the experience of not remembering your own birth

2/28/11

i would like to blog, gently, calmly, and ballsily, some of my thoughts about poetry and writing and the ritz that gets put on or doesn't get put on. i will blog these thoughts in between the blood bar gif, which doesn't work as it should, and the "dude you're a nut job" emo kid below. i will also do this while watching the nuggets/hawks game, which is about to start on altitude tv.

first off, poetry is not important. i know this sounds like a dumb thing for a guy who goes to school for poetry and who has a book of poetry published by a small press to say. what i mean is that poetry is no more important than a glass of water or a leftover chicken nugget. it is the chicken nugget and the idea of the chicken nugget. i want to find out the potential of the chicken nugget, how the chicken nugget can be used to save humanity.

i don't have a fever. i am sitting in a room. that is entirely factual.



the factuality of this event is not exciting, just like the factuality/actuality of an entire lived life is not, on its own, interesting. there has to be some sort of context, something outside of the factuality/actuality of life. is this spirituality? i don't know.

i've been trying to figure out, lately, the difference between my life and everything that is not my life. i don't know what that statement means, or whether or not it's true. after all "trying" is not something that can be proven.

kenyon martin just stole the ball and dunked it. the announcer said, "bye bye" when kenyon was on his way to the basket. the nuggets are losing 21-13.

the nuggets are still losing 21-13 because it's a commercial break. in a few minutes "the nuggets are losing 21-13" will not be true, which is why facts are not important. "justin bieber is a boy." well, maybe tomorrow he will get a sex change or maybe even a sex erasure. there is something more in the world than the facts that we all possess and project with our actions and words.

now the score is 21-15.

i find facts to be a means of dulling experience and truth in the real sense, that is reality that is constantly changing. for example. "i have a book of poetry published and have another on the way sometime soon." this is a fact. it doesn't make me happy or sad. likewise, "i did not get a teaching position at my school." this is another fact that does not affect my emotions. emotions don't seem to belong to reality the way that many people believe they do, at least in my experience, which may or may not be real, which may or may not be comparable to the experience of others. it is something.

i find poetry to be a way to create an emotional experience for myself. the act of writing can produce a catharsis or some similar experience that makes me feel like a human being or at least something different from my day to day experience as a human being. unfortunately, this experience does not last long. the poem remains an artifact of this emotion. sometimes the poem is able to recreate the emotion in me, and maybe in others, though the experience in others is probably very different from the experience that i have with the poem.

experience changes.

i haven't read very many poems lately that made me feel emotion the way that i'd like to. emotion, for me, has come easier from movies and music, mostly movies. some poets that have created strong emotions in me include frank o'hara, frank stanford, dorothea lasky, william bronk, anne carson in nox. here is a song that evokes incredibly strong emotions in me.



these poets and this song and the movies i love are able to evoke emotion through directness and a treatment of reality as something that is far too complicated to understand, so the only way is the direct route, which is a route that is often without end.

3/21/11

this sentence is being writ like weeks after the previous sentence. the nuggets beat the hawks. i just reread my thoughts and i can see a thought process that existed on that night that is similar now but does not completely relate to my experience then. it's like watching your hair grow.



and my hair has grown, maybe not all that noticeably, but it has. it's only been a couple weeks, but my hair has grown and the weather has become increasingly more bearable.

also, i made this change to my body while trying to see how far i could move my body from one point of physical contact with the earth to another point of physical contact with the earth.



if i write a poem right now it will probably not seem like a poem for a very long time to me. i think the desire to create an emotional experience alongside the creation of the poem seems like it comes from the awareness that language is unemotional without the context. i don't often understand my own relation to the poem, how my own life and my experience living it gives the poem context or vice versa. it's like there's a gap between language and reality (what i call my experience of life) and the emotion arises from finding myself hovering between the two. at times language seems like another form of living. it becomes a dream. inside the dream i am able to relinquish control of my feelings. inside the dream i can love at an unstoppable capacity or seek ultimate destruction.

is it possible that language destroys its own power once the word is assigned meaning. can the musical properties of language ever overcome this? can images overcome this.

film will always be a more powerful artform than poetry.



i have no desire to live exclusively inside my own reality. i have infinite realities. i want to use poetry to try and touch upon these realities, at least a few them.

"i" is a way of leaving the body. fuck the body. i was a ballerina and i jumped over the entire audience.

i have to wonder if the sound of language (or of the voice) will ever be able to completely create the images to correspond with the sounds. probably not. film will always be a more powerful artform than poetry. i cannot think of a more complete, communal experience than that which is (or must be) involved in the making of a movie. it is experience. it is a document of reality that does not include all reality or exclude that which is not reality. a poem on the page or on the screen is simply a shadow made by the hands as the hands move to create an impression of reality. a poem can never and should never be real.

when i watch a movie i can't help but think, "this actor has a life outside of this film," and i love that, for me, both lives are just as true.

now it's evening and i'm about to watch the nuggets/raptors game. i thought about liveblogging the game but that seems like a gimmick because this blog post is not about basketball.

3/28/11

it's been a month since i started this blog post. i don't think i have any true beliefs about poetry at the moment except that the only thing to believe in regards to poetry is that i should write it.

the other night i had a dream where i was playing basketball against a team of pastors and when i violently rejected one of the minister's shots i turned to him and yelled, "I AM THE FUCKING DEVIL," which is the most power i've felt in a long time.

today i received a prayer rug in the mail. it came from these people.

here i am holding the prayer rug with my hair that continues to grow.



it also came with a large image of the crucified christ. next to christ it says, "God Is Watching OUR VERY THOUGHTS. You are holding awesome power in your hand with this sealed prophetic word, which is part of this letter to you that you just read. Be sure to mail your prayer requests to the Church."



i didn't read the letter that they sent me because it had too many bolded words, annoyingly inconsistent capitalization, and a lot of red underlining. it made my eyes burn a little. and like saul turning into paul i felt slightly different. i felt the deep, misguided concern of the world. i felt awesome.

but i don't see change in the world, just the gelatin-like quiver that is human beings trying to make sense of it all without seeming stupid.

the prayer rug, made of paper, came with a sase for me to include a prayer for another person. i'm supposed to send the prayer rug back so they can send it the prayer's recipient. i don't think i'm going to do that. prayers don't belong on paper, if they belong. a prayer is as useful as a poem.