Uh, no. I've been reading poetry since I was in elementary school but took an unnecessary hiatus because I was a self-righteous retard in high school. I'm not saying this propels me to a whole new level as a human being but aren't you glad you learn something every time you visit my blog? Awesome.
Two of my favorite poets are Charles Bukowski, who was somewhat intimidating and died five days after I was born (does that say something?) and Emily Dickinson, who did not write like a stupid girl on anti-pregnancy pills. She was smart and never tacky -- which possibly accounted for her lunacy, but all the best people had/have that.
And now I'm rambling so much that I don't know what exactly to say anymore, except that I act like an excited little school girl on placebo drugs whenever I see their books in the local bookstore. This doesn't happen a lot though.
| I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through.And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here. And then a plank in reason, broke, And I dropped down and down-- And hit a world at every plunge, And finished knowing--then-- - I felt a funeral, Emily Dickinson |
This could be the lyrics to a Florence+the Machine song! (Is it wrong to say that?)
And --
I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous
because we’ never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told
us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’
magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’ happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.
- An Almost Made Up Poem, Charles Bukowski
See. It's comforting to know people who actually understand/understood you existed in the previous generations, which means the odds of them being reborn into yours are kind of high. Oh, adolescence . . .
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