Rub Paw Press

I wrote this ‘poem’ on November eleventh, a few days after I had a party at my apartment:

‘If it weren’t so cold, we’d probably have an epidemic’

This party in my apartment has been fossilized cuz
the bottles are still
all over the floor and table
the windowsill too
like an image I can’t think of but less trite than
memories
and I’m probably too lazy to throw them out.

You see, the other ones from
the old party are sitting under the table,
where I hid them from my landlady
cuz she’s got a prying eye
that I’m trying to avoid
like something more thoughtful than
the plague
the Russians have started wearing masks again

quiet chuckle,
laughing while I collect fossils.

Today, I attended an “American Poetry Contest” that I was supposed to ‘judge’. The person in charge of this competition ‘had heard from someone that sometimes I write poetry’ and insisted that I read something. I browsed my tumblr and decided that this was the least vulgar/most suitable. I like/hate this, in the way that fathers feel let down when their child doesn’t make varsity/get into a good college/has unprotected sex etc.

I think in general when I write poetry I am ‘obviously trying to hard’. I think this is because I never went to workshops/only ever read poetry in liberal arts lit classes/always though Jose was better at it than I.

This poem was supposed to be ‘ironic’, supposed to serve as a ‘poetic excuse as to why I’m bad at poetry’. I was trying to use ‘cliche images in a non cliche way’ that was also relevant to current events/feelings/interpretations of society.

like an image I can’t think of but less trite than
memories

like something more thoughtful than
the plague

This attempt to use cliches as noncliches was supposed to be evident here. I was trying to be ‘ironically meaningful’. Being a college-educated individual, I am aware that memories are often embodied as/represented by objects in poetry. Here, I wanted to indicate that the ‘party mess/bottles’ represented my memories of recent party type events/thoughts of my recent relocation. At the same time, I wanted to show that, being a college-educated individual, I knew that this was a weak/lame/unimaginative image that to most has no real meaning to ‘real poets’. I also thought that in my post-party state, admitting my own shortcomings and inability to think of something better was ultimately ‘more real’ or at least ‘less terrible’. I thought I had found poetry in the mundane, and had thus given the cliche somewhat of a new meaning. Being ‘too lazy to throw them out’ was supposed again illustrate the problem of the bottles/trouble with cluttered memories/not knowing a better way to express myself.

Looking back, I think it falls short.

I then attempt to carry the ‘memory bottles’ into the second stanza, where they are hidden. I thought these ‘hidden bottles’ would communicate my magnitude of party & drinking/shame of being ‘socially’ and ‘physically’ messy. I think this was actually somewhat successful.

In the second example you see above, I again was trying to ‘refresh a cliche’ via the plague. ‘Avoiding something like the plague’ is such a common image I wanted to renew it with a similar ironic approach. Again, I attempt to communicated my reduced ‘post-party’ mental state through self-admission of lame imagery.  Again, I admit that I know using such a phrase is common/meaningless/really kinda dumb, but I tried to renew it with a slight nod towards ‘the swine flu epidemic’ and how all of the Russians were wearing masks like it was the end of the world. This was supposed to make it ‘alive’ cause the plague was something that people felt was real.

Here I really fail, being that I make it absolutely impossible to infer how ‘the Russians’ and ‘the plague’ are related, except if you knew exactly what was happening in the November of 2009 and were some sort of genius that somehow could figure out such an obtuse image. Should have thrown a ‘piggy flu’ in there for good measure/more clarity. The passage was also somehow supposed to show a disconnect between me and the Russians, but I absolutely fail to mention my own ‘masklessness’ in any way. As a whole, it’s horribly overpersonalized.

I also thought that using ‘classically unacceptable’ language would make me seem more ‘non-traditional’. Hence my use of ‘cuz’. It was also an aesthetic choice, I liked the way it looked. I left it at that because I didn’t want to overuse it/draw attention away from other things. Now I mostly see it as distracting. Maybe that’s a good thing.

There’s one thing that did seem to work when reading it aloud today. Concerning the tone, the poem was supposed to be funny. Or at least not so serious at the surface level. I think that’s hard to tell from my standpoint as the author, but the Russians laughed at the ‘right parts’. So I guess not all was lost.