Poem #164 of 365

I was misunderstood when I
pulled the pages apart and
ripped them into little fragments
like bad chapters
with no decipherable
beginning or end,

and this was taken so out
of context--i had made a long
and tedious introduction to
my performance--by those
who were paying more attention
to their cocktails than to my
explanation,

but once they heard the ripping,
saw me breaking the book apart,
they thought first of Hitler and
burning books and Fahrenheit
fires.

what they missed is that i'd
said this book, in specific,
was a gothic romance novel, and i
thought it was a particularly bad
one at that, and that to see that
good resources were wasted on
such insipid books was an insult
to the fine writers who sometimes
could never get published.

and so, the spewing and hard
stares, and Richard on a different
soapbox, and a misleading mention
in the Weekly, and all i could think
was:

welcome back to fort worth.


copyright 2007 tammy melody gomez