Fall On Your Face, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/METTA and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

It’s comical when your cat
Or your dog, run into
The clean sliding glass door

They look back at you embarrassed
“You didn’t see that”
And they know your laughter says

“Yea, I damned sure saw that”

But despite that, as far as this poet
You don’t need to beat me up
I run into that sliding glass door

All the time, when I am writing
And it isn’t funny in the least to me
When I miss my bad spelling spree

And hit submit anyway, that glass door
Was a brick wall, no , no , no, more like
Falling off the Golden Gate bridge
Hitting the frigid fog covered water

And the seals, and whales and sharks
All laugh at my belly flop, the carnage
I took with me, bared myself for all to see

When I fuck up, I do so in epic fashion
The opening of the Olympics of poems
Only that it is more like a circus show

I am the clown running away from the bull
See what I mean, not a circus, but a rodeo
I am on the trapeze with no partner to catch me

I feel like the dog’s flee, just hanging on
Desperately, hoping that there was no one to see
The crash and burn at the smash up derby

But I still do it, tie my shoelaces together in public
Trip over my words, like some video show
Canned laughter, under the microscope

And why you ask, do I put myself through all that
Show you my unfocused photographs, or
The ones I spilled my coffee on, stained for all to see?

It is actually easy to understand, it’s better than being dead.
(end)

I don’t work like many poets. Many hold back, run over their work over and over in private until they absolutely are sure it is presentable. I am fine with that. But with my maladies, and my anxiety, that would be far worse for me, it would make me more depressed and suicidal than I have ever been.

I need to get it out quickly, even if messy, because I can forget quite quickly, or get distracted from my A.D.D. So it has always been far more important to get it out first, even if messy, then go back and fix it. The message to me outweighs any potential embarrassment. I operate like a high speed photographer. I don’t worry about the bad shots being seen. I keep going because eventually I do get something right.

Did you notice the one stanza with 4 lines where all others were 3? Did the message get lost to you? I don’t think it did.