045 - Angry Poetry

If I were a kettle, I'd be whistling.

I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that if I were a large man with muscles, I would be a very angry guy. The fact is that there are a great many things that annoy me and yet, due to my inability to smash things, I’ve had to deal with them in an emotionally mature way.

At present, the only outlet for my anger is poetry, which can be scathing. And I do not want for subject matter, I have poetic gripes with many things in this world. ‘Write angry’ is my new motto and if you stick around you’ll get to see me express a lot of this frustration here in this blog.

One thing that never fails to piss me off is when something I don’t like becomes popular. Firstly, I don’t like having unpopular opinions and secondly, I don’t like changing my mind. It’s important that what I’m into is the same thing the masses are into. This allows me to just kinda vibe unscathed.

I’ll give you an example.

Around the time I became legally allowed to drink, craft beer started to become very, very popular. I had just acquainted a taste for most prolific, mass-produced lagers in the world. Everyone was drinking them. It felt amazing to be among the many in terms of taste.

How could I have known the military industrial complex of beer was about to be usurped by the Portland, Oregon of beer?

I just didn’t count on the hipsters, who appropriated a counterculture attitude from the punk movement without acquiring the habit of nailing spikes to their head or eating glass, to affect me personally. These cowards decided lagers were passé and started lusting after ever stranger craft concoctions that stretched the very definition of beer while being super shitty.

Obviously, I wrote a poem about it. It’s a sonnet (esque) called Maximalism after the concept that if you mix too many colors together you get gray. Which is fine if you want gray but maddening if you want a crisp pint of tasty beer.

Maximalism

Kumquat, coffee, poppy seeds?
They’re fucking up beer like you wouldn’t believe!
I didn’t ask to drink my meal
So take out the fucking orange peel.

From craft to trash, who gave you the power
To infuse a fucking elderflower?
Basil, oyster, grapefruit juice?
Beer already came in different hues,

It was seasonal, artisanal, in numerous styles,
So save the fruit for a fucking child.
Hemp, nougat, peppercorn?
That’s not beer, it’s fucking flavor porn.

Coconut, pineapple, and horchata?
Just brew the beer the way you oughta!