A Poke at Hypocrisy
by Brad Zandofsky
I’ve come to a point in my life when I’m quite confused as to how I want to present my thoughts. When I was younger (listen to me and I’m only 28) and my time was preoccupied with revolutions and conspiracies, I filled pages and pages with metaphor-laced rants and analogy-stained proclamations: “As the sun drowned in the West and the ebony with tiny pinpricks of light dotting its canvas, slowly overtook my tattered soul, I let out a weary sigh, for I knew I was alone.” Well, you get the picture anyway. I suppose that was good enough for then, I guess. But now, it just all seems so phony. I see my peers get up and regurgitate a chain of metaphors on my plate and then expect me to dig in with a smile (tricky that is). But I’ve lost my appetite (now I’m getting real cheesy). There’s only so much you can take when people spout out in this strange William Shatner sing-song voice, “The serpent- of desire, has- coiled around- my blackened heart, with fangs of vengeance- poised, to pierce- its aged husk.” I mean you half expect them to be holding a skull and wearing a cape. Whoa, slow your roll Shakespeare! Now I poke fun, but I’m the first to admit that I’m as guilty as anyone, maybe even more so. Don’t forget, I’m the poet warrior that choked on a cliché in the desert void of his love-starved room. Right?I’m at a point when I stop and wonder, can I as a writer reflect in the written word what people really feel? In the first couple of hundred pages of my book, I’ve tried desperately to write in a style and manner which people can identify with and will relate to. Dumb writing you say? Moo cow journalism? Calm down now, your fiery orb of creativity hasn’t set yet. Effortless I tell you, effortless! Anyway, to return to the point at hand, I tire of the contrived drama that stains the endless pages of my classmates. I strive (laugh if you will) for a marriage between reality-based writing and fictional. I want to see what happens when Kafka and Kerouac drop the gloves and go eight rounds. I want to see what happens when you put Dostoyevsky and Bukowski in a room with a bottle and a typewriter. Hell, I just want to be Henry Miller. For me, it all comes down to the notion of sympathetic simplicity. How do I convey, or how do I show instead of tell (classy move eh?), how we’re feeling? When you’re hot, do you say to yourself, “I feel the choking tendrils of humidity slowly squeezing the life out of my exhausted frame”? Or do you just say, “Damn it’s hot!”? Tricky, my friend, tricky indeed.
…a Round Kid rides again thought…
