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wonder why i didn't... (warning ADD kids, this is long)


vinyl junkie

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[edit] the writing refered to in here is not graff...[/edit]

 

 

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

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well, you're no rakim.. but i got beef w/ poetry anyway.

 

like the only straight up 'poem' i was ever impressed by was the jabberwhocky

 

in any event, it sounds like it's a productive thing for you to do, whether it's for a living or not. yeah, perhaps you're afraid of success.. plenty are. or afraid of failure if they apply themselves, that is.

 

so just keep doing it. you can always go for it once you get a lil grip in your pocket.

 

good luck w/ the school thing.

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that's it. i give up. just give me a shit-ton of your poetry and that'll be the lyrics for the band, because my shit sucks compared to yours. we'll sit down and format it together to make sure you'll be into it.

 

seriously fucker. we'll change all the lyrics before we rerecord the cd when clint gets back.

 

ps i'm serious.

 

pps how does rust work?

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i got a similar situation, except not with poetry and im to lazy to write. i should write and im told i should write but the fact is, when it comes down to me writing for my own enjoyment rather then an assignment or somthing someones asked me to do, i just dont do it.

 

so you 1uped me there. if you enjoy then fuckin do it, those are my heroes. anyone that makes a living doing what they love, or at very least, enjoy and dont feel time has been wasted.

 

although this is where i would normal pour my infinite wisdom upon your feeble mind, i dont have any. i aint gone frather then once upon a time...

 

stick with it.

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well shit... how rust works:

 

short version: when water hits iron the water mixes with carbon dioxide in the air and forms a carbonic acid... the acid forms and dissolves the iron, some of the water breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen... then the oxygen released from the water mixes with the dissolved iron and turns into iron oxide* and also release electrons... the electrons move on to another piece of the iron and (i think, i'm a little shady on this part) attract more carbonic acid... boom... rust...

 

*on a related note, when you look at analog audio tape, the brown color comes from a coating of ferric oxide, aka iron oxide, aka rust... it's the rust that gets organized into waves by the magnet in a record head...

 

ps, gfresh: you realize that whole thing is about me being a junkie, yeah? can we put it right befor your songs about the evils of tv?

 

:lol:

 

cheers fuckers...

 

 

incidently, today, the day after writing all the shit in this thread, that same teacher sent me an email saying he wants to publish some things i gave him back then... weird...

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rust ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rst)

n.

 

1. Any of various powdery or scaly reddish-brown or reddish-yellow hydrated ferric oxides formed on iron and iron-containing materials by low-temperature oxidation in the presence of water.

2. Any of various metallic coatings, especially oxides, formed by corrosion.

3. A stain or coating resembling iron rust.

4. Deterioration, as of ability, resulting from inactivity or neglect.

5. Botany.

1. Rust fungus.

2. A plant disease caused by a rust fungus, characterized by reddish or brownish spots on leaves, stems, and other parts.

6. A strong brown.

 

 

 

Nice poem, man. Dictionary.com is a good reference guide if you're ever sitting at a computer writing and you have a word you think will sound real good but you're not sure how to spell it or if it is a real word. Writing can help you sort things out in your head, keep it up.

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haha good lookin out on the rust knowledge.

 

And what cultural said..I get the same shit. Just sitting down to write gives me no enjoyment but when I have to write essays and such they are usually the shit depending on my mood and how lazy I feel. I been hearing the shit from my teachers about how I should write since back in the elementary school days winning young authors awards. I think that is why I like writing rhymes a lot. It's writing but you don't have to write as much as you would with a book or whatever. Also, you can have more fun with it. I know one day I will do something with writing either books or songs cus that shits just been my gift my whole life.

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cultural and gucci- that's the thing... i hate writing when i have to... i have never done well with essays and shit at school...

if i have to do it, i'll put it off; if i don;t have to do it, i'll totally geek out on it...

 

and i've gotten paid decently for it, and i've gotten completely fucked as well (this was 5 years ago i think, and it still pisses me off... and the company is still making money off it)... it all depends...

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Well, if you can write really good then I would say stick with it. There are all kinds of things you can do with it. You could stick with the poems and just get really good with that. Or if your all around good at writing then you could maybe do books, or even ghostwrite songs. If you think poetry isn't going to take you as far, then experiment with other things that stem from writing. If poetry is the only kind of writing you feel, then I would say just hit that shit hard. Keep writing and writing, build them skills up. If you stay with it and are passionate enough, one day you will strike it big.

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Well I didn't read all your post, but I did read the poem.

 

Heres my critique.

 

Mabye I'm way off but what you have written appears to be confessional poetry to me. By confessional poetry I mean its centred in the your ego, it's based in your private emotionals and feelings. While there is ample confessional poetry that is great ( I'm partial to a bit of Sylvia Plath), almost every poet writes it without being aware that they are writting it (and without getting into a big thing about the merits of conciouse vs sub conciouse writting . I feel its ok to say that if your not aware of the literary trend your taking part in, your work will loose some value). Mabye your not one of these cases but I just thought I'de point it out.

 

Anyway, confessional poetry is fine by me. But it must hold some relevance (sylvia plaths poetry on her personal experience's related heavily to feminism for example and made you think about that). If its just a poem thats wanking on about how you feel without any relation to anything more engaging, then most of the time, I'll feel worse of for having read it. While I did like some parts of your poem and wouldn't be as harsh as to say that. I didn't feel like your poem did anything more then just express an emotion of yours. That is to say, it did not really engage me or make me think or even really feel much at all.

 

Aside from that I think your line breaks are a bit off in places. Alot of it is cool but in some parts the flow is disrupted. I think your trying to create a certain type of emphasis or omnience in doing this. But personally I don't think its working, an example of that is

"or anything that means

i’m more than a puddle "

^ I think that would be much better as one line.

 

Um also a tittle would be cool.

 

Having said that there are some really effective lines in it I think the stanza

"a bitter drink

bleeds through my stomach

dissolving in water

and flows through my veins"

is great

 

and

"and your falling cigarette

becomes the bomb that’ll kill us all" is also a very good image.

 

Anyway theres my little litterary wank on. I'm currently doing a creative writing course. Unfortunately all the stuff for it is offline. But if you want I can give you some hints as to what I'm being taught so you can research it for yourself ( you may already know about alot of the stuff.. but if your intrested holler )

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