A younger woman’s last refuge

most people, when they run out of explanation, turn to god

a woman,
18-25 (we’ll say, estimation) ,

will say

“you’re just pissed because i didn’t want to fuck you”.
no that’s not it at all. in fact, it just proves how stupid you are.

A Note for Billy Collins

Billy Collins is nothing better than a mentally challenged version of William Carlos Williams.

Tho he is not a plagiarist, he managed to take everything good and decent about Williams’ style and strip those parts out. It is sad, really, that a poet could remove all interesting elements from his/her work, including the most important: the poet.

What happened to poets that actually attempted to COMMUNICATE with their generation? Does Collins really capture the essence of his generation? Is this how one accounts for his popularity? Or is it his “accessibility”? (Can you really compliment a poet for being accessible when he/she takes no chances?).

The best part is, Mr. Billy Collins, is that you can change. There is a world going on around you, and your work has managed to miss the really important parts. Do not try and impress us with the trivial because nothing is such, and attempting it in a poem is fruitless. When you write a poem you should not only learn something about yourself, but about the world, and your audience MUST recognize this in your work so they can learn something about you and your (their, our) respective world(s).

So Mr. Collins, I leave you with this:

When your audience abandons you (alive or dead), will you be able to say the poems you have written are completely, utterly, entirely, you?

-C

9:02am  2/16/09

Two New Songs on youtube

poem

*
*
*
yes, my country been hacked out of oak, coal
cold, and this is my body too, changes in
topography in miles I always could go somewhere
else, but I’d still be me; quotient = why they
make whiskey so strong// and there are headlights
coming along over the hill, and outside
NYC some squawks have stayed for winter,
their bodies frozen to the top of the shallow
waters, and traffic careens under underpasses
that corkscrew, and to be headed home is
175 miles of staying awake, tho the
sky and road aren’t even colored

two new songs posted on youtube

enjoy!
Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-10:56pm, 12/11/2008

An original song of mine

click the link

or you’ll stink

and have to wash yourself

in the sink!

Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-8:30pm, 12/9/2008

Last Night at the bar in Shippensburg. And Jack Spicer is awesome.

I.

Last night I headed to Shippensburg to visit Ray (somebody I’ve known since college, fall 2004) to play music and head out to the bar. Ray and I were in a band in college with a few other guys and we played some folky kind of tunes and Ray ended up writing all the lyrics and even a few music. He’s still going at music, and I have been working slowly on building a large set list so I can play out more (I’ve played one show already and only 7 people came out. I was disappointed).

Anyway so I brought down a small bottle of hacky Jack Daniels and we started drinking. I was slamming it down in half shots between each song one of us played, Ray was taking swigs out of the bottle every now and then too. The thing was about half gone before we even left for the bar.

Anyway we show up at the bar and I have some guinness and we meet up with Ray’s friend and start talking and drinking. I’m pounding some jagerbums after the guinness pints and we’re all just having a good time shoot pool and the like.

Next to the pool table was one of those arcade basketball games and I got really interested. At this point I was drunk to the point of elation and began playing the game. The hi-score was 63 and I had shot up to 56 in one round. So I’m adamant at this point (most likely the whiskey haha). And I want to beat the hi-score. So I’m slamming quarters in the machine and shooting and drinking and just having a good time.

Well, in the middle of the game this guy comes up and starts grabbing a ball shooting them when I’m playing. And he’s drunk too. A jocky-type jacked guy from Long Island. I didn’t see him because I was focusing but I knew he was there so I started talking shit.

He ended up walking away because I was yelling at him and then he walked over and sat at the bar. I asked Ray’s friend where the guy went and he pointed over to the bar. So I walked up to him and start yelling at him for screwing up that game. He probably did it because he figured that I was skinny and wasn’t going to start shit. Well he was wrong.
I asked him “Yo why were you fucking up my hoops?” and he was just being dumb like the idiot he was and not saying much. Anyway he’s like “you want to fight about it”. And I’m really drunk at this point and he’s jacked like a mother fucker and I don’t care, I’m like “yeah. i don’t give a fuck how big you are”. Basically Ray pulled me away because he ended up coming to the bar to pay his tab.

