puddles...
sometimes i wonder if i should have taken everyone’s advice and tried to be a real writer.
not that i think my writing is super good (although i admit i get more and more pleased every time i write something new) but i am willing to put more effort into it than just about anything else.
i don’t research new art techniques unless i see something that i really like and want to emulate.
i don’t research new ways to play or write music unless, again, i am trying to emulate something.
but when i write, i spend more time researching than actually writing. and not researching shit so i can copy it, but simply for my own self advancement.
i’ll spend hours just going through a dictionary looking for words i don’t know. something in the definition will lead me several hundred pages back, to look at another word. this will go on and on, sometimes for hours, and i’ll end up with only a handful of words that i am interested in and want to use at some point.
i was doing that tonight, and eventually landed on the word cerebrospinal.
now that gets me into the other part of the research. that word, cerebrospinal, has now led me on a search through tons of medical text books and websites to find out how the nervous system works, and how it can be effected by internal and external forces, and how it is connected to the rest of the body.
i spent hours doing that tonight. i still am. and all the information i’ve taken in, and taken notes on, and studied, much like a medical student would, is all gonna be condensed into nothing. maybe fifty lines of poetry, where i could have just as easily substituted easy words- words i already knew, and that others would understand. and i could have made the simple nose to brain, stomach to brain, lungs to brain, blood to brain highways, instead of trying to find all the pathways and receptors and shit.
i spent hours doing that tonight. i still am. and here’s the thing that makes me think i should have listened: i don’t regret wasting all that time. all that time was spent so that i can be happier with the final product. so that i can know that it turned out exactly the way i wanted it to and just "as close as i could get it".
another example would be how i spent three days (in between classes and shit) reading up on how rust works. in the end it all got used in two lines, describing rust eating through a robot’s cheek. i still never felt like that time was wasted.
so why didn’t i decide on this for a living?
i’ve had teachers telling me for the last eight years or so that i should pursue this.
i’ve friends and strangers tell me how much they like what i wrote (i’ve had more than one person tell me my writing made them cry, which is, i think, the best compliment i have gotten in my entire life).
i had an english teacher come up to me last year and say: "i know you write outside of class. i want to see it".
so i gave him a copy of my most recent zine a couple days later. a couple weeks after that he walks up and hands me a stack of papers. he tells me who he sent copies of the zine to, and what schools they teach at. he tells me that the stack of papers is all scholarship forms, scholarships he guarantees me i could get.
this was about a year ago, so the zine i gave him was about six months old then. a year and a half old now. i read it the other day, and compared to my writing that i am doing and excited about now, it sucks. out of about 25 or 30 pieces in that zine, there are, i think, two that i would ever consider printing again. so i can only imagine what he would say now.
so why didn’t i go with this? maybe the thought of actually being successful at something scared me; i mean, when this shit with the teacher happened i was in my fourth year at community college, having only passed a handful of classes that whole time. maybe it was because i’d watched my uncle bring himself to tears because he was writing item descriptions for catalogs and not doing book signing tours like his wife. maybe it was because the one girl i’ve ever really loved went to school as a creative writing major, and came back a junkie and even crazier than when she left. maybe it was because i had actually made a little money off my music and art, while all the writing i’d had published barely paid enough to cover my costs of sending it to the publisher.
i don’t know. i don;t think i regret it; i’m having fun doing what i’m doing now, and i can see myself doing it for the rest of my life, and besides that, i am so in debt with this current venture that dropping it now for something else would cripple me for years and years.
whatever... here’s what all those hours of research tonight led up to:
stave off loneliness
with fantasies of heroism
or infamy
or anything that means
i’m more than a puddle
being ground into
level loop olefin
by unaware converse
and imported heels
riparian bodies oblivious
dive in head first
swallow,
crush,
spike,
smoke
sweep the puddle
to a concentrated corner
where i can imagine myself
some form
fragments of flowers float
through cerebrospinal fluids
a bitter drink
bleeds through my stomach
dissolving in water
and flows through my veins
powder seeps through
mucous membranes
only to plunge into blood
a liquid is poured
straight into a vein
and a tar settles
to coat my lungs
the gasses skipping
all stops to my brain
and i’m back in the world where i matter
i’m kickin ass and taking names
i’m the center of attention
i’m the one buying
everyone’s drinks
my phone never stops ringing
and my door is beaten down
everybody loves me
or everybody hates me
but everybody knows my name
and when i come back
i’m somehow back in my house
back in my room
melting again
into that puddle
with a tendril and a cigarette
hanging out the window
i can hear you’re just
as lonely and me
but we can’t talk about that
so a stick in the mud reaches
for that pill and glass of water
and before too long
the clicks of your lighter
become the footsteps
of my followers
and your falling cigarette
becomes the bomb that’ll kill us all
not that i think my writing is super good (although i admit i get more and more pleased every time i write something new) but i am willing to put more effort into it than just about anything else.
