fuck can it be useless when i feel empathy from a book, or lost in its created world when i am taken aback by the beauty of music when you can't help but look look look at dancers amazed, envious of their discipline it is not useless it is more powerful than anything else in the entire world this collective consciousness this writing this art this love this humanity it is not useless it's the farthest thing from it but i could only get angry if something's true, right? people don't get angry when you tell them something so obviously not true you wouldn't get pissed if i told you you had a purple unicorn maybe you'd get annoyed after my persistence, but that's it but i think of the second sex and i think of the jungle and i don't understand how you can say a book is useless revolutions do not rise due to something that's useless laws do not pass over something that's useless and i think of tupac and i think of john lennon and i don't understand how you can say words are useless people don't get killed over something that's useless and you wouldn't be able to tell me you don't care if it wasn't for a book i didn't understand how a writer couldn't see it he said he wrote because he had to well, i write because i have to because to keep it inside would lead to explosions i leave my explosions to the page because i was born with the people who said to hold things in was bad to hold anger in, to hold issues in gave you an ulcer you gotta get it out whether it's in writing or art or dancing or punching whoever you can in the face and maybe just didn't understand maybe he just didn't have anything to hold in maybe he just never wondered how not to explode because i am sure he has felt the way it feels to read a book and be lost in another world to listen to music and be overwhelmed, to sink into the sweetness, the glory, the other dimension, to look at art and understand something you didn't before or to realize something you realized before in a different way to see what you could never see on your own to do what you couldn't do without something else expressing what they couldn't help but express but worked hard to express it just the way they wanted to because they had to because they wondered how not to explode because they didn't give a fuck if it was useless or not because they not only had to because they needed to because they wanted to because they realized how different the world could be with a new perspective because they wanted to add to the conversation of the world passed between canvas and page and movement and concrete and air because they understood that expression that art in all its forms is the farthest thing from useless in the entire world. so here is my expression to you i hope you realize what it is that you do how important it is for everyone yeah, not just you “Just more of a free write than a poem.” November 30th, 2010