Inside My Head

I've been writing this for awhile
Inside my head

People ask 'Where do you get the time to write?'
And I think to myself
You don't need time to write
Just space

Space to store all the stuff you want to say
Space that can handle a long delay
For when you actually sit down and convey
What it is you've been thinking

Sometimes it's years later
And you dust something off
To reveal that you've repealed
Your initial thoughts on the subject

That happens a lot with anger
But regret seems to stay fresh
A lot longer

Inside my head
I have equal parts
Astounding beauty
And unspeakable cruelty

The beauty is hard to capture
Whereas the cruelty hands itself to you
And says 'Here you go.'

And people wonder why I use one
More than the other

Sometimes not all the cruelty makes it down on paper
And so instead it comes out of my mouth
Out into my actions
Down onto others

And I remind myself that next time
I have to use more of it
Even if it means never showing what I've written
For fear that people will be astonished
At how much of what's in my head is bad

People say 'How can someone who writes such beautiful work be capable of such awful things?'

Don't you understand
That one can't exist
Without the other?

And don't you understand
That the only reason I write
Is to try and right--

(Pardon the pun)

--Whatever wrong I do in life?

The hardest thing I've ever had to hear
Is that someone had no interest
In finding out
What goes on
Inside my head

But that's all I've got, I thought
That's the only good I have

As soon as someone said--

'You can't write your way out of this one'

or

'I can love your art and hate you'

It became...

...Difficult

I wanted to smash the writing

I envisioned it as a fragile glass bowl
And I threw it to the floor
Watched it break
And walked away from it

What good are you, I thought

What good are you if you can't change people's minds
About who I am

What good are you if you can't make me seem
More attractive?
Smarter?
Funnier?
Charming?
Sincere?

What good are you if you can't make people like me
Or, more specifically
Understand me

What good are you if you can be separated from me?

If they can take you
And leave me

As if you're just some friend I have
Instead of what I create?

What good is that to me?

And it was quiet

And then it wasn't

Voices come back
Ideas sprout up
You begin to miss what's inside your head
Just like you would miss a friend

Perhaps a more loyal friend
Then you imagined earlier

Inside my head
There are a thousand tasks
That will never be started
Let alone completed

There are lousy ideas
That will be brought to fruition
And wonderful ideas
That will simply fall out of memory
Like a single leaf
Falling off a cliff

I might grab at it as it passes over the edge
But I've learned to just let it fall
And hopefully one day make a trek to the bottom
To pick up all those lost miracles

Inside my head
I have constant meetings
Where heated arguments occur

Creativity argues with Execution
Length argues with Editing
Candor argues with Self-Preservation

At the end of the day
Something usually gets accomplished
But the merit of what was done
Versus the merit
Of what could have been done
Always seems to lean
In the favor of the incomplete

As cross as I may seem at anyone
I am always most cross at myself

I listen to what's inside my head
And I say--

That's too pretentious
That big word is unnecessary
That piece was too long
That wasn't handle properly
That was a cheap joke
That's a joke nobody will understand
That's laziness
That's boring

That's it
That's the last good thing you'll ever write

Inside my head
I'm the boss
Of a company in turmoil

I'm in control
Of the chaos
For as much as the chaos
Can be controlled

I'm unbelievably hypocritical
Judgmental
Surprisingly conservative

I'm the opposite
Of what I try to project
What I strive to be
What I'd like to be perceived as one day

I say--'I don't care what people think
Yet inside my head
Is a wall with every harsh comment
That's ever been spoken about me

And every day
A new comment goes up on the wall

For a team of inner cerebral critics
To look at
And dissect
And discuss how to counter

These critics have hard hats
Because occasionally a comment or critique
Will fall off the wall
And when it lands
It lands harder
Than you would think

Inside my head
Topics jump out at me

Sex, God, Theater, Death

And I tell these topics--

No, you've been addressed enough
Time to focus on something else
Time to expand my horizons
Time to develop a range

I don't want to be like Anne Rice
Writing about vampires and Christ
Forever

Or Stephen King
Where everything is a car accident
And every location is Maine, Maine, Maine

Amy Tan and her Asian mother/daughter teams
Christopher Moore and his stoners and mythological creatures
Gregory Maguire once again going to Oz
In the hopes that somebody else
Will make a billion dollar musical
That he can get a fraction of the profits of

No, I will not be those people
I read those people
I don't hate those people
But I don't want to be those people

And yet inside my head
I doubt whether or not
I'm even capable
Of mimicking those people

The word that appears more and more in my head is 'capable'

Am I capable of being
What everyone either thinks I can be
Or says I'll never be?

Inside my head
There's a portrait of this person
I may never be

And I close my eyes
And look at it
Study it
Try to imagine how to build it

But it's like trying to make a souffle
Without a recipe

I can fake it
But no matter how well it turns out
I know it'll never be quite right

In my head I'm a genius and a fraud
An artist and a hack
A comedian and a funeral director

In my head I can occasionally cut myself a break
And look out onto the things I've done

The characters I've created
The situations
The stories

I look out at them
As if from a high vantage point
Onto a vast landscape

But something
Another voice
Pecks at me

It says--'Do better'

'Do better'

And I think--

That's it

That's all I want to do