Sunday, September 2, 2007
smack
Dead god: Spare me from bad poetry. Good holy christ, no more bad poetry. I'll even become a better nonchristian! It's sent to me by well-intending people who want me to {shudder} critique it, I'm always being asked to come to readings that high schoolers put on... and then there's Robert Frost, for eff's sake. I don't know WHAT you were trying to do with Robert Frost. This isn't 100% bad poetry-- just most of it. *smirk* Ha! Obey the fist! I know-- I'm not a poet. I don't sit down and write poetry. It's never been my thing. However, I definitely read my share and think I can formulate a good idea of what works and what doesn't. A lot of these kids have poetential, but it needs to be further developed beyond "capitalism sucks, man!", angst, angst, angst, and how their parents won't let them cruise to Jack in the Box at 1am for e-coli burgers. Some of them DON'T have potential, and need to give up before the god of poetry smites them down. Heh! I want to smite people. I remember the last time I ended up at a bad poetry reading. The drug czar J and I went out afterward and got coffee at one of those tacky 24-hour places AND DREW ON THE PAPER PLACEMATS! That's the best. I didn't think I could actually eat anything on the menu, so I stuck to the coffee. After so long, my stomach can handle it. There's still something about those places that fascinate me like every other dysfunctional part of the all-american kultur experience. THIS is diner food. Cigarette ash on the formica, acrid coffee, cranky lesbian he-man of a waitress, questionable translucent orange residue on the dinner plate... the epitome of all that is wrong with foodstuffs. Ahh... the cheap all-American 24-hour diner. Teenage goths, alcoholic fathers, runaway convicts, truck drivers who try to rape my friends in the bathroom, rednecks who verbally assault us, drug users, farmers, bad poets... all in this horribly-concocted "pseudo-country-home" setting with single mothers on welfare dishing out the dead cows. Cows must equate the diner experience with hades. Or-- at the very least-- Jeffrey Dahmer's refrigerator. I wonder if it was a Westinghouse. Then we wrote our OWN bad poetry about it, in the style of everyone at the reading: "Oh, MAN these gaudy fake pine candleholders speak like a piece of my heart melted by ephemeral phantasmagoric spinning spirals lucid out of control the day is yesterday, non unlike that black velveteen oil painting of John Wayne over there in the corner. And I ask myself: why this obstructed social system? Why black patches of haze in the moonlight tear my vision? I am going to listen to Rage and eat some cheeseburgers now!"Fffffffffffff...... I need to leave.
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Frost threatened to kill his wife about every year or so, as I remember. Stuck a gun in her face and made her recite...was is the Bible? Can't remember. Might've been his own shitty poetry.It's funny: a friend and I have almost entirely switched majors without actually doing so. She, the communications major who used to just stay in and read Adorno all day now tries to drag me out to local *shudder* readings. She's wearing a beret for Jebus' sake! I, the english major (who actually used to wear puffy shirts) have been in a state of near-complete disenchantment with poetry for a couple of years now. I used to read Byron when I got drunk; now it's Miller or Baudrillard.I remember seeing a photo of you with orange hair where you had your hands covering your face (as usual). Anyway, it looked like it was at an all-nite diner o' doom. In a sick, wrong way, I prefer those places and their battery-acid coffee to the dimly-lit, smooth-jazz playing cafés downtown. It's like not taking a detour through the scuzzy part of town: I never want to forget what North America is for the 80% of the population who aren't privileged white suburban teenagers who can write/read all of the bad poetry they want, because they'll still be able to go home to mom and experience the wonder of the magic cupboard. (Note: that was a self-indictment)Rage and cheeseburgers? You're evil.I'm off for breakfast coffee.
Switched majors, or switched the all purpose character attributes-or-flaws of people with those majors? :DThat photo! I looked for it again but I don't think it's on my computer anymore. It's pretty old. Still, that's exactly where it was taken. That establishment tends to be a bit above-average as far as diners of doom go. Their menu has-- get this-- a vegetarian section. At most places like that, even the greasy fries contain meat.I know what you mean about the diner v.s. the "hip" cafe. It can be a guilty secret.
Switched majors, or switched the all purpose character attributes-or-flaws of people with those majors? :DDefintely the latter, although I have never and will never wear a beret.Yay for veggie menu! I just found out that the pub at school has a veggie section. Treated myself to a very nummy (and pretty cheap!) falafel burger. Two patties!As for "guilty secret", I tend to wear any "low"-culture/non-"alternative" tendencies with a mark of pride. Underlying guilt? Maybe, but after hanging out in university circles for four years you get so sick of people claiming (bad) poetry as a legitimate form of social rebellion that you begin to grasp at the sort of stuff that shocks the beret-wearers: professional wrestling, Guns N' Roses, baseball. Sad to say, but me wearing a Blue Jays T-shirt would be a far more daring act of rebellion than smearing my face with pigs blood, wearing a faded Adicts shirt and donning a tutu. Who are you trying to make an impression on, too-much-ginsberg-boy? It isn't the frat boys who laugh at your excessive hand gestures and raised-pinkie cappucino habit (although you do a good job of pretending to be upset when they call you a fag), it's too-much-plath-girl in the corner, scribbling in her notebook, sleeves of the too-long black sweater slipping over her hands.
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