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March 16, 2024 - The Matt Walsh Show

08:33

I'm No Poet, But I Know This Is Not A Poem [Weekly Walsh Original]

ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/walshYT and find out how you can get 3 months of ExpressVPN free! This "poem" went viral on Twitter. The only problem is...it's not a poem.

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	Well, I should tell you that I actually had other plans for the daily cancellation today, but then this morning I happened to see something pop up on my Twitter feed that was so bad and lame that I had no choice but to change course.
	So, someone named Vinay Krishnan, who describes himself as a writer, organizer, and attorney living in Brooklyn, decided to share something that he calls poetry.
	And apparently Vinay fashions himself a poet on top of all of his other self-ordained titles.
	This particular piece of poetry, I'm sad to report, has at this moment 30,000 retweets and 20 million views.
	There are hundreds of comments saying things like this, quote, this is heartbreaking and lovely.
	And quote, I would have cried reading this, but I'm just too tired to cry.
	And, quote, it's fantastic and breaks my heart at the same time.
	And also, quote, I've been waiting for a poem like this, whether from me or someone else.
	So, that's what the people are saying.
	Most people are idiots.
	Some people, at least, are saying that it's lovely, beautiful, heartbreaking.
	It's the poem we've been waiting for.
	It's the poem of the ages.
	The poem of our time.
	And it's also easily the most popular poem posted to Twitter in quite some time, which perhaps isn't saying much, but another accolade to add to the list.
	Certainly you would hope that for a poem to be viewed so many times, and for it to be reposted by so many people, and for it to receive such glowing reviews, for it to reduce readers to tears of joy and sorrow, it must be quite powerful.
	Let's find out.
	Here's the poem from Vinay Krishnan, the organizer from Brooklyn.
	It's titled, There's Laundry to Do and a Genocide to Stop.
	So things are not starting off very strong based on the title, but let's not judge a poem by its title.
	Let's venture on unafraid.
	We must be brave.
	We must be courageous.
	And here's the poem.
	There's laundry to do and a genocide to stop.
	I have to eat better and also avoid a plague.
	My rent went up $150.
	I'll need to pick up more shifts.
	20 people died in Rafa this morning and every major news outlet is stretching the limits of passive voice to suggest whole families may have leaped up through the air at missiles that otherwise had the right of way.
	I just got a notification that my student loan payments are starting up again and my phone isn't charged.
	My cousin got COVID for a fourth time and could no longer work or walk or even feed himself.
	The person across from me on the L train seems to fashion themselves a punk rock revolutionary, but they're not wearing a face mask.
	And that's the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes me want to steal batteries.
	Fascists keep winning primaries for both parties, and I think I gained a few pounds.
	The CDC just announced there are no more speed limits on highways, and I think this Ativan is finally hitting.
	This NYPD farmer's market only sells bad apples.
	Have you heard that one?
	Listen, it's warm today.
	Too warm for March.
	But I don't have time to think through the implications because there's laundry to do.
	And a genocide to stop.
	The end.
	There's the poem.
	I mean, once again, as always, I've made it way too good with my stirring rendition.
	I gotta stop doing that.
	With my performance, I've almost tricked you into thinking that was a good poem.
	I almost did.
	But it's not.
	In fact, you have to say at the start and again at the end that it is a poem, or else you would have no idea that it was a poem.
	That's a good indication that it's a bad poem, is if when you post it and show people, you have to tell them.
	You have to say, here's a poem.
	Because with a good poem, or really just a poem, a real poem, you don't have to tell people it's a poem, they'll get it when they read it.
	The thing is, if you're not told it's a poem and you read that, you think that you're reading just like a random assortment of YouTube comments.
	But no, that was a poem.
	A poem that, if it made you cry at all, it should only make you cry because you want it to stop.
	But it just goes on and on and refuses to stop.
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	So let me just make a few observations here.
	First of all, this may be better titled non-sequitur the poem because it's full of sentences where the second part of the sentence has nothing to do with the first.
	For example, I just got a notification that my student loan payments are starting up again and my phone isn't charged.
	That's one sentence.
	But how are those two things related?
	And what is he saying?
	Is he saying that he got a notification that his student loan payments are starting up again and he also got a notification that his phone isn't charged?
	Or is he saying that he got a notification that student loans are starting up again and also on a separate note His phone isn't charged.
	Never mind the fact that if the phone isn't charged, then how are you getting notifications about anything in the first place?
	The bigger question is, why did you put those two entirely separate thoughts into one sentence without even a comma to distinguish them?
	In a similar fashion, he tells us that fascists keep winning primaries for both parties, and I think I gained a few pounds.
	So did he gain a few pounds because of the fascists?
	When he goes to the doctor and the doctor says, you've gained 14 pounds.
	What happened?
	Does he respond?
	Oh, well, you know, fascists have been winning primaries.
	He probably does offer that as an excuse, but still it's a non sequitur.
	And of course, the greatest non sequitur line in the whole thing is the bit about a guy who wasn't wants to be punk rock on a subway, but he's not wearing a mask.
	And that makes the writer want to steal batteries.
	It leaves us only with a question of why his anger towards the guy without a mask would make him want to steal batteries and why batteries specifically.
	The only sentence in the whole thing that makes sense is the one where he says the CDC just announced there are no more speed limits on highways and I think Ativan is finally hitting.
	In that case, we can see the connection.
	You know, he begins by telling us about some totally imaginary situation where the CDC is abolishing speed limits, I guess, and he ends by telling us that he's under the influence of psychotropic drugs, which explains the hallucinations.
	So, that part makes sense.
	The main point is that this writer has barely managed to compose a single legitimate and coherent sentence, let alone an entire poem.
	And so I must once again point out that this is not poetry.
	You cannot just write a series of run-on sentences, slap a title on it, and call it poetry.
	Poetry has rhythm, structure, meaning.
	I'll put it another way.
	If this is poetry...
	Then everything that's ever been written is poetry.
	Literally every paragraph ever composed about anything in any context is poetry, if this is poetry.
	An IKEA instruction manual is poetry.
	An online recipe for lasagna is poetry.
	When someone calls themselves a poet, in this case, all they mean is that they have the capacity for human speech.
	Because the poem, to the extent that it's anything at all, It's just one long series of complaints.
	Yet the complaints, like so many complaints these days, vacillate between totally imaginary and incredibly petty.
	He says that his cousin has been rendered crippled and paraplegic from COVID, which of course didn't happen.
	He says that the CDC abolished speed limits, which also didn't happen, unfortunately.
	He says that fascists are winning primaries, which hasn't happened.
	He says he has to avoid the plague, but there is no plague.
	And he says that he has to stop a genocide, yet at no point during this man's daily life is he ever confronted with a genocide, much less one that he has to, or can, or would even attempt to stop.
	The only reality-based complaints in the poem are that the rent has gone up, he's gained a few pounds, it's warm outside, the farmer's market has a subpar supply of apples, and he has to do his laundry.
	Let me play a sad song for you on the world's smallest violin.
	And when you boil it down like that to its essential parts, you see that actually, you know, this guy has it pretty easy.
	99% of humans on Earth have a harder life than you.
	And almost none of them are writing poems about it.
	In fact, your bad poetry, if anything, is only adding to the overall net suffering in the world.
	You have just made everyone's lives a little bit worse by inflicting crappy poetry on them.
	I could write a poem about the suffering I experienced from reading that poem.
	In fact, I already have.
	As established, everything I've said already is a poem by default.
	That's what happens when you lower the artistic bar to this extent.

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