POEM EXCAVATION
The tan notebook yields its bounty
The poet’s dreams are rarely sublime / the poet’s dreams almost never rhyme / the poet’s dreams are on the bookshelf / to be read at some other time
I wrote some poems in my early 20’s, while I was attending art school. I found them in a box several years ago. I read them. They belonged in a box. Forever. Or maybe thrown, box and all, onto a bonfire. I had a look around for them a few days ago, I wanted to see them again, see if I could use them here. Have a laugh at the expense of young earnest moody me. I didn’t find them. Maybe I threw them out, I don’t know. Houses fill up with the accumulated artifacts of personal history and with the passage of time we discover that some of the artifacts are crap and belong on the scrap pile.
I also wrote some songs in my mid 20’s while I was attending art school and I mention this because they weren’t really songs. More like poems, but not poems trying to be poems. They didn’t rhyme, they weren’t precious, syntax was irregular, and I could spit them out like an auctioneer. They were hyperbolic narratives and absurd observations from my angsty alienated existence. I wanted to be an existentialist. But I was more drunk art studentist. I performed these songs on my “Badlands Guitar,” an old beat up acoustic with three strings on which I would thrash out a primitive rhythm with a single throbbing bass string at the root. I do not play guitar. If I wrote those songs down, those documents are long gone. The corridor to the memory of those songs has collapsed.
I did some performance poetry in late 90’s and early 2000’s…..but they definitely have a best before date. These pieces were fat with hyperbole and absurdity, rife with obscenity and references to popular culture of that time, then delivered with the nuance of a carnival barker and the fervor of a televangelist. They were written and performed for reaction and for the most part don’t stand as pieces of writing to be read.
So where’s this going? I kicked off this newsletter, Jackass Path, with a post that had been catalyzed by some writing I found in a tan notebook I’d kept. It also contained, I discovered – DUH DUH DAAAAAH – some poems.
So what? Why the drama, what’s the big deal about poems? You’re a songwriter right? Your songs aren’t exactly “normal”, right? They’re kinda irregular, one might even say “poetic,” right?
Yah yah yah back off voice in my head and consider this:
Songs vs. Poems
Words of songs…..they can hide behind a melody. Lalala lahla. Words what words?
Then there’s instruments too. The audience is like “Wow that kazoo solo, mindbender, real face melter … uh what was he singing about?”
And rhythm. Everyone’s tapping their feet rocking in their chairs, muttering under their breath about the dancing lady in a long skirt swaying at the front, blocking sightlines.
Meanwhile the lyrics have been sent to sit in the corner wearing a dunce hat. Lyrics what lyrics?
Poems must appear naked.
Yup, those are my hairy balls alright, says the poem.
Hmmmmmm, yes, those are his hairy balls alright, says the audience. Hmmmm.
These tan notebook poems are poems trying to be poems and I’m harbouring uncertainty. Frankly it’s a leap for me to expose the poet’s fleshy underbelly. Their primary currency is surrealism. They’re not insightful, beautiful, wise, or lyrical, they have no rhyme or meter. The poems that register lower on the Surreal-O-Meter are akin to blunt objects. Maybe more like the me some of you are familiar with. This is not the kind of writing I’ve aired publicly and I’m swinging between “oh yah baby” and “oh no man.” But then again what do I have to lose?
My *air brackets* CREDIBILITY *air brackets* ?
I excavated 13 poems from the tan notebook and I’m going to publish them here. Incrementally, three or four at a time. When I read poetry I can’t absorb too many poems in a row. They stop going in and start bouncing off my thick skull. What’s your poetry threshold? What is your relationship to poetry like? Tell me. Love, loathe, or lazily indifferent….let me know your thoughts.
The Boudoir
smoke filled the boudoir
I thought the hair on my balls was burning
it was a pile of sweaters
on fire
in the driveway
the overhead light
bright as the cheerleader's eyes
the one who lost her mind
an eel
in my sock drawer
long
black
stinking
gasping
tiny razor teeth revealed
bouncing from pillow to pillow
forked tongue cat in velvet britches
singing all Disney's hits
nothing was the same as 1978
or 1986
or 1993Internet Casualty
The internet casualty admitted to the hospital had been wrapped like a mummy in black bandages
Outside Zuckerberg clad in a gold lame jumpsuit performed triple sow cows flying camels on the skating rink he had donated to the facility
The sky was the inside of a whale’s stomach rapidly descending Zuckerberg and the hospital staff wondered what mythical shore they would be vomited onto In the future
Cuban Piano Dream
Stop me if you’ve heard this one A man goes to sleep in a Cuban piano dreams black limousines piloted by neon rainbow fish pulsing gills keeping rhythm to the throb of American engines
An old woman wrapped in burlap a headless dog hangs from a flagpole
El Presidente in terry towel and kitten slippers sways above the toilet’s amber waters
his tongue a red slab where black ants dance
Best Seller
I thought I would write a memoir it would be about the girls I wanted to fuck but didn’t
getting really wasted and vomiting becoming unconscious
and shitting my pants
Best seller
moviez!
I love movies and I’ve seen a couple goodies recently I’d like to tell you about.
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Director Sidney Lumet’s last film is a masterpiece. A heist film that’s as heavy and twisted as a Shakespearean tragedy featuring brilliant performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as brothers with issues and Albert Finney, in his last role, as their father. Family dysfunction, drug addiction, infidelity, money problems, a heist gone wrong. Compelling storytelling through a series of flashbacks from the different character’s perspectives and an out of control dénouement that left me gasping. Not for the light of heart.
.
Mandy
Director/writer Panos Cosmatos is a former Victoria, BC resident weirdo (and I mean weirdo in the most complimentary sense) who was in and around the local music scene in the early 2000’s. Mandy is a sci-fi action thriller horror that had me on the edge of my seat, uncomfortable at moments, laughing my head off, and fully entertained. It is really fucking creepy, violent at times, but also oddly hilarious. Or at least one other person in the theatre was laughing besides me. I was also squirming, aspects of this movie are visceral and unsettling. I had streamed this movie on my computer and it was good, but this is a film that benefits greatly being seen on the big screen with big sound. I was fortunate to catch it recently at UVIC’s Cinecenta. Visually stunning with a saturated psychedelic palette and an 80’s vibe, Nicholas Cage is inspired in a drug-fuelled rampage to avenge the sacrificial burning of his woman by a cult of drugged out hippies with alien connections. Scored by Johannes Johannsson, the dark heavy industrial soundtrack references black metal and utilizes dark menacing ambient synths to set the tone. This is a complete and realized film and a real trip. And maybe not for the light of heart either.
Check out Cinecenta….presenting a diverse program of films you may not be able to catch elsewhere
You're a poet. You've always been a poet. Case closed.
More poems please.
Yeah I like the poems
Especially ‘Best seller’
Kinda sums up poetry in a filthy little packet