16. existential angst 'n shit

other days,

I realize

this mind

is a prison

I will never

escape;

that what world I see

through these bars

is too far away to touch,

that I am scratching tallies into stone,

and that I will never know

why caged birds sing.

This was the products of the most recent bout of melancholy. If I were to sort this poem into a genre, I would sort it into "shitty emo poems." Oh the angst. Anyways, this one probably fall in the ten that are not good. It was fun to write, though.

slam poetry: a playlist

The lists consists of fifteen poems that aim to show you the beauty and power of slam poetry along with its diversity. It’s probably around two hours of poetry. The beginning is aimed at providing context and pointing out technical elements. The latter parts are chosen more for their content, and are aimed at the hopes that some of them will resonate with. Because I  I included only poems that I love, so I hope you enjoy. Cheers!

Julian Curry – Niggers Niggas & Niggaz

Slam poetry began life as a battle to be indignant with the best wordplay. It branched out off of rap pretty recently, so especially at the beginning there was a black style and a white style, and a lot of poems were about race and other forms of oppression. I didn’t include too many, but it’s important to know, even though these distinctions have largely dissolved. Shouting, rap-esque wordplay and speed would have been a more black style, especially when tackling issues of race.

Smokey Robinson – Black American

This poem also tackles race, but it’s in a much more controlled style. At the time, this style was pretty “written” and pretty white—notice how there are a lot of couplets in it. It’s also not in any way indignant of self-righteous the way a lot of spam poetry was at the time this came out. Plus I love this poem. I think it’s a really effective piece of argument, appealing to humor and tackling a broad set of arguments.

Dahlak – Routine Check

I love this poet. He’s kinda black because you can still hear the rap in it, but he has so much control, and he never lets himself be overcome by emotion. I also dig his use of humor. For more: Peculiar Evolution by Dahlak

Rafael Casal—ADD

This guy is passionate black style done right. When he gets rolling, he turns over control, and he drops frequently into passages of wordplay too quick to understand. His timing and diction are impeccable, though, which keeps his shouting from being oppressive. I recommend this guy strongly—for more, check out Barbie and Ken 101 I was reading this as I put the links in and I realized this guy reminds me of Eminem if Eminem weren't a confessionalist and didn't have music behind him. 

Taylor Mali—What Teacher’s Make

This poem is here for being a passionate anthem about something other than race. This is what Taylor Mali is best at. He enunciates like a white guy, but he’s adopted all the indignity and underdog spirit of slam poetry’s origins. It’s hard to listen to him for a long time because of how shoutey he tends to get, but his poems themselves are all really strong. He’s especially famous for one about speaking with conviction that’s called “TotallyLike Whatever, You Know?” I’ve run into that poem in a lot of non-poetry places, which is why I mention it. Another one by him that’s great is called “I’llFight You For the Library”.

Poemcees – Cheatin’

I also love this poem. (I love all of these poems.) The style is distinctly black, but controlled. It’s also cool because of its humor and playfulness.

Shane Koyczan – Haiku

This exists.

Rives—Hobo

As far as I can tell, Rives invented white style. None of this is from having read anything, but there wasn’t that much slam poetry on the internet in 2009, and I will tell you that he was unique at that time. He was like, “passionate emotion? Nah, man—I can communicate myself with wit and charisma, remaining aware of my audience at all times.” His presentation is excellent, and his internal rhymes are abundant but never draw attention. Notice that if you encountered his poems on a page, they would seem conversational, but you would be willing to accept them as page-poems. It may be relevant that Rives was how I got into slam poetry and has pretty much always been my favorite poet. That’s mostly why this poem is here—because I like it.

Andrea Gibson—How It Ends

This is here because I think it’s one of the few true love poems. I admire her joy, and I love that I believe her that this poem really is about her own life, and she still means every word she says. In terms of poetry, we’ve now transitioned into what most slam poetry looks like at the moment with its enthusiasm without overflowing passion, wordplay that isn’t distracting, and speed that’s easy to follow. What I’m referring to loosely as the current style is more white than black, and the overtones of rap have largely been lost. If you found them on a page, you’d probably be willing to accept them. Quite a few of them you could also accept as monologues—they don’t tend to launch into passages too quick to follow. Recommended also: Complimentand Kite, both by Rives. These three poems go together in my brain. Compliment is another love poem that I’m inclined to believe, and Kite is similar to How It Ends in tone and theme. I would recommend watching them all.

Shane Koyczan—The Crickets Have Arthritis

One of the first things to happen after racial poems and relational poems were heart-wrenching story poems. I included this because of the way it engages with storytelling. Compliment tells a series of small stories that all relate to a central theme, which is pretty common. This one tells a story that would have taken a long time to live, and then drops out into abstract words and philosophy before returning. It’s most similar to Routine Check, which flits between story and moral pretty quickly.

