Keep passing the open windows

Weekend Assignment #316: National Poetry Month

As April wraps up, let’s not let it get away without celebrating National Poetry Month. For this assignment, please share with us something about poetry. Tell us about your favorite poet, or quote us a few lines of your favorite poem, or if poetry doesn’t happen to be something you enjoy, tell us why!

Extra Credit: Write a Haiku!

Me and poetry have had a long, storied,and semi-tragic love affair. I took creative writing twice, and both times flunked. Lowest scores? Big heaping vats of iambic pentameter. I could do free verse, but I wasn’t a big fan of most. The first poem to rock my world, truly was called Something as it really is.

I am going to burn down the world

I am going to tear down everything

that cannot stand alone

I am going to turn ideals to shit

I am going to shove hope up your ass

I am going to reduce everything

that stands to rubble

And then I am going to burn the rubble

And then I am going to scatter the ashes

And then maybe someone will be able to see

Something as it really is

-Mel Lyman(Apocalypse Culture.ed. By Adam Parfrey)

To say that this imprinted on my nineteen year old depressive nihilistic brain like a hot iron would be an understatement. This was poetry that spoke, that rocked, meant something. I told one of my coworkers at the bookstore about this piece, and he said “If you like it so much, why not get up on stage and read it? They’ve got an open mike night at Cafe Kismet.

Cafe Kismet, for those of you reading who didn’t live in Waukegan, Illinois during the nineties, was as close to a liberal enclave as the far north suburbs of Chicago got. It served fancy coffee, pastries, and more smarter than you attitude than a bus full of Noam Chomskys. So, as a college age smartass, I was instantly hooked.

I can say that those times at Kismet over the years certainly broadened my horizons. I got introduced to Henry Rollins, zine culture, and the peculiar pleasures and pains of dating bisexual women at that place. I made new friends, new enemies,and got the nerve to write poetry again.

Nation of Rebels

We all shine on…

Just as long as we got canvas Cons

Don’t conform, Don’t conform, Don’t conform

I’m really not a yuppie

No, I’m not a wombat dancer

(Where do Doc Martin’s profits go?)

Yes, at Kismet, you are a target market

chew on that, oh artsy ones

If we’re so different,

Why do you all look the same?

-Trevor Curtis, 1992

I chose that poem because it was the last I ever read onstage at Kismet. The owner Lorenzo had decided his profit margins(yay socialism!) were not large enough, so he started cracking down on how many people were coming in, how much they were buying, yadda yadda yadda. My friend Chris had gotten banned form the place, and I wanted to follow suit. My disillusionment was crystallized by my then girlfriend cheating on me with a girl who looked like DJ Qualls from Road Trip. I’ll wait for that image to get out of your head for a minute.

But my disillusionment had been codified by a young man who came up every week, and read a long rambling poem about mine workers in Chile. It was heart rending, descriptive, and read in a monotone. It was the poetic equivalent of “dark and stormy night” every week. Finally, I’d had enough and asked the guy if he’d ever even been to Chile.  I actually asked him while he was on stage. He got really upset and stalked off, so I guess I’d hit a nerve. About this time poetry slams started gaining ground, and I could never deal with those. If I want poetry as competition, I’ll listen to rap, thank you.

So I’m forty now. I have my slim volume of poetry on my bookshelf, A reminder of who I once was, and in some ways will always be. Poetry can be life affirming, it can be beautiful, and some days, like all art forms, it’s a two dollar hooker in an alley.

Extra credit:

Poetry is a

blind warrior in lead chains

hoping for quick death