Born with a plastic pen between my fingers,
I set out to right all the world's wrongs.
People scream "Take me to another age
with your plastic pen in hand."
I lose pens.
What praise for these
soldiers of communication?
They lie in garbage filled garbage bags,
often hardly used.
It's just scrawled on papers I keep,
in strange arrangements.
I read them constantly sometimes.
I try to improve,
try to get ideas.
Well I don't take you to another age.
I write about these days,
where the tendency is
to think about rebellion
and do nothing.
The 80's are kind of neat,
but then so is existence.
Life has contradictions.
Hearts sadden as we take out the trash.
"I'm sorry but I just couldn't deal
with the clutter."
Might as well be empty clutter.
The room is so unrepresentable.
It simply can't be drawn.
The trash clutter packratting
is without composition or form.
It is a meaningless womb
of ideas sprouting like potato buds.
Some hope - something organized and together,
a unity of various materials
lies hidden like a treasure,
hoping it won't get smashed,
or sometimes even worse - smudged.
It hopes to leave to safety,
to hang proudly in a museum,
to talk of prices and opportunity
on the market today
with the piece next to it.
Started while I was:
- living on Milnor Ave. Syracuse, NY
- apparently in 1987 or 1988 when I was aged 19 to 21 but I think it’s earlier when I was around say 17
Writings By Erick Heins 