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there’s an infestation in my mind’s imagination

i hope they choke on smoke

'cause i'm smoking them out the basement

this is not rap, this is not hip hop

just another attempt to make the voices stop

rapping to prove nothing just writing to say something ‘cause i wasn’t the only one who wasn’t rushing to say nothing

this doesn’t mean i lost my dream it’s just right now i got a really crazy mind to clean, know what i mean?

no, i didn’t understand a thing you said, if i didn’t know better i’d guess you’re all already dead

mindless zombies walking around with a limp and a hunch,

saying stuff like “you only live once”

yeah, once

you got one time to figure it out,

one time to twist and one time to shout

one time to think and i say we start now

because death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.

- “street poetry” by tyler joseph

I figured for my last poetry response I'd write about the first poem I posted here, the "favorite poem" I brought in on the second day of class. It's an amazing work of spontaneous rap by Tyler Joseph, who is absolutely a god of lyrics and writing. You can watch his performance of it here. I love this poem to death. It's the story of a troubled mind, chased by fear and doubt and death, and the struggle to overcome it all.

In this poem Tyler is calling out to everyone out there who has the same problems as him. Everyone who's ever been confused and tortured by their own mind and needed an outlet, like poetry, like music, to pour their soul into. He wants you to stop fearing, and start living. He wants you to see death as an inspiration rather than a cage. He wants you to think. You're the rabbit and you're running faster each day.

#responses

there are few things i love more in this world

than the thrill of the pit.

the ability to lose oneself completely,

to jump in time with a thousand people

and scream together in one voice,

must be a gift from a higher power,

the closest thing

we have to magic.

#original

Epitaph for David Kammerer

A weary lover

once he was

Who wept as only

a lover does---

or else he laughed

as a lover must;

now his mouth

is ringed with dust.

For he is dead,

and now will heal

The wound which he

alone could feel.

The credit's his---

He was quite brave,

To shut his loving

In his grave.

- Allen Ginsberg

Continuing on the Kill Your Darlings theme, I chose this Allen Ginsberg poem written for David Kammerer after his death. I think this is a really awesome and dark poem. I love the structure of it and the rhythm it has. The rhymes are great and very clever. I like how rhymes like this are typically light-hearted, but this poem is decidedly not, so it takes you by surprise.

In the poem Allen comes to the conclusion that death was the only way to "heal" David's lovesickness. His love was unrequited ("a wound which only he could feel") and Allen thinks he was "brave" to die for it. My favorite line is "and now his mouth is ringed with dust", because until this line the poem could just be about a past lover, but after it it becomes clear that it is about a dead lover.

#responses

i can’t understand how some people believe that they dont matter.

i think you should treat yourself as the center of your own personal universe, because you are.

if it turns out that i imagined the world, i dont want to have wasted my time worrying about what these figments thought of me.

there may be seven billion people on this planet but you only get to live the life of one.

- rr

#original

Hymn to the Virgin

[David Kammerer to Lucien Carr]

Thou who art afraid to have me, lest thou lose me;

Great anodyne, thyself compound of pain;

Thou comforter discomfited;

Thou strength so fraught with feebleness,

And mind unsure, unmade;

So prudent and unwise;

Thou at once ravished and virgin-bride;

Thou happiness sans happiness;

Thou God, so mortal coiled,

Thou terror, so afraid;

Lover, asleep: celibate untouchable, awake;

Oh contradiction contradicts!

Unwrite thy tight braced treasure,

Thy rigid regular relax,

Thy self-pent, hoarded soul release;

Give, share, lose; know entire co-mingledness

Lest we both die isolate and unbloomed.

- Allen Ginsberg

I'm obsessed with 'Kill Your Darlings', which is great because it's helping me get my poetry work done. This poem by Allen Ginsberg is one that John Krokidas and Austin Bunn originally had in the movie but decided it was too formal, so they 'remixed' it into the final poem that they used, which I already responded too (no surprise there). Anyway, the poem itself is really interesting. Allen wrote it in the voice of his friend David Kammerer and addressed it to Lucien Carr, who, only days before the poem was written, had murdered David with a boy scout knife and dumped him in the Hudson River.

