Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Devastation on Stage

Collision Poetry

or as I like to call it

Devastation on Stage

Is it the art of the poet to invoke the sensation of having your heart torn out?

Poetry is a performance art. It goes beyond mere words on a page to be read by scholars and elitists posers looking for attention. Poetry is shouted in the back of the bus, sprayed on Day-Glo under bridges and screamed out…

I am never quite certain where the notion that poetry was a confined language slave to meter and verse, or a refined art of stoic and static principles long carved into marble artifacts… unchanging and long since dead.

We may pay homage to the past, relish and marvel at the great works that have come before, but it is cultural suicide to deny the art room to breathe, to grunt and swear, to procreate in a climax of exultation and infatuation. Poetry moans like a whore and takes it like a lady. Poetry hunts like a rogue and fakes like a gentleman. Poetry knows no taboo, recognizes no church, and belongs to no state.

A harsh word of condemnation or the soft caress of a lover, poetry collides head-on without breaks and airbags… and when it is gone, behind the trail of the emotions struggling up from their knees to the bar… holding an ice cube to the temple with eyes closed… remembering what has never been.

Monday, February 9, 2009

about Fred

So I am back to blogging in poetry which is a good indication that I may be a little pissed off. Naturally I don’t want to come out and say “Hey… Pissed Off over here” because what happens is the good intentions and advice… stuff like “coming to terms with it” and that sort of thing… what the hell does that even mean? My emotions are not up for negotiations… this is not a contract with terms conditions and clauses… hey… why don’t you come to terms with that…

Like all good adventures in poetry there is a melancholic wave rubbing up against the beaches of sunshine and happiness… a sort of lapping of lackluster bland banality slowly erasing the passage across the sands… those footprints that let you know which side you arrived from… where the car is parked for the grand get-a-way… be it in the nice sleek shiny sports car or the rusted out beater…

It is the winter time… sanity demands that you know those sorts of things… what season it is… the name of the day… today is Fred… but best to call it Monday in public… when you get on close first name basis with a day the jealousy of others will result in a bad experience… say Mister Monday and they will punish you… but it is winter… the cold probing season of soul searching amid the ruins of the last summer… the fallen branches of recklessness… the worm out tired grasses that have been rolled over one too many times… and the fallen petals of exotic roses… all buried under the snow waiting to be slowly thawed out and revealed, then washed away in the tears of the rain… that is the truth of it…

You can look out your window and see nothing at all but the snow… or you can see that beneath the snow lies a mystery… the beach is still there… I just have not been there for a while… the only question is where do the washed away footprints go? We can ask Fred, but Fred will never answer direct questions.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Apathy

Apathy


they came
they came up and said
you know
you know that you are dead
no matter what you do
it’s the only thing that’s true
and the salad bar you can plainly see is still on fire…

but the radio is on
and it playing my favorite song
the one you used to sing
when you screamed at every thing
the one you said expressed all your desire…

and the green parade is on
going through the town
but you are up inside your room
searching through the gloom
you really don’t have anything to wear…

and you are worried about you hair
will it still be there?
when the sun burns on your face
leave you without a trace
it doesn’t matter, there isn’t anybody there…

at all…
it’s all just the fall…
nobody to meet
there is no one on the street
and the green parade was cancelled because of rain…

I didn’t want an apple anyway