the Worcester semi final slam tonight. First one I’ve missed in years.
I wasn’t feeling all that well, but mostly I was bored. I’m bored in general by a lot of things right now. I think I hate poetry and poets a lot…
I did get to sit with Morris, which helped me a bit with maintaining a modicum of interest in things for a while; nonetheless, I am missing something…
I read “The Frontier” tonight, and have been working on it since I got home; the last lines aren’t working at all. The immediate solution is to cut them, but I think it’s too easy that way.
But why bother?
I feel like I can’t read poetry any more the way I have always tried to read it — as if it were the last thing I would ever do, and so needed to be invested in it to that level for the sake of excellence and legacy and passion…Know why?
Because I did it tonight, as I always do; said those words to myself before I started…and all I could think of was, “So what? So what if it is the last thing you’lll ever do? Who here will care? Who will recall that? It’s just another stupid poem by just another stupid poet, just another idiot masturbation.”
We’d be better off as ghosts. We’d haunt people longer.
Dark Matter 
December 23rd, 2003 at 8:42 pm
Re: Haunted
Yeah. Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked.
The problem for me isn’t so much the poetry itself as my disgust with myself for not rising above it and making things better, or trying to, anyway.
December 23rd, 2003 at 5:46 pm
Haunted
This has been bothering me as well, Tony, to the point that I’ve cut off my poetic nose to spite my poetic face. I’ve separated myself from all things poetic for so long now that my muses have decided that I’m a fickle tease and have thumbed a ride for Wichita.
But damn if that last line you’d just written in a spate of despair at all of this — “We’d be better off as ghosts. We’d haunt people longer.” — hasn’t stuck itself in my brain and refused to let go. Poetry even in the face of railing against poetry.
December 22nd, 2003 at 4:53 pm
“So what? So what if it is the last thing you’lll ever do? Who here will care? Who will recall that? It’s just another stupid poem by just another stupid poet, just another idiot masturbation.”
I care.
And you’re a huge reason I’m still writing and reading and believe in this thing.
Thank you for that.
LOVE
December 22nd, 2003 at 3:25 pm
Thanks, Morris.
I read your report on the evening, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. I think you coming into the scene will do a world of good for it.
December 22nd, 2003 at 8:27 am
I wish I knew what I could say to help.
It was great to see you tonight, and to hear you– that’s one of the best pieces I’ve heard in a long time. (Paul really liked it, too.)