It's a sad poem of unrealized romance; a plea to Lucien to allow himself to stop holding back and really feel. Allen clearly sympathized with David a lot, and wished the events had turned out differently. Maybe he suspected that if Lucien had reciprocated David's feelings, the murder would never have occurred. Perhaps he saw David's death as a failure on Lucien's part, and wrote this poem to point it out to him.

The picture I chose to pair with this is a screenshot of Dane Dehaan's portrayal of Lucien Carr in Kill Your Darlings because his expression here is what I think his reaction might be to this poem, and because he is an absolute angel.

#responses

"post-human"

you shouldn’t fall for this boy. he’s blond and angel-faced but there’s something dark and bruised lurking in his touch and in the whites of his eyes. when your blood mixes it’s a natural disaster. he ruins everything he loves and the worst part is that you want it, you want his fingernails under your skin and his tongue in your mouth. you want him to take you apart and crudely put you back together with no regard for what you once were. you want to be his creation, his new vision.

you don’t stop him from chewing you up and spitting you out.

#original

A girl who is bespectacled

She may not get her nectacled

But safety pins and bassinets

Await the girl who fassinets.

- Ogden Nash

This poem was recited in the movie Kill Your Darlings and I didn't find out what it means until after my fifth time watching it. I had to do a bit of research on Ogden Nash to figure it out. Ogden Nash was an American poet famous for his light, humorous rhymes, which often included made up words. This poem contains two of these made up words - 'nectacled' and 'fassinets'. After repeating the poem over and over in my head I was able to decipher their intended meanings. The poem itself is a response to Dorothy Parker's dictum, "Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses". With this context in mind, Ogden's poem and its imaginary words start to make sense. "A girl who is bespectacled / she may not get her nectacled" means that a girl who has glasses may not attract men ("nectacled" here sounding like "neck tickled", referring really to any kind of physical affection), but she will also be spared from the fate of the girls who do attract men ("fassinets" sounding like "fascinates"), which is getting married and becoming a mother (safety pins and bassinets both referring to children). It's a playful little poem and I liked the process of trying to find out what the made-up words meant.

#responses

"ode to being alive" - rr

i can see life beneath your skin

a fragile, fleeting flicker in your exposed throat

you are made of many things,

a billion particles of dust and blood

bound together by a network of wires wrapped around a bony cord.

with every breath you take a piece of the universe into yourself to fuel your beating heart

and in this way you are a part of everything

and everything is a part of you

#original

Be careful.

You are not in wonderland

I have heard the strange madness

long growing in your soul.

But you are fortunate.

In your ignorance

In your isolation,

you who have suffered

Find where love hides.

Give. Share. Lose.

Lest we die unbloomed.

This poem was written by Austin Bunn and John Krokidas in the style of Allen Ginsberg for their movie 'Kill Your Darlings'. The movie is a biographical drama about the early life of the famous beat poet Allen Ginsberg, particularly his relationship with Lucien Carr, and to a lesser extent, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. In the film, this poem is the first example of the 'new vision' that Allen writes. He writes it for Lucien, who he is in love with, and directs it toward him when he recites it for the first time. It's a very poignant moment in the film, as before this scene, Lucien was doubting if Allen would be able to write such poetry, and after it he knows he's found the right guy for the job.

The most interesting part of this poem, I think, is how it was written. The writers of the movie (and this poem) describe Allen Ginsberg as having a "magpie" style, where he stole from common speech and repurposed the words into his poetry. In the movie, a lot of the words in the poem were said to him beforehand, and you see his process of collecting these words and incorporating them into his work. The poem itself is beautiful; despite the danger and madness of the word, it is an invitation to live and love.