He got me back over with the people we were with and I ended up lifting one of his friend’s friend up in a snowplow ( a la British Bulldog) to show them that I wasn’t drunk enough to punch that turd at the bar.

Anyway we leave the bar because it was last call, and we head to this small cafe. I’m falling all over the sidewalk in to bushes and banisters on the way there. There was an upstairs in the place, so we headed up there. I ordered some coffee and the guys got food.

Well turns out this dumb jock was hungry too, so he came up and made a scene when he saw me. So I rolled over to him and sat down with him, his buddy, and two girls (that were probably equally dumb). And I started saying shit again. Anyway I’m talking to him and getting to know him, and I get him to lift up his shirt and show me the stab wounds he was talking about. It was pretty ridiculous. Then somebody wants us to arm wrestle and we do. Well he doesn’t move his arm and I start pushing his down and all the sudden he moves and slams my arm back on the table. As soon as I felt the force of his hand I let my arm go limp so he wouldn’t snap my forearm in half because the tables were raised from one another and off balance.

Before I left the table I shook his hand and then I said “You know I would’ve faught you back at the bar. I don’t care how ripped you are. I would’ve come at you bloody as hell”.
*****

*

*

*

*

*****

II.

Jack Spicer’s collected Poems : “My Vocabulary Did This To Me” is simply amazing. I recently got to sit down with it this weekend after getting it in the mail. I haven’t read too much of it, but what really impressed me was the sequences I came across. He writes sequences in a style like Berrigan’s “Sonnets” although Spicer was writing these sequences a good 5 or 10 years before Berrigan was even on the scene. What makes these sequences so cool is that Spicer is writing the “I” as a hybrid between himself and the content of the poem (he wrote one on King Arthur, another on Merlin) and consistently blends the two together. If you could imagine the self-referencing of lines that Berrigan does in “Sonnets” condensed in a smaller 6 or 7 poem sequence, it’s really cool. At one point Spicer uses the same word in the same verse but interjects in two different manners so you don’t even see the repeat coming.

What I really like about the sequences Spicer wrote is their ability to make the project of something like Pound or H.D. or other Modernists [combining biography and western history/myth] as accessible as a Frank O’hara poem. Also Spicer’s voice makes the historical seem less showy, a fault that contemporary poets have (but that’s what happens when poetry is basically controlled by the academic system even when those that write have long graduated and sometimes have not returned to teach)

Anyway I’ll read some more of the Spicer since I’m not too far in to it yet. But I definitely recommend the book because it really seems to be a promising read. Plus the title is awesome and it would look great on your bookshelf. Your friends would be impressed, trust me.

Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-6:00pm, 12/6/2008

The Election ‘08

The times they are a changin’.

I love Bob Dylan’s music, especially his lyrics from his 60’s albums; however, that was the 1960’s. This is not 1960, as much as I wish it would be sometimes. But the times are always changing aren’t they?

As much as I’d like to believe that this Election is “historically significant” as it’s been so excessively deemed, let’s consider some facts.

1) Regardless of Who becomes president-elect in November, we will still be in Iraq for at least the next four years.

2) The economy will continue to fluctuate, neither candidate will improve it within 4 years. If any change will occur it’ll be more than a 4 year wait.

3) As America considers its position and reputation with foreign nations it will continue to drift from domestic policy. After all, if you want the mess the Bush Administration created, to be fixed, it’ll have to be top priority, (keep in mind, there is A LOT of work to do).

4) Thanks to Ron Paul supporters, he will steal votes from either McCain and Obama depending on what state we’re in (ex. PA had a large Ron Paul support and most likely still does compared to other states. PA is/was a swing state, that’s why this is a significant example).

Now to get on with what bugs me.

