I had been sitting there waiting for what seemed like days. Next to me, naturally, was the most nauseating person imaginable. Her name was Beth, and she reminded me of an overweight beaver going blind out of sheer weight gain to the face. Apparently, this happens when the lard has nowhere else to go. Put it this way, at least she can't miss with eye drops. Due to the funnel action of her coalishly pinched twin sink holes. And that voice, for fucks sake, it takes one a month just to get the feeling back in their souls after having conversed with this mentally slow deplorable abomination. I fucking hate lectures, especially poetry lectures. You've never seen a group of more miserable wretches. That oxygenated fruit, those little plastic cups. Cheap red wine, and sweaty pseudo handshakes. Built around bad recollections of pointlessly remembered quips about the struggles at the local buffet and salad bar by hopelessly boring old farts. God, I'm going to pass out, face first on the grandma in the folding chair in front of me, I know it. Wait a minute... HERE HE COMES! The reader is approaching the podium to speak. Here it comes, he's about to deliver his poetry to the auditorium. Thank god. Thank GOD! "This poem is a piece from my first book some many years ago". He states, matter of factly. "Gosh, he's a handsome son of a gun", Beth says. An old woman around eighty five years of age spins around and hushes Beth, with the know how of what could only be years of child rearing skill with little money, and even smaller plucked penciled in eyebrows. The poet continues... "This poem I call, Ode to a songbird. You songbird with hindsight. You sound just as the warm night. You sing songs of Joy. You turn me to boy. Oh, song bird, oh songbird Oh, song bird... Your song." He ends by staring up at all of us as if pleading with the crowd to hear it with him. To join him in his tribute to mundane awareness. The crowd applauds vigorously. People stand and thrust their approvals all about like a pack of copasetic lemmings. Beth, is weeping, and repeating over and over again how spectacular it was, and how selfless and handsome the poet seems. I, however, am petrified by disbelief and shock. That was it? That was fucking it? My eyebrow spontaneously twitches uncontrolably. I'm also convinced I'm on a tv show. Except, that's impossible because that would mean somehow my suffering finally payed off in the form of a mental collapse of the highest imaginable order, and i'm not that lucky, ever. On the way home I have the sudden urge to cross lanes and end it all, but then a song comes on the radio I like a lot, and I remember that there is a joint in the glove box. I know that there are people out there that might say I'm a pothead or a lazy stoner, but trust me when I say, "If it wasn't for some kind herb, here and there, accompanied by a long drive through the night? I wouldn't be able to tolerate the conservative majority. Let alone the ones that actually think they can write. So if that's you, do me a favor. Quit pretending and start.