Monday, December 1, 2008

i bring you the previously unpublished and thought to be lost $$_A*HOWE_$$ poems


Looking through old draft posts on this blog, I came across these two unpublished posts by $$_A*HOWE_$$. Sitting in the depths of Blogger's catacombs, I read them with interest. To read a poem is one thing, but to a read a poem in this context is another - it brings up questions that can't be readily answered. Why didn't he finish these posts? Why did he leave the drafts up? Laziness? Forgetfulness? Or to be discovered? Or to be hidden for future use?

I realized when I was re-typing them here to be posted, that these two entries differ in fundamental ways. The first, "Untitled" (and Unfinished), was clearly meant to be in poetic or prose form. Lines were parsed, stanzas clearly delineated, and thoughts ramble on like a Kerouac paragraph. Halfway through typing up the second, "potpurri", it dawned upon me that it was perhaps not meant to be a poem. See, when viewing old drafts of others on the Blogger dashboard, the text is crunched into narrow columns, making even the most paragraphical posts come off as Shakespearean sonnets. However, I thought it worked well as a poem, and let the way it was chopped up stand. Read it as you will.

1. "Untitled"


driving me and gma to vote
up hill (suburb on a hill)
radio: literally the november rain guitar
solo; my huge desire for that to matter
[shrill candidate wife campaigining literally in
parking lot for husband...
...vote, no wait]
klosterman metaphysics, call it
wait, real metaphysics
desire to drape doilies of meaning onto the
crumbs and pebbles of our dioramas---all the
time
but voting
a hundred million people and change say I
Want This
and not a referendum on ice cream flavors
as awesome as that would be
but I Want This for my life
to be... represented by x or y
representation >> empathy in the broadest
sense >> mimesis, and self/circumstances-
as-universal
we do it in poems/to poets all the time
hell, think of any given sports championship
even neanderthal sportswriters have no
choice but to try on narratives like wedding
dresses
[newsweek about "never lost his ironic
detachment," thats exactly what i was
imagining a president of our generation
behaving as: 'i will fix this country. hah, no i
wont. but i really want to try! seriously!']

AND

okay, great, economic crisis
that being fine: watchment quote about
"cards on the table"
but also, reflection:
there is so much land
and food is so fundamentally affordable
that travis's longstanding thesis is true as
ever: everyone is fine, will be fine
even souplines had soup at the end of them
in fact
the only thing holding everyone from th

2. "potpurri"

fratboys the bugbear of middlebrow criticism
(limbo-bar usa today can thus praise the
"frat pack" and call them that without any
hand wringing)---and of course there are
kind 'n worldly members of fraternity in this
country, but there are also Jewish bank
moguls and african americans who can
never, will never, get their fill of
watermelon, and only alfred p. No One is
helped by focussing on these
subdemographix

realizing being home that openness to
strange experiences is fucking central to me
in terms of who i can like (need to
distinguish, phrasing and otherwise, from
the bullshit widespread "open to new
experiences!" like the purple sex pillow in
burn after reading)

and anyone can be! although probably true
that certain groups are worse about it---the
blacks, for example. no im kidding.
fraternity types, perhaps.

mt adams vs clifton <> manhattan vs
brooklyn

the bandana as not-douche signifier despite
the rest of what im wearing. mix and match,
right? mixing high and low is still in, right?

increasing my live-with-me stock living at
home: cleaning, etc.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

write poems about sexy stuff.

Anonymous said...

like ur diock