Portrait of the tortured cliche

I was sitting up late one night (actually early one morning) reading during the college years, feeling alone and unappreciated, when I realized I was a cliche. A stereotype. Just like everyone else.
It happened while reading the book of Ecclesiastes. I don't remember which part. I just remember that at that  particular time of my life I thought I was the tortured artist, the unappreciated genius, so unique and different with an understanding of the world that no one else seemed to have, when I realized Solomon (the author of Ecclesiastes) sounded a lot like me - only better.
Which meant if some guy writing thousands of years ago was feeling many of the same things I was, how many other people had felt that way in the years since?
All that junk about how we're "individuals'' and there is "nobody else in the world like me" - and it hit me that we're all more alike than we are different. Think about it: there's a finite range of emotions, and we all share them, just in varying degrees. Sure, there's just a wide enough trough to draw from in our emotional make-up to make us different, but we're still all drawing from the same trough.
Anyway, that didn't depress me. For some reason it caused me to laugh at myself, and go on feeling much better about things.
I say all of that to get to the fact that there was a time in my life when I thought I was the tortured singer-songwriter-poet.
That was a long, long time ago, when I had visions of being the next Carl Sandburg/Jack Kerouac/Kris Kristofferson.
Needless to say, I wasn't.
But I did write poetry - some of it pretty bad - that I came across in an old notebook, in which I'd written things like:
              Jarred to life by an unwelcome wake-up call
              Struggling to discern reality out of the brain-fog of sleep
                      Papered walls, bolted down lamps
                      Pictures of flowers screwed into place
                      Is this Denver? Or Detroit?
              Teased by the trace of perfume and reefer
              Trying to remember through the dull throb of dead cells
                       That face in the mirror
                        Is vaguely familiar.
                        Haven't we met somewhere before?

Now, understand my life in imagination was much different than reality. It always is. That  poem might suggest a much different life than I actually led. But that's part of living inside your imagination as a tortured, unappreciated artiste.
It was going to be a whole series of "road stories." I had a whole wad of them, including this one:
                          
                                                       Arizona Desert 
                       Telephone pole, or telephone pole
                       Mighty post of tar and wood
                       Clicking off the miles in unknown measures
                       Dodging beer can missiles fired from a '78 mobile cruiser

                        One more last stop 'til the desert
                        Followed by one more last stop 'til the desert
                        Is there a last stop?
                        Or are the deserts so small
                                           they fit between stations?
                         And is this buzz only in my head ?
                         Or is there a fly
                                                  come along for the ride?
                      
I know. I should be - and I am - embarrassed. But what the heck, right? I have a whole book of these things, including country songs that never found a tune (mercifully). And the truth is, some of them I actually like.
So I'm going to start a new category, and call it "bad poetry."
Call it the revenge of the tortured artist. Only this time, make it the torturing artist.

                  The Budweiser Lite light reflects across
                              the surface of the pool
                  
                   Tom removes his shirt,
                           then dangles his legs over the side of the pool,
                           soaking his shoes and socks and pants up to his knees
                   Mitch sits at a cast-iron table
                           hustling the waitress who has no other table to wait on,
                           rubbing her back and caressing her neck
                    J.T. bounces a ball into the air
                           off the end of a beer bottle,
                           stealing quick drinks between each bounce.
                   
                    It's one a.m. in a Holiday Inn
                            on the outskirts of some forgotten town.
                            Another alcohol induced dream
                            Chapter 104 of a rental car ramble
                                   where progress is marked not in road signs
                                   but in picture post-cards sent to a place called 'home'
                                   and faces nearly forgotten.
           
                   J.T. takes the last swig, catches the ball on the bottle,
                             sets it on the table and wanders off to his room.
                   Mitch disappears into the dark, arm around a country girl
                             who giggles as he whispers in her ear.
                   And the reflection of the Bud Lite light is rippled
                             as Tom throws up in the pool.

There is more, unfortunately, and I'll get to them, also unfortunately.
Because what's the point of starting a file called "pathetic poetry" if you don't fill it?