i don’t research new art techniques unless i see something that i really like and want to emulate.
i don’t research new ways to play or write music unless, again, i am trying to emulate something.
but when i write, i spend more time researching than actually writing. and not researching shit so i can copy it, but simply for my own self advancement.
i’ll spend hours just going through a dictionary looking for words i don’t know. something in the definition will lead me several hundred pages back, to look at another word. this will go on and on, sometimes for hours, and i’ll end up with only a handful of words that i am interested in and want to use at some point.
i was doing that tonight, and eventually landed on the word cerebrospinal.
now that gets me into the other part of the research. that word, cerebrospinal, has now led me on a search through tons of medical text books and websites to find out how the nervous system works, and how it can be effected by internal and external forces, and how it is connected to the rest of the body.
i spent hours doing that tonight. i still am. and all the information i’ve taken in, and taken notes on, and studied, much like a medical student would, is all gonna be condensed into nothing. maybe fifty lines of poetry, where i could have just as easily substituted easy words- words i already knew, and that others would understand. and i could have made the simple nose to brain, stomach to brain, lungs to brain, blood to brain highways, instead of trying to find all the pathways and receptors and shit.
i spent hours doing that tonight. i still am. and here’s the thing that makes me think i should have listened: i don’t regret wasting all that time. all that time was spent so that i can be happier with the final product. so that i can know that it turned out exactly the way i wanted it to and just "as close as i could get it".
another example would be how i spent three days (in between classes and shit) reading up on how rust works. in the end it all got used in two lines, describing rust eating through a robot’s cheek. i still never felt like that time was wasted.
so why didn’t i decide on this for a living?
i’ve had teachers telling me for the last eight years or so that i should pursue this.
i’ve friends and strangers tell me how much they like what i wrote (i’ve had more than one person tell me my writing made them cry, which is, i think, the best compliment i have gotten in my entire life).
i had an english teacher come up to me last year and say: "i know you write outside of class. i want to see it".
so i gave him a copy of my most recent zine a couple days later. a couple weeks after that he walks up and hands me a stack of papers. he tells me who he sent copies of the zine to, and what schools they teach at. he tells me that the stack of papers is all scholarship forms, scholarships he guarantees me i could get.
this was about a year ago, so the zine i gave him was about six months old then. a year and a half old now. i read it the other day, and compared to my writing that i am doing and excited about now, it sucks. out of about 25 or 30 pieces in that zine, there are, i think, two that i would ever consider printing again. so i can only imagine what he would say now.
so why didn’t i go with this? maybe the thought of actually being successful at something scared me; i mean, when this shit with the teacher happened i was in my fourth year at community college, having only passed a handful of classes that whole time. maybe it was because i’d watched my uncle bring himself to tears because he was writing item descriptions for catalogs and not doing book signing tours like his wife. maybe it was because the one girl i’ve ever really loved went to school as a creative writing major, and came back a junkie and even crazier than when she left. maybe it was because i had actually made a little money off my music and art, while all the writing i’d had published barely paid enough to cover my costs of sending it to the publisher.
i don’t know. i don;t think i regret it; i’m having fun doing what i’m doing now, and i can see myself doing it for the rest of my life, and besides that, i am so in debt with this current venture that dropping it now for something else would cripple me for years and years.
whatever... here’s what all those hours of research tonight led up to:
stave off loneliness
with fantasies of heroism
or infamy
or anything that means
i’m more than a puddle
being ground into
level loop olefin
by unaware converse
and imported heels
riparian bodies oblivious
dive in head first
swallow,
crush,
spike,
smoke
sweep the puddle
to a concentrated corner
where i can imagine myself
some form
fragments of flowers float
through cerebrospinal fluids
a bitter drink
bleeds through my stomach
dissolving in water
and flows through my veins
powder seeps through
mucous membranes
only to plunge into blood
a liquid is poured
straight into a vein
and a tar settles
to coat my lungs
the gasses skipping
all stops to my brain
and i’m back in the world where i matter
i’m kickin ass and taking names
i’m the center of attention
i’m the one buying
everyone’s drinks
my phone never stops ringing
and my door is beaten down
everybody loves me
or everybody hates me
but everybody knows my name
and when i come back
i’m somehow back in my house
back in my room
melting again
into that puddle
with a tendril and a cigarette
hanging out the window
i can hear you’re just
as lonely and me
but we can’t talk about that
so a stick in the mud reaches
for that pill and glass of water
and before too long
the clicks of your lighter
become the footsteps
of my followers
and your falling cigarette
becomes the bomb that’ll kill us all