On poetry

Despite (or because of?!) the fact that I majored in English Literature in university, I'm not really that into poetry as a literary medium. Though there are many poems that I like, a number that I love, and a handful that I can recite from memory or at least with very little prompting (because yes... I AM that nerdy that I have been known to memorize my favourite poems; gentlemen, please TRY at least to keep your panties on while I'm telling this story), poetry seems to have a much higher incidence than prose of being (a) terribly shitty, (b) disgustingly, cringeworthily schmaltzy, (c) incredibly affected, pretentious, and ostentious, (d) SUPER BORING and/or (e) gag-reflex-inducing.

Let me just say that it is NOT an accident NOR an exaggeration that Douglas Adams writes about poetry in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and writes that Vogon poetry (the Vogons are a hideous and bureaucratic alien species in the book, obviously):

“is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine -- in a desperate attempt to save life itself -- leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.”

That is what bad poetry can do (or what it feels like bad poetry is doing to you). But good poetry: good poetry is awe inspiring.

My favourite poet is a grizzly, frankly terrifying looking, hardened man with an acne-ridden face, who was addicted to alcohol and women, and is best known for being a laureate for the masculine American low-life and documenting the despairing, dirty, vulgar fringes of mainstream society. His name is Charles Bukowski, and he wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and a number of novels about extremely joyous things like desperation and violence and the mundane, soul-sucking nature of life.

He literally could NOT be any less like me or anyone I would ever expect to become a fan of than if he was a purple haired devil unicorn. I have nothing in common with him, given that I am not a gruff alcoholic womanizer (I think).

But I still remember the first time I read one of his poems. Bukowski stirs all these emotions in you that you don’t even know you have. The first time I read his poems, I felt like he was talking straight to my soul. TO MY SOUL, MAN. I can’t say that about ANY of my favourite prose authors, love them though I may. I don’t even know why Bukowski touches me so much. Maybe my soul is secretly masculine and hardened (this is actually a totally possible explanation although I live in high heels and adore make-up), but whatever the reason, Bukowski is totally my spirit poet (like the poetry equivalent of a spirit animal. On a related note I don’t know what my spirit animal would be. I would like to think it’s something awesome like a white tiger but it’s probably a capuchin monkey or something).

What I can articulate about what I like about Bukowski’s poetry is that I really appreciate, in a way I can’t even emphasize, when beautiful, sensitive things are wrapped in all these layers of grime and muck and vulgarity. And when simple, normal, everyday words, even profanity, become touching and truthful. I would imagine (though I’m no poet, so take this with a mountain of salt) that it must be easier to write beautiful things when you use flowery language and rhyming structures and sophisticated word choices. But when you use the everyday vernacular, and everyday scenes –  poverty and prostitutes and seedy motels – but you can make those beautiful and touching and extract all this emotion out of just simple words and dingy life scenes: THAT’S amazing, because it's all real, and it's ugly, but it's beautiful, and that's life.

Dreamlessly

 old grey-haired waitresses
 in cafes at night
 have given it up,
 and as I walk down sidewalks of
 light and look into windows
 of nursing homes
 I can see that it is no longer
 with them.
 I see people sitting on park benches
 and I can see by the way they
 sit and look
 that it is gone.

 I see people driving cars
 and I see by the way
 they drive their cars
 that they neither love nor are
 loved-
 nor do they consider
 sex. it is all forgotten
 like an old movie.

 I see people in department stores and
 supermarkets
 walking down aisles
 buying things
 and I can see by the way their clothing
 fits them and by the way they walk
 and by their faces and their eyes
 that they care for nothing
 and that nothing cares
 for them.

 I can see a hundred people a day
 who have given up
 entirely.

 if I go to a racetrack
 or a sporting event
 I can see thousands
 that feel for nothing or
 no one
 and get no feeling
 back.

 everywhere I see those who
 crave nothing but
 food,shelter, and
 clothing; they concentraate
 on that
 dreamlessly.

 I do not understand why these people do not
 vanish
 I do not understand why these people do not
 expire
 why the clouds
 do not murder them
 or why the dogs
 do not murder them
 or why the flowers and the children
 do not murder them,
 I do not understand

 I suppose they are murdered
 yet I can't adjust to the
 fact of them
 because they are so
 many.

 each day
 each night,
 there are more of them
 in the subways and
 in the buildings and
 in the parks

 they feel no terror
 at not loving
 or at not
 being loved

 so many many many
 of my fellow
 creatures.

   

Whats The Use Of A Title?

They don't make it
the beautiful die in flame-
suicide pills, rat poison, rope what-
ever...
they rip their arms off,
throw themselves out of windows,
they pull their eyes out of the sockets,
reject love
reject hate
reject, reject.
they don't make it
the beautiful can't endure,
they are butterflies
they are doves
they are sparrows,
they don't make it.
one tall shot of flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
one flame, one good flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
in the sun.
the beautiful are found in the edge of a room
crumpled into spiders and needles and silence
and we can never understand why they
left, they were so
beautiful.
they don't make it,
the beautiful die young
and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.
lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death
as the old men play checkers in the sun
in the park.

How Is Your Heart?

during my worst times
 on the park benches
 in the jails
 or living with
 whores
 I always had this certain
 contentment-
 I wouldn't call it
 happiness-
 it was more of an inner
 balance
 that settled for
 whatever was occuring
 and it helped in the
 factories
 and when relationships
 went wrong
 with the
 girls.
 it helped
 through the
 wars and the
 hangovers
 the backalley fights
 the
 hospitals.
 to awaken in a cheap room
 in a strange city and
 pull up the shade-
 this was the craziest kind of
 contentment
 and to walk across the floor
 to an old dresser with a
 cracked mirror-
 see myself, ugly,
 grinning at it all.
 what matters most is
 how well you
 walk through the
 fire.


For Jane

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.