Like we’ve seen it all like we’ve deemed it all nothing
like we’ve dreamed it all like the mountains and the
trees and the streams are false supreme being never
seen never seems to call loosened the strictures of the
seeing-eye goosed the elusive pixels of thou and I the
smoke and the stones and a thousand cries in our
cloaks we don’t know to whom we bow or why a rock
swims while a flower dies the trust of an entity’s identity
and sanctity which after mental entropy begins
again eventually the crush of morality such fallacy’s a
friend to thee the canopied fantasy of unkindled
centuries candles and fondles free until losing all
sanity sounds like a plan to me and the saber-tooth itch
and the heavenbent powerless and god’s good growl as
he benevolently devours us our guessing games
suggesting names confessing blames digesting flames
and gripping coping hoping that your kid won’t go
unzip his veins sputtering brains will refrain and
refrain or would you dare to see them studying the
paramecium uttering of great men or apemen do all
aches need mothering do all steaks need buttering do
all waking minds that mind waking up need cluttering
are the statesmen still stuttering so we go though we
know not where we go or how we go who goes or
where or what through we go with the sightedblind in
the night with no shoes we go with the fightingkind of
the lightningmind blues we flow a rock sinks under a
deadpetal breeze who listens to our lips as they
disperse like b l a c k c l o u d s kissing what they can’t
count cursing at the churches and the missions and the
campgrounds rehearsing for the showdown the clamp
down the ho-down the man down the count down
we’re on a hunt down for a handout on the lookout for
a standout as we go down
There is the place downtown called the Mercury Cafe or simply “the Merc” where they have open mike night every Friday for poetry readings. All of these poems would be great to hear in a venue like that. They demand a live reading, printed alone they seem totally unfulfilled.
It reads really well but… it sounds GREAT using voice recognition software (the new software that has intonations and phrasing). Very beaty… very cool… very far out. Yeah, I dig you man!
If I had known this was a good format I wouldn’t have abandoned it last year! No rapping or beats. Just the furious tapping of my keyboard and the noise in my head.
True, you discovered the magic unlocked when read aloud. You should hear ME read it aloud. It’s fucking intense…it wakes the devil and makes the earth shake.
The process is to just let it carry you along letting assosance and alliteration and rhyming be your guide. Usually you can make any old thing fit with just a little tweaking. And if you fuss with it just right, it hints at huge layers of meaning that can go in any direction. The result is a piece that makes no sense and yet too much sense. This one makes some sense…I actually like some of the other ones I posted back when. At least that’s my take when I’m in a good mood. Thanks for noticing this though. Gamer
Silently it dies, but aloud it comes to life beyond words. I am a musician, and so are you, Gamer. Sounds melding into words off your lips in a frenetic explosion - very passionate and (most of all) unique. I like that. Better than rap, I think. I missed the commas in my first reading, but then realized that without them, it is more creative in one’s individual interpretation.
I have this new attachment to my ipod that lets me record thoughts and instantly download them to my itunes and email them. I may do a “podcast” of some beat poetry. Maybe even an ILP podcast in general…or a dramatic interp of some of ILP’s more telling and colorful exchanges. Wouldn’t that blow the fucking roof off of everyone’s world? Break the third wall? Probably not. But it’d be kinda cool. Oh, and fuck commas.
You can say that, but in most cases, commas help the reader to comprehend what the poet is trying to convey. In your case, your poetry is about rhythm and sound all the while delivering the driven content. It wasn’t a putdown, just a comment. I thought that is what we were encouraged to do:
comment
Then again, retorting your disagreement here is expected, so I will remember that when someone tells me my poetry sucks.
Oh I like commas. My attitude for thies piece was fuck commas, though. Statements with commas lack an elegance that non-comma prose has. Sometimes a comma is languages way of telling us we’re floating away from simplicity. Most profoud truths can be conveyed without commas. I just think it’s an interesting idea, to try to avoid commas. Of course, this piece avoids commas in a different way from the way I’m talking about here. The reason I omitted commas and stanzas was to convey a sense of bewildered, breathless catharsis, and sort of, as someone mentioned, to allow for double meanings in word groupings, and perhaps multiple interpretations.
how do you do it?!
