makes me SO happy…
Their punk show, “Sonic Reducer,” is one of the highlights of my week if I’m home.
They just played 7 Year Bitch followed by Black Flag’s “TV Party.”
I now wish to hear “Blank Generation.” Or, some old 7 Seconds.
Category Archives: uncategorized
two thoughts on an afternoon of poetry
1. Every time I see Regie Gibson, I swear he’s BETTER than he was the last time I saw him.
2. Tom Daley is pretty fucking good himself.
Bonus thought:
Ryk McIntyre won the slam, and did it beautifully. Let’s hear it for a no-Ramen holiday!
OH, OH, OH!!!! Plus, looking for thoughts
Why does this make me so down deep, soul enrichingly happy????
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/01/20/morales.temple.ap/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey, looking for advice.
As i’ve mentioned, I’m resuming the Zero Point Zero column on gotpoetry.com.
I plan to change the format a bit from the old freeform days. I plan to use each column to dissect the process of writing a poem — looking at considerations of voice vs. craft, how things work, standard poetic devices, and the like — at least, that’s the basic plan; i’m sure I’ll go farther afield.
I want to use a recent poem as my jumping off point for the first column. Any thoughts as to which one you might like to see ripped apart?
I am serious — would love your input.
EDIT: I’m definitely thinking “Sneakers on a Wire” for the first one, then “Nuggets.” After that, I’ll probably dig into old stuff. Thanks.
for mplsfish: why i don’t publish much
Here’s the thing: I have a longstanding stubborn resistance to publishing.
Reasons:
1. I figure the effort involved in submission doesn’t always equal the reward.
2. I publish my own chapbooks, sell them at gigs. In the spirit of punk/DIY, a large part of me likes it that way. I like the control, the direct contact, the idea that it’s my hands (and the hands of my far more capable publisher, thisrabbit ) that are on the work that people get from me.
3. Money doesn’t motivate me that much.
4. Regarding #3: Good thing, I’m a poet.
5. I don’t feel like I need the validation of publication to make me feel good about my work.
6. I post most of my work here, and on the gotpoetry.com forums. I bet more people have seen my work here there than would have if I’d reserved it for publication. Poets want to be read. I’m no exception: I just suspect this gets my work more efficiently to an audience that appreciates it.
7. Regarding copyright: I don’t really care all that much about it. I figure, someone steals one of my poems (and stealing seems so silly a word for it to me), karma’s a bitch. Anyway, I can always write another one.
8. Regarding #7: My own cynical opinion is that most of the people who get freaked about people stealing their poems are the ones whose poems are least likely to be stolen.
9. If someone’s gonna steal something, copyright ain’t gonna stop them.
10. I do publish on occasion, mostly in e-zines (The Furnace Review and The November Third Club being recent examples) whose sensibility interests me. I have some work in anthologies out there, and I’m interested in putting my old columns from gotpoetry.com into a coherent manuscript for submission.
All that said, I am starting to work my way into a state of mind for more submissions to hardcopy journals, for one reason and one reason only: I am preparing a manuscript of poems for publication, I am not sure I want to self publish it based on sheer size, and regrettably, publishers generally want to see publication credits before they’ll consider a manuscript. I consider this a form of selling out — for me. But we all do it at some point.
*Please everyone: don’t think of this as a condemnation of publication in general; it’s just a reflection of one ex-punk’s insane control freak mentality. I read journals, cheer on my friends and pray for them to get what they want. It’s just never been for me.
Hey, you asked…
there is a certain level of power
in the hands of the one who leaves the relationship
my hands are so small, i can’t even form a fist using them both
you expect me, somehow to change my mind
and get past all these monkeys
and come back with a secret in hand about how to get back home
there’s no answer you could use
they give personalized advice
and you gotta just go and throw a punch
and ask them if you wanna know something
the road to interplanetary space
is paved with small violence and ignored pain
the certain level of power that a leaver has
is the recognition that pain is not only unavoidable but beloved for growth–
a blow to the head and we all see stars
a second blow to the head and we bend down,
at which point we are supremely placed
to dig into the flinty soil, and begin the planting
RIP, Wilson Pickett
Oh…the Wicked One is gone.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_en_mu/obit_wilson_pickett
This one really, really bothers me…
Although
there are exceptions to every rule, I would suggest that if you begin your poem with the phrase “there are no words…” you are a big fat liar.
