07-04-2023, 03:02 PM
This is a good poem. None of the poems I post here are poems I love. I love women and trees, not poems. Both are cut down and spent on poems. This poem comes up a lot. It's the kind of poem people think Bukowski writes. It's the thing people who know they are poets write before they write poems, before they know that the poetry that they attack is the poetry they will be if they are given the chance.
And this is why this is a good poem. It's a poem that says all that poets who are poets but not yet writers wish to say. Bukowski made an art of it the way Jim Morrison made an art of being young and hot and having a deep voice in a college town. The way Maya Angelou made an art of being black and abused and afraid under a house in silence. The way Lewis Carroll talked nonsense, instead of doing what would be too much sense to an 11 year old girl. The way Christy Brown probably wouldn't have even thought to paint, had he had a hand at hand.
And if Rimbaud went to Africa, So what?!, on this July spangled day. Bukowski dead in America. James Baldwin, a name few have heard, none have read. Here:
(What, you was expecting me not to make a connection between Rimbaud and black people?)
Why Rimbaud Went to Africa by Jim Carroll
poetry isn’t literary
poetry isn’t sure which fork to
use
poetry can’t name the parts of speech
fill out a grant application
logroll
poetry doesn’t like cappuccino
poetry doesn’t want to be printed in a
small press edition with its name on the
cover and get reviewed in 2 little magazines
read by 3 people
argued over by 8
poetry doesn’t care about glory
glory is nice but poetry figures it’s
dessert
poetry doesn’t want to get laid
poetry might want to get drunk but
that’s only self defense
poetry doesn’t want to traipse around Europe
and collect stray bits of wisdom
from ruined empires
that it can show like slides when it gets home
poetry has a headache
poetry is a slingshot
a war you can carry in your pocket
a better way to die
the kind of fire that never goes out
and never gives an inch
poetry wants to be on every street corner
hissing from the cracks in the sidewalks
from the columns of print in the newspapers
on the lips of people on buses going to their
miserable jobs in the morning
poetry wants to be
in the prayers of dogs and the
screams of acrobats
in the terror of politicians
and the dreams of beautiful women
poetry wants to be
an eye through which the world will see itself and
tremble
poetry doesn’t want to
die in the gutter
it already knows how
poetry doesn’t want to sparechange strolling professors
and millionaires
wear anything but blood
have conversations with college students about
the meaning of life
because a bad wind is coming
you can smell it in the air
the pollution of the cities
mixed with the odor of rotting souls
the wind will climb
it will have little sense of humor
it will not want cappuccino
or reviews
or girlfriends
or anything else
except the death of
everything we love
Somehow, anyhow. DH Lawrence can make even the silliest thing feel more polished, more real:
If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.
Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.
Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.
Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.
Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.
Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!
And this is why this is a good poem. It's a poem that says all that poets who are poets but not yet writers wish to say. Bukowski made an art of it the way Jim Morrison made an art of being young and hot and having a deep voice in a college town. The way Maya Angelou made an art of being black and abused and afraid under a house in silence. The way Lewis Carroll talked nonsense, instead of doing what would be too much sense to an 11 year old girl. The way Christy Brown probably wouldn't have even thought to paint, had he had a hand at hand.
And if Rimbaud went to Africa, So what?!, on this July spangled day. Bukowski dead in America. James Baldwin, a name few have heard, none have read. Here:
(What, you was expecting me not to make a connection between Rimbaud and black people?)
Why Rimbaud Went to Africa by Jim Carroll
poetry isn’t literary
poetry isn’t sure which fork to
use
poetry can’t name the parts of speech
fill out a grant application
logroll
poetry doesn’t like cappuccino
poetry doesn’t want to be printed in a
small press edition with its name on the
cover and get reviewed in 2 little magazines
read by 3 people
argued over by 8
poetry doesn’t care about glory
glory is nice but poetry figures it’s
dessert
poetry doesn’t want to get laid
poetry might want to get drunk but
that’s only self defense
poetry doesn’t want to traipse around Europe
and collect stray bits of wisdom
from ruined empires
that it can show like slides when it gets home
poetry has a headache
poetry is a slingshot
a war you can carry in your pocket
a better way to die
the kind of fire that never goes out
and never gives an inch
poetry wants to be on every street corner
hissing from the cracks in the sidewalks
from the columns of print in the newspapers
on the lips of people on buses going to their
miserable jobs in the morning
poetry wants to be
in the prayers of dogs and the
screams of acrobats
in the terror of politicians
and the dreams of beautiful women
poetry wants to be
an eye through which the world will see itself and
tremble
poetry doesn’t want to
die in the gutter
it already knows how
poetry doesn’t want to sparechange strolling professors
and millionaires
wear anything but blood
have conversations with college students about
the meaning of life
because a bad wind is coming
you can smell it in the air
the pollution of the cities
mixed with the odor of rotting souls
the wind will climb
it will have little sense of humor
it will not want cappuccino
or reviews
or girlfriends
or anything else
except the death of
everything we love
Somehow, anyhow. DH Lawrence can make even the silliest thing feel more polished, more real:
If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.
Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.
Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.
Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.
Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.
Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!