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

long poem: beginnings

On the ride up to the Bronx last night for work I decided to begin a long poem. How I’ve decided to go about it is this (something I haven’t done ever as a poet): to write and write and do not touch, then combine and revise it as a poem. Most of the time I just write spontaneously and let it alone. Revision has always been iffy for me. Who cares if what I say or write doesn’t make sense? Why bother catering to an audience? Call me naive, but if you  are true to yourself as a writer and a “thinking thing” than someone will understand what you are saying. Even if you don’t believe in collective human consciousness (not saying I do), you must at least be able to admit your juxtapositions are not entirely unique, in fact, to borrow from Wittgenstein, what makes them yours?

Anyway, yeah, so long poem. cool.

I should be visiting a friend in NYC with another friend next weekend, should be a good time. Events from that could bleed in to this new long poem project, verdad?

***

I should note that the idea for the long poem came from reading a smaller poem by Williams from probably my favorite non-Imaginations book, Sour Grapes. The poem is called “Blueflags”. I noticed two words/images (reeds, children)  carried through the poem, pretty standard kind of stuff, but not generic, after all, it’s Dr. Williams! “Blueflags” is a kind of poem that makes it easy to see what jumping points Creeley started from, in terms of the condensed small poem. Williams poem is probably a good 30 lines or so, but what he accomplishes in such a short time is something to be attempted at some point.

How this poem brought me to the long poem was to show me the freedom of the long poem over shorter poems. For example, ever read Silliman’s “Ketjak” or “Sunset Debris” ? These both show the freedom of the long poem while also being controlled by certain formal aspects (ex. Sunset Desbris is nothing but questions, arguably with answers within “Ketjak”. Ketjak is controlled by the sentence. The sentences themselves repeat and reappear after some time to bring the reader  in to a different interpretation or impression of what they just read earlier. This is an interesting technique, and certainly was a good read; the fact that a poet can get me to read the same sentence multiple times has to be a sign of some kind of talent right? Right. Of course, with poems like “Ketjak” it’s no wonder the general public is lost when it comes to poetry. (Sorry Ronny, I know you know this, and it is sad).

I guess you could say Silliman (The Age of Huts) is a decent influence to pursue the long poem. I would also say Pound’s Cantos and Zukofsky’s “A” are also good influences too (though I will be honesty I haven’t read all three of these books cover to cover, but it’s no matter. Poetry shouldn’t be read the same way prose is read (long gasps).

Poems have a longer return value (at least for me, as a reader). Prose is very plot-heavy and one has to continually read to get the bones and tension of the story. Though there are good descriptions out there, they are just hard to find. Descriptive prose should come back in a big way. If you want Plot there’s Law and Order. Where the hell is John Steinbeck?

Anyway, I need to get to bed. Gotta leave for downtown Manhattan in a few hours.

Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-11:13am 6/26/2008

Tract

A friend of 7 or 8 years was recently killed in a violent car accident with a tractor-trailer. I won’t say much about this, other than I’m still having trouble believing he won’t be around anymore. I won’t deny that after high school I didn’t speak to him as much as I should have, but my friends had recently assembled the weekly poker game that started so many years ago that him and I were both a part of. I only saw him a handful of times before this his death early Saturday morning. There isn’t much left I can say, and certainly nothing I can do about it. I was a little broken up by it yesterday, but I tend to get over events involving death because there isn’t any point in not accepting the reality of it.

I’ve enclosed this poem and it’s audio clip by William Carlos Williams. This is an early Williams poem entitled “Tract”.

*

Tract

I will teach you my townspeople

how to perform a funeral

for you have it over a troop

of artists-

unless one should scour the world-

you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with a design for a hearse.

For Christ’s sake not black-

nor white either – and not polished!

Let it be whethered – like a farm wagon -

with gilt wheels (this could be

applied fresh at small expense)

or no wheels at all:

a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!

My God – glass, my townspeople!

For what purpose? Is it for the dead

to look out or for us to see

the flowers or the lack of them -

or what?

To keep the rain and snow from him?

He will have a heavier rain soon:

pebbles and dirt and what not.

Let there be no glass -

and no upholstery, phew!

and no little brass rollers

and small easy wheels on the bottom -

my townspeople, what are you thinking of?

A rough plain hearse then

with gilt wheels and no top at all.

On this the coffin lies

by its own weight.

No wreathes please-

especially no hot house flowers.

Some common memento is better,

something he prized and is known by:

his old clothes – a few books perhaps -

God knows what! You realize

how we are about these things

my townspeople -

something will be found – anything

even flowers if he had come to that.

So much for the hearse.

For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!

Take off the silk hat! In fact

that’s no place at all for him -

up there unceremoniously

dragging our friend out to his own dignity!

Bring him down – bring him down!

Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride

on the wagon at all – damn him! -

the undertaker’s understrapper!

Let him hold the reins

and walk at the side

and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:

Walk behind – as they do in France,

seventh class, or if you ride

Hell take curtains! Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly -

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What – from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us – it will be money

in your pockets.

Go now

I think you are ready.

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.html

^Section #7, then #2, you’ll see it.

enjoy

-Cm

6:43pm 6/15/08