#responses

(this is an experimental poem i created from my dreams. i used a program to generate the most commonly-used words in my dream write-ups from last summer to now, and put them in a cloud so i could see what i dream about most.)

#original

Flogged lame with legs

Shot through the head with balled brains

Shot blind with eyes

Nailed down by his own ribs

Strangled just short of his last gasp

By his own windpipe

Clubbed unconscious by his own heart

Seeing his life stab through him, a dream flash

As he drowned in his own blood

Dragged under by the weight of his guts

Uttering a bowel-emptying cry which was his roots tearing out

Of the bedrock atom

Gaping his mouth and letting the cry rip through him as at a distance

And smashed into the rubbish of the ground

He managed to hear, faint and far - ‘It’s a boy!’

Then everything went black.

"A Kill - Ted Hughes"

This is another Ted Hughes poem that I liked when we read it in class. if you couldn't tell by my writing and response choices, I really like gruesome, bloody, or anatomical subjects the most, and this was perfect for me. Ted Hughes really has a way with gore.

This poem is about, strangely, birth. At first read it looks like it's about death in every way - the character is flogged, shot, nailed down, strangled, clubbed, stabbed, drowned, and dragged under by its own body. You'd expect him to die, but no - the last lines explain that he has actually just been born. I love how the author tricks you into thinking the opposite with his word choices. The concept is actually really intriguing - in comparing birth to death, he makes it seem like it's the death of the crow's spirit as it gets trapped inside a physical body. This would explain why it is said that his own body is what is killing him. He is strangled, drowning in his own brand new physical form, ripped away from the freedom of the spirit world, or even just from the womb, where he is weightless. It's a very interesting poem!

#responses

"test tube romance" i want to study you in a bubble in a place where even the most minute changes can be observed i want to investigate the miracle of your anatomy record every breath and pump of blood and twitch of muscle i want to open you up and catalogue you, give names to your organs and bones count every rib and vertebrae and nerve ending i want your measurements, calculations, percentages and numbers i want you spread out on spreadsheets and scrawled out in textbooks sampled and examined and analyzed i want to love you scientifically. - rr

Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death

Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death

Who owns these still-working lungs? Death

Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death

Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death

Who owns these questionable brains? Death

All this messy blood? Death

These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death

This wicked little tongue? Death

This occasional wakefulness? Death

Given, stolen, or held pending trial? Held

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death

Who owns all of space? Death

Who is stronger than hope? Death

Who is stronger than the will? Death Stronger than love? Death

Stronger than life? Death

But who is stronger than Death?

Me, evidently

Pass, Crow

"Examination at the Womb-Door" by Ted Hughes

We read this poem in class and I really liked it. Ted Hughes' crow poems are all very interesting. I like how all together they tell a cohesive story, but also work on their own as standalone poems. This one specifically was interesting to me because of the life and death aspect, and the awesome way he describes each part of the crow's body.

The beginning back and forth of the poem is referring to how, since death claims all life eventually, every part of the crow's body belongs to death. However, at the end, the crow acknowledges that in being alive right now, it is actually stronger than death, despite being owned by it. The title of the poem leads us to believe that this conversation and acknowledgement is taking place right when the crow is born, at the "womb-door," which makes it even more intriguing. The crow has just been born and is learning its place in the continuum of life and death.

#responses

"keep it down"

it's a distraction from the pain,

and it's supposed to help, even if it doesn't

it gets lodged in my throat,

and no matter how hard i try i cant swallow it down

it spills from under my eyelids and out of my mouth,

and it's a catharsis, a purge

it comes in a bottle or it's bottled up inside,

and i don't know if i'm writing about emotions or medicine

- rr

#original

luxmendax-deactivated20141206

another reminder.

the world is heavy but your bones (just a cubic inch) can hold 19,000 lbs

ounce for ounce they are stronger than steel

atom for atom you are more precious