Kill Your Darlings, and Apps

Look Out, WordPress!

Yesterday I wrote a long post about a book, a man, and baseball. The book was a collection of poems by Maged Zaher. The man was Bill Corbett, an editor at Pressed Wafer, who published the book by Maged Zaher. Baseball was thrown into the fray because Bill Corbett sent me the book by Maged Zaher in the mail, and along with the book were three postcards with silly pictures of Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez was carrying a woman’s purse.

Here’s a snapshot of the postcard:

Pretty funny, right? Especially if you were a Red Sox fan in 2004. Especially if you’re a Red Sox fan in 2010, when the Yankees are blazing and the Sox are smoldering. Pretty funny. Yeah.

Anyway.

The gist of the post was that it was a nice thing for Bill Corbett to do, to send me a book and a funny postcard, and how as long as there are good writers and good people to support them, publishing will be fine. It was a heartfelt post. Maybe too heartfelt. Maybe it was my teeth medicine. Maybe it was the rain. I got a bit sentimental. I realized this around two o’clock in the morning. I took the post out of the queue, using my WordPress app from the comfort of blankets and pillows. I slept soundly. And then I woke and the damn post was shaved to the bone. Probably 400 words, gone. Only the introduction left. My mouth hung open. It still hangs open.

But maybe it’s for the best. I’m not a sentimental person. And so will not feel bad about letting go of a lousy WordPress app that is supposed to help you out when you reconsider a post’s legitimacy at two in the morning but instead winds up causing more problems than the post — and the app — is worth.

WordPress, I don’t like problems.

What I do like, though, is a good poet. And Maged Zaher is a good poet. He still deserves the spotlight, despite WordPress’s attempt to dim his star.

His book is called Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer.

Here’s a poem from the collection, originally published in Exquisite Corpse.

The Inferno

At lunchtime, we took our khaki pants, meeting agendas and went there, the fourth circle of hell, by the espresso machine. I saw him, with plastic tubes coming out of his body, my drinking buddy, the one who told me that I can be romantic, trustful, and still practice safe sex. We stopped by the gift store, where Charon stamped our hands in exchange for money. Virgil, I knew him from his name tag, in a worn-out tuxedo was our guide. He showed us the sound effects, we rode the Minotaur, paid our tips, and bought mementos: cans of blood, and bags of bones in pink glasses. Dante was there too, sipping bad wine and flirting with the girls in the massage lounge. He told me: it was a fake metaphor, Beatrice was a mid-life crisis thing, a career opportunity, and when the damn paparazzi surrounded the Ritz he smelled her death in the eyes of the bell captain. I asked: master, master, is Barry White a great romantic? Which should I work for: startups or established? Which is more truthful: the Dow or the NASDAQ? He looked into my tearful eyes and answered: Son, search thyself you. The Trojan-war is just a myth. IPO’s is your best bet. Don’t search for Beatrice, and don’t repeat my mistakes: Whenever you buy a pack of cigarettes ask not for one, but two sets of matches. Your friend was right: you can be romantic, trustful, and still practice safe sex.

That’s a fine poem. Thank you, Bill Corbett, for making us read it. We like good poems and postcards that emasculate A-Rod and receiving things in the mail.

What we don’t like is WordPress.

WordPress, fuck off.

Video: Maged Zaher at the Subtext Anniversary Reading

– Kevin Murphy