Carlos Andres Gomez—Letting Us Be Men

This one is also here for its relationship to storytelling. This poem is basically just an anecdote. I actually found out tonight that it might be an anecdote instead of a poem, but this guy is a kickass poet, and I looked half an hour to find this story. It’s also cool because the narration moves at about the same pace as it would take the events to happen.

Jeanann Verlee—Brawler

This is here because Jeanann Verlee has an incredible voice. I would like to nominate this woman to be the voice of God. This is a list poem, which is especially common in slam poetry. After starting to write examples, I realized that I love that form and a lot of those poems, so I added a couple.

Steve Colman—I Wanna Hear a Poem

Hells to the yes for tightly packed internal rhymes, right? Notice also the basic three part structure—narrative poems, philosophical poems, and abstract words poems. Quite separately, I think the third section of this poem is just great.

Joe Hernandez-Kolski – Cool

This poem reminds me a lot of “Yo,” which is another poem that I love.

Jon Sands—Dusk

This poem is here for the simple reason that it got lodged in my soul this afternoon. Melancholy as the static between voices is striking and beautiful. Remember how one of the questions in Crying of Lot 49 was the degree to which you’re eternally and irrevocably isolated from others inside your own mind? This was the Remedios Varo painting, Oedipa as locked in a tower, bubble shades, and the world refracted through tears. This poem deals with the same kind of isolation, and I think it makes quite a few profound moves without forcing itself onto you. Consider, “So I have known you.” Look how the first voice’s thoughts become shorter and clearer, and his responses more appropriate as the poem goes on. The beginning is cool, though, because it’s inviting and realistic. 

15. On The Middle of Nowhere in November

The sky is gray,

the trees dark shadows

twisting up from the ground.

The fields are blanketed in the dry

refuse of last year’s harvest.

The nymphs are departed.

The land stretches empty and flat

into the horizon against which I see clearly

the silhouette of a far-away pine tree;

standing on this road, I may know

that I am the only soul outside

in the cold for miles around.

Trees mark only farmsteads or streams,

follow wandering creeks like thread

through dead fields,

or stand shoulder to shoulder

as soldiers against the wind.

Everything we built is falling down.

Why did we ever come here?

Next to barely inhabited houses

barns built a hundred years ago

collapse, the weight of time and snow

too much to hold.

The paint is faded, the corners dulled,

the landscape fated for the sweet amnesia

of snow.

I believe exceptionally in this one. I want this one to work. I'm happy that all the details in here so far are true. This one I would love a close reading on, and I do intend to revise it, because I really, really want it to work.

"The nymphs are departed" is a T. S. Eliot quote from the Wasteland.

Little things questions:
I considered both "shoulder to shoulder / as soldiers against the wind" and "shoulder to shoulder / in hollow armies against the wind." The first has that nice internal rhyme within the simile, which is why I chose it, but "armies against" is alliterative, and a bit more subtle. "Hollow soldiers" is also an option, which wouldn't have much literal meaning, but would be another T. S. Eliot allusion and might to tonal work. Votes?

I used snow twice at the end. The last three lines ground the poem in time by assuming the inevitability of winter. At the moment, the title does this as well. Without that, though, this wastelandish state is allowed to exist indefinitely. I half feel like the ending is a cop-out right now. I'm not sure the last three lines match the rest of the poem, but I also don't have a different ending in mind. Regardless, the first snow is not snow that actually exists, whereas the second snow is. Is that a problem? What are your intuitions toward the ending? Do you have thoughts on other things that could be done?

14. Ode To The Spanish Girl Who Never Stops Laughing

It is always Spain out where you are.

The last rays of the perpetually setting sun

always glow as they warm the brick

that never cools.

The water is always calm, where you are,

and you are always laughing.

I have been coming to this coffee shop

for five years now, studying

your world on the western wall,

trying to discern your secrets.

You have not aged a day since we met.

The creases at the corners of your eyes

have not deepened, the smile

in your eyes has not gone out.

You have never grown bored.

Is it lonely to smile all the time?

Does it hurt to never move?
Do you grow tired of watching

the same swatch of sky,

waiting for clouds that never come to

hide you from the sun?

Do you wish someone would repair the paint

peeling from the steps on which you are

perpetually perched?
Do you even know that it is peeling?
Can you see it in your periphery?
Can you consider it?
Or can you know only the vacant, cloudless sky

and the weight of your happy paralysis?