Emo kid indie hipsters that think Obama is amazing and have little or no foundation for their opinions. “Obama isn’t Republican” or “Obama isn’t McCain” sounds painstakingly like “vote for Kerry because he isn’t Bush”.

People that vote for McCain aren’t thinking either. McCain, unlike Obama, tries to cover up the fact that he’s not only out of touch with the people, but that he is also out of touch with the general culture.

I’m not voting. Not because I’m apathetic or because the electoral college is a dumb idea (because let’s face it, it is). It’s because both candidates “worth voting for” are nothing but smoke-blowers. So if you do vote, vote outside the 2-party system. Maybe things will change.

ps. calling it historical to have a “black” president or our “oldest” president or a female vice president is just ridiculous. once you base historical significance on race or gender or age you nullify it, having pointed out the superficially “different” aspects of each individual. Also, focusing points like this is what disables any kind of unification between parties, classes, races, genders, etc.

I’m sick of talking about this already.

I bought a mandolin yesterday

a poetics blog finally. started putting my longpoem writings in to ms word too. this was inspired by an old friend from high school who writes poems. he posted a short poem, and this was my comment.

ah the short poem.

much to be learned Mr.—

there is something your poem lacks ( i think of the two most exceptional examples of short poems that come to mind). because the language is so limited one must put more emphasis on content context and image. the two poems i’m referring two come from the Modernist Era in American Poetry.

William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

and Ezra Pound’s “IN A STATION OF THE METRO”

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

here’s wiki analysis of what i’m speaking about Pound : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro

Williams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow

anyway, what both poems do is they place a different context to each general image “train station” and “wheelbarrow”. for example the first lines of Williams’ call in to question the importance of the wheelbarrow “so much /depends”. we don’t associate that kind of importance or urgency with a wheelbarrow, so we’re then left to ask “why is this so important?”. The best part about the poem is it doesn’t give anything away. We’re left to put our own interpretation in to that question.

The Pound works in another way. Associating a general common area (the subway [and its crowd]) with a bough. even here it might seem that our interpretations are limited towards the negative (after all, Pound chose “black” as his color) however, a bough is very much like the connectedness of the people in the crowd (separate stems connected by one whole).

so yes. this wasn’t terribly influenced by college. my own pursuits mostly. i’m also not suggesting you have to write like that. being the varying possibilities of language and interpretation there is certainly no reason you can’t do it different. it just helps to be conscious of this things. not writing towards “meaning” but writing towards variations.

Who says life isn’t fair?

High school.

Middle school.

Both were terrible for me, and elementary was pretty horrible too. The people that gave me shit have no idea what they put me through. I was beat up, teased (not like a harmless thing, more like a overly aggressive abusive deal). Combined with the other nagative emotional and physical stuff going on outside of school, I was becoming an angry, insolent individual. I read in a Psychology Today (my mom gets them every month) that kids that were popular in school were so because they never let rejection affect them. I still think this is bullshit. I honestly can only guess the reasons why people didn’t like me on first impression, but they didn’t and they made damn sure to let me know through the following 10 years of schooling.

This has come up because I was at a bar tonight and there were people there from high school. Generally speaking I was more or less ignored or not really listened to (with a few exceptions). However, these two kids (one who just arbitrarily started hating me a long time ago in high school, and his buddy who was trying to get a rise out of me for a good laugh) kept saying something to me as I walked by them a few times. I thought about saying something but I didn’t. Why waste my time on them?

I used to think that I was better than them, that’s how I dealt with it. But after tonight I realized that it has nothing to do with me being better or worse than them. Simply because I know that the relationships they have founded are not true ones, that if it came down to it they would find out how many people wouldn’t be there for them, a dramatic change that would show how deep the lie they live really goes. I can sit around and hope for it to happen, but I don’t have to, because these people have already showed me themselves, and if they haven’t changed something so deeply rooted in their own psychology by now, chances are, they won’t.

They will get theirs, everybody does.

I have and will for the things I’ve done.

Life is unbiased in its distribution of negatively affective events.

Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-2:20am, 7/27/2008