Liar, liar. Pantoum’s on fire!
things i hate v.2 (things i love)
insomnia
lose-lose decisions
loneliness
crowds
overly solicitous people
the empty email box that claims attention although it will not be used again
having one of my poems used as evidence against me
the inability to memorize
not taking responsibility for the things i am and am not
age, infirmity, the dying light in my eyes
my fear of the cold
fear of the cat who will not rest as i try to sleep
this hunger that makes no sense
certainty of death, life, the dawn, the need to move forward
my inability to let things go
my inability to care
my inability to care enough
my evil, my selfish, my ignorance, my lack of empathy
the way my mouth curves down most days
my teeth and their crooked truth telling
hot blood rising in me when faced with evidence of my own incompetence at life
my parents, sister, wife and more
the hate i feel for myself after writing that
the fact that i will not delete it
my unexpressed revolts
all the men i have not been
the things i have done and not done
the way i smell when i breathe
the panic i feel in the face of being loved
love itself: its implacability, its manic charm
bullets being placed in the cylinder, the snap/lock of the loaded cylinder being put in its place
the subsequent sound of that gun revealed in the space between lines of a symphony
that i will not write my “love supreme”, or that i will not know that i have until i worry it to death
my hair and my insistence on believing it makes me different
the refusal of race
the refusal of the whisper that race has not mattered in my life
losing the religion i never had
the satisfaction that i feel when contemplating certain murders
my own face in the dusty mirror
dust itself
things i hate
insomnia
lose-lose decisions
loneliness
crowds
overly solicitous people
having one of my poems used as evidence against me
the inability to memorize
age
fear of the cold
fear of the cat who will not rest as i try to sleep
hunger that makes no sense
certain death
certain life, the dawn, the need to move forward
myself
my inability to let things go
my inability to care
my inability to care enough
my evil, my selfish, my ignorance, my lack of empathy
the way my mouth curves down most days
my teeth and their crooked truth telling
parents, sister, wife and more
my self
me
myself and my unexpressed revolts
memo to self
your words can sound
as if you were
on a plane
with sages
who find spirit
in each breath
no matter how small
or silent
your voice can sound
as if a rock
once rolled away
from your throat
and opened a path to
insurrection
your every line of speech could be such
that one hundred years from today
a condemned prisoner
could recite any of them
and gain clemency
from a hanging judge
knowing this
what of your voice
do you care to waste
steadily slimming big poem v.1.3
On television
a holy man again proclaims
God’s love for vengeance.
He worships the clot and the hurricane.
He is a hosanna in a dark suit.
I thought I recognized him
from a picture
I saw once
but he is not as red
as I remember.
He says what he wants and
believes and I watch it.
Fact is shattered on that end
and reglued on this end.
Light never comes through it
the same way after that.
I turn the channel as casually
as I might spit on a sidewalk
to get something out of my mouth
that didn’t belong there:
millions of agreements,
billions of tacit approvals…
Go farther.
Turn off the TV,
turn off the power,
turn off the lights.
Turn off everything.
The coma patient
bursts into song. The heretics
rise from their fires. The wind
stops blowing.
Count backwards from a trillion,
count by tens, hundreds, thousands.
Count fast, count faster,
past the Gospel
all the way back to the One Word.
We leave our homes and look at each other
standing in the street, our backs
straight, blinking in the sudden bright,
wondering:
what that voice was we just heard
that sounded so little like any we’ve known?
fragments from the Big Poem (highly drafty)
I.
Tonight on television
I watched a holy man again proclaim
God’s love for vengeance.
He was a hosanna in a dark suit.
I thought I recognized him
from a picture
I saw once.
He was not as red
as I remember.
I turned the channel as casually
as I might spit on a sidewalk
to get something out of my mouth
that didn’t belong there.
II.
This is the way
television works:
fact is shattered on their end
and reglued on our end.
Light never comes through it
the same way after that.
III.
The country is holding its head in its hands
and watching television. It hurts to look
and it can’t stop. The country can’t really see
what is different, what has remained
the same, it is no wonder that
the country lashes out, seeing white, no wonder
people yawn at the seething jowls of a bigot
seeing God’s wrath in an old man dying, a hurricane blowing,
no wonder hundreds of years of hate become suspicion and fear,
thousands of miles of body dragging road are broken in the summer sun,
hundreds of thousands of trees are draped in pious warnings,
millions of agreements, billions of agreements, billions and billions
of tacit approvals.
IV.
Turn off the power.
Turn off the lights.
Turn off everything.
In the dark,
count backwards from a trillion.
Count by tens, hundreds, thousands.
Count fast.
Dark Matter 