...And then I got distracted by the mural. Fun facts: there's no girl in the actual mural. And it might be Greece instead of Spain. But it's like the quintessential mediterranean. Anyway. The bit with the paint at the end might be lame. I might take that out. Its sole purpose was to question what the girl in the painting can and can't know, and whether her mind is, in fact, as blank as the sky. What might be more effective for that is to ask something to the effect of, "do you even know why you are smiling? Do you remember what joke made you laugh to the sky the moment before you found yourself frozen?" 

I also think the base narrative here would be a good one to pick up again sometime and drive more toward the nature of the present moment. Maybe this already does that. But in revision, I'd like to give it more philosophical resonance to the end that one is always trapped in the present moment, but that looking back, not even that will seem real. 

I don't know. I'm happy with it, on the whole. 

13. My People

Watching the sun set out the window,

sipping spiced cocoa, examining

the details of the mural

of some place in Spain where the light

is always beautiful, and the smiles

never fade, and the faces do not age,

I am among my people.

We are the shitty-poetry makers,

the intense-face-at-your-laptop makers,

the drama readers

and the dreamers of dreams;

and I would like to thank you,

my fellow solitary intellectuals,

for sharing the jazz, the too-beautiful

Spanish girl, and the awareness

of our shared estrangedness

with me.

And later, when I grow afraid,

I will know that futures are more like

coffee shops than concert halls,

and I will think fondly of your too-focused faces

and of spiced cocoa,

and of the Spanish girl who never stops laughing.

and even of shitty Christmas jazz. 













I am considering whether the last stanza does any work. I don't know that it does. "Coffee shops, not concert halls" is one of my mantras, but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs a place in this particular poem. If it does, I'll change the things that are at the end to involve a sense of time. I was thinking things that resemble future-me, but I don't actually know how to do that without just being like, "there's a woman with children, and an old one, who makes pie for the neighborhood kids on sundays-- it's kind of what she has instead of God." 

This, btdubs, is actually what my favorite coffee shop is like. This is the one where they gave me free coffee and won exclusive rights to my soul forever.

12. And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness

and they have escaped the weight of darkness,

flying—

its sticky fingers no longer clawing

at their hair,

the tails of their shirts, their memories,

their soles;

they have escaped the weight

of darkness,

have nestled it carefully once more

between Atlas’ shoulder blades,

have bitten into the golden apple

and fled;

have escaped,

have slipped under cover of daylight

into suspension and color;

have escaped,

and as fugitives hide,

telling not their names

and brushing dark histories aside;

of darkness,

of the isolation one cannot unknow,

of the blindness thick as unbelief,

thicker than forgetting her face,

his name,

escaped,

and from that bright oblivion,

floating,

shall not return.

I started reading e. e. cummings, and I realized very suddenly how much I missed physical-less poetry!!! Oh, goodness. So far this project I've been pretty loyal to the Williams Carlos Williams creed, "No ideas but in things." I am proud of this first departure because it's just really fun. 

The title and first line is also the title of a song by Olafur Arnalds, which is kind of mediocre, but I really like the words together. 

Can you imagine me trying to write poetry without allusions? Like every poem is an allusion. I'm like T. S., only he was better at it 'cause he's freaggin' T. S. Eliot, droppin' some Dante up in that bitch.

...and, cue the moment to stop talking.

11. they sell tombstones

they sell tombstones

across from the boneyard.

if you look to your left,

ladies and gentlemen,

you’ll see the tombstone shop,

the lacquered memorials

bright in the late-summer sun.

with one of these

be-yootiful

headstones, your loved one

will be remembered

with dignity and distinction.

on the right,

the little town’s boneyard,

where the grass is mown,

but the fence is rotting and falling down,

and the tombstones are weathered

and unadorned.

the windbreak is untrimmed

and speckled with holes.

when it is winter

and the ice blows in from the north

it will encounter no defense—

no stand of life against indifference.

i'm okay with this one, but i don't think it's that technically good. i might try writing different versions in different tones, because i think the subject matter/concept has a lot to offer. like, consider the same basic premise, but more focused on who had the audacity to build a tombstone shop yet, citing as examples the graveyard never leaving customers' peripheral vision, seeing their future at every moment in the shop. consider also the absurdity of loading up a tombstone at the appropriate time and driving it across the street to its new home. or if they took customers window shopping in the actual graveyard. "ah yes, the michaelsons. this was a very special piece-- i worked on it myself-- why, that must have been way back in seventy-four. anyway, the red granite really is such a rich and beautiful color, don't you agree?" the trick will be to focus only on the absurd features of gritty, everyday life in this place. if i'm lucky and i do it right, the cosmic statements will take care of themselves.