Thursday, October 16, 2008

My body of work is my body of flaws.

The truth about blog writing is this: People read it. It's like a diary that your children have already found, a time capsule already dug from the ground. The future of the words is immediate. 

People come up to you and tell you they miss reading about your life and you wonder who else is out there, checking your updates- confirming their curiosities. You wonder why you write- for you or for them? Then there is too much pressure and you are busy and life happens and you forget to post something about that beautiful comment a girl made to you on a night last week and all of a sudden its too late. 

Time and attention is already one week ahead.



I'm hosting my first party saturday night. It promises to be epic. Last time it was practically a rave in a dim sum resuraunt in china town. This time will be even better. 

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What I was thinking while she was reading her poem at the open mic last night:

Shut up.
Stop talking about what you want your poem to do and just DO it.
You're wasting your words. my time. 
telling me all the dirty things you want to do to me while I'm naked in front of you and never laying a finger on me.
Useless.

Like your metaphors. 
Your two-bit thesaurus flowery language as though
being vague was a prerequisite of becoming a poet
as though real meaning is too heavy.

I don't care for abstract art.
16 black squiggly  lines are not the travels of odysseus and 
that intergalactic constellation of fascinating cohabitation with sweet relations like the roots of the african nation means only this:

you need to learn how to think outside the rhyme. 
there is more to a word than the sound that lingers at the end of it. 
Shut up.

Don't speak another language.
I'm just going to spend the rest of this uncomfortable sticky plastic couch experience thinking about what those awkward foreign sounds meant. 

I cling to my stella like a lifeboat. Not done yet.
worse, you're mentioning politics.
blah blah blah broken heart dog cat obama

every time you put in a dollar you get a soda
every time you say fuck the police you get a cheer

You make me want to apologize for calling myself a poet.

I'm sorry I was never raped 
abused, black or hispanic in america, dirt poor

sorry I can't memorize three poems and recite them
for years sorry

I don't want to preach politics to the converted sorry
I never lost a best friend or had a sex change operation

I am sorry I hate rhymes and  I am sorry I hate long poems and 
Sorry I didn't name drop ghandi or the baby I had from when I was 16 who is surprisingly well-adjusted.

My bad.
I guess, I'll shut up.

No really, that rasta guy over there has some important things to say.

Poetry,
I love you- but I think we need some time apart.
You're seeing other people, I hear stories 
and I know I shouldn't compare 
like that time my boyfriend cheated on me with a maxim magazine blonde
but I can't help thinking sometimes:

Poetry, when I witness you in your new lovers mouths-
I feel like maybe my words could use some plastic surgery 
become sharper, lifted, perked, more fit for slam consumption

I can't sit here and listen to you be stripped naked of your worth and dumbed down by the fumbling pens and lips of these strangers.

I'm drunk. I am going to pee.

1 comment:

Space Station Mir said...

Thank you. I feel bad for hating so much of the poetry that is out there, but I have always loved yours and now I know why.