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Flash Epistle Number Eighteen
There are some questions that shouldn’t be asked. How big is your penis? Have you stopped beating your wife? Did you kill anybody in the war? Pretty obvious stuff.
One I am often asked concerns my poetry: Tell me what it means?
Babe or Bro, that’s not my job. It’s yours. It’s a question only posed by the lazy.
I couldn’t answer it even if I wanted to, which I don’t. No answer I could supply would be your answer.
I may have some idea what a poem means to me (or not), but if I do, it will be vague and nebulous. The poem may have meant one thing to me when I wrote it, but something else as time has passed. It might mean one thing in Pennsylvania, but something quite different in Kathmandu. A man or a woman might read it differently, as might a dentist or a hooker. There is no one right answer.
What it means to you is what it means to you. How am I supposed to know that?
“Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains.”
Man or woman up! Read, think, and decide for yourself. Your answer may be… nothing. I won’t be insulted. At least you did your work, as I did mine.
If you like this piece, and can afford it, please dribble a few coins into the busker’s cup.
Answering unimaginable questions…
