Jeff Taylor's Interaction With Daphne Gottlieb's "Fifteen Ways To Stay Alive"

Jeff Taylor finished his interaction with Daphne Gottlieb's Fifteen Ways To Stay Alive waaaaay before deadline. 

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Interaction With Daphne Gottlieb's 15 Ways To Stay Alive
​Jeff Taylor

Instead of asking the Amazon driver if he wants to smoke a bowl I immediately tear open the package and flip through Daphne Gottlieb's 15 Ways To Stay Alive and open it to her poem titled "there are no poems after Auschwitz"
I open a google window and look up both quote and sayer.

With a panel of faces staring at me
like I've wasted their time
it dawns on me.
Ardorno is Mr Hand

and he is taking Jeff's pizza to give to the people who believe him
when he says there are no more poems to be had at this time.

This is his time and
there are no more poems on Mr Hand's time.

If I'm here
and you're here

isn't it really

 Our Time

Mr. Hand.
​Our time to be the sayer of quotes.

Our time to show up unannounced
to not be able to wash
the blood from our pigs until they're hatched.

But maybe I'm as much they as I am our. Maybe my Wikipedia only has one meaning.

How much of himself does Mr. Hand see in Spicoli?
How much Spicoli is seen in Mr. Hand.



I've ordered my usual
ginger-ale in time to hear
myself saying
he poems
are making
me
feel          bad enough that I'm picturing them happen as cartoons
       instead of real life.
​

I'm looking at the pitcher of water on the bar next to the plastic cups. 

I hear myself laughing



​                                              about using my privilege as a shield.
​

I'm using my privilege as a shield


but it's a cartoon                                                                                               


                                                                                                                instead of real life.



there are no poets after white privilege.

just a bunch of boring words                                                                                                     

written                 in nail bitten

                                                                                                              skin scratched PTSD.

The only poets left

                                                                                                              have fallen for junkies or
                                                                                                       are hiding in their past lives.
They went
back home
to drag
a wound
across thirty
agonizing pages
until begrudgingly
putting the
wound
out of
its
misery.

That wound knew love.

It knew
there will always be poets

because poets know 2 things:
1. How to love a wound.
​2. How to not die.