Multiconstruct

Watching The New World, the only Terrence Malick film I haven’t seen. Its pretty good but i’ve been way to restless to just watch a movie for a while. At least one on the TV. I got a late start on it, as its 2 hr 15 min but I was still giving a crack at the novel in a month. Got discouraged  with my process. Might not be terminal but it sure ain’t healthy for getting a novel done. Maybe I’ll just have to try to publish a book of abandoned first chapters.

Maybe I’ll just blog. I was blogging every day most of last month and I rather enjoyed it. Managed to create a poetry page, which has allowed me to know for sure what I have up and gives me the chance to put up more stuff. It was fun reading a lot of my stuff too. Only found 2 duplicates.

One noticeable omission was Untitled #1 as I only had the second stanza up and that fairly recently. I wrote it as three separate pieces all in fairly quick succession as well as a handful more in what I remember as a red notebook maybe all in the same day. It was flowing then, I couldn’t contain it. I couldn’t get anyone to listen to it though. No one much wants to hear what a crazy person has to say. Definitely the worst part of a mental illness is how people treat you. fortunately I was protected by boisterous manic self confidence or I might have despaired not to create. I kind of wish I had spent more time writing, it was good stuff and am thankful for what survives. A lot of it I wrote and gave away so there might be more out there.

This one is three I pulled out of the notebook and put in my head when I was trying to sing with Milk Carton. It was a metal kind of song with heavy base and I tried out four as a spoken word piece. The first stanza was the most gothic and a lead in, the second I thought went with it and the third and a lost fourth verse I tried out and ended up keeping the third only as the song came together.

I used it as my first poem in the first poetry slam I was ever in down in Fayette Arkansas when I was visiting my buddy Jay with Rebecca in the fall of 1998. It was a gothic slam as it was near Halloween and I think people just liked it because it wasn’t as cheesy as the ghost and goblin stuff other people were doing. I also did” I don’t go to zoos” which I also need to put up, which scored a 9.7 from the English teacher judge and I ended up winning the slam and getting $25. Context really hit me, from the unlistened to ramblings of a mad man to getting 25 bucks to say it, context is everything.

Untitled #1

Slash, feint, perry

The mind is a weapon

Carving subject from object

Truth from fiction

The rational mind unleashed has become a threat to all life

And yet we still look to it for rescue

Salvation even

From the very problems it has created

Once there were alternatives

Other ways of knowing, of being, of caring

But those days are gone

Mowed down under the scythe of technological advancement

Until only It remains

Silent and gleaming

In the new darkness

Of unasked questions

Because there are no more words.

Spring can be as cold as winter

For the mind without purpose

The heart without love

New life is inevitable

But not your life

Not our lives

Our Acts of Being

Are as meaningful

Or as meaningless

As we allow them to be.

Spring can be as cold as winter

When we refuse to allow

The Life Force to shine out

Brilliantly and forcefully.

And what is to be done

With this world of ours

Seeingly able to absorb all of our passion

Yet rippling the missteps into torrents

The excuses mount steeds of excess

To ride over the backs of the innocent

The holy ones without voice

Watch and listen and learn