'Jackleg'

You're out there all around

You put yourself on display with nothing to say

The internet, that bastard endeavor

Hides your true identity 

talentless lack

In that you don't have one

insecure to have anyone else have one to

Plus one, plus two, plus three

you add up to nothing to me, them us

Going places, self-actualizing

A real threat to you

We're here, you're there

a mission to nowhere

A wobbly table about to fall over

A 'jackleg' can't support, prevent a fall.

This is a piece done in an 'Allen Ginsburg' 'Howl  type manner.  I've been researching Allen and an ode to his voice is given in the structure and message. Over the past few years I've come from the perspective that there is a subculture of people who are the bottom feeders of society.  For instance, last summer, I worked with an independent film producer on a script for a horror production only to be written out of the project. The reason being, the producer found out I had a girlfriend at the time and it threatened his personal plan for having me in the project. I  had to find out by accident the project went on without me two months later. I met the producer on a social networking site. I advertised for comedy sketch writers on one of the site's groups for local artists. I should not have ignored the red flag when we met in a Birmingham area establishment and he tried to coerce me into a horror script, even knowing the meeting was for comedy. Other banal happenings take place when I try to get 'indie' projects going off of the same social site. A lot of considerations, then ghosting. Nothing of substance ever getting done. I answer a casting call for a major network the following spring and have a fantastic, validating experience on a legitimate project. It's like the 'cream of the crop' don't need to 'scratch that itch' of validation because they have been successful and notorious before. Everyone on set is enthusiastic and don't act like I'm infringing on their 'art property.' Folks are quick to get me to sign up for other endeavors in the Atlanta metro area.  It's as if everyone wants to share the fun of their accomplishment.  No one is 'catty' and territorial. I'm able to compare and contrast the incidences realizing there is a paradigm of the legitimate vs. the illegitimate in the world.  It has gone on for thousands of years from snake oil sales people to assorted scams to insecure people gossiping about someone else 'in any church U.S.A.'  vs. those who accomplish great things and want others to alongside them. In romance the same thing has been observed for decades.  There is a bastion of insecurity and ineptness in certain strata of society and then there is the validation of hope in discovering the mature, open minded and secure in personal actualization. One thing the author has consistently found is that the 'illegitimate' seems to hang out on networking sites and the computer in general. A place where it is easier to hide their true intentions, they can mask their insecurities and short comings to the world better.  They have been rejected in real time in front of real people and have to escape to the 'unreal.' After some time, I know where the 'Jacklegs' an (Alabama expression) for the weak, the chaff of the world;👎👵🙈 congregate and am in a better position to avoid interaction.  I'm  more quickly able to determine, through discernment, who is a 'jackleg' and who is capable.  I surmise it's a major watershed moment of growth.  Of course, the 'jacklegs' feel threatened by the fact people even observe them as 'jacklegs' and act out.  That is the primary behavioral trait of a weak, incapable person.  To feel threatened by exposure.

J.C.B. 

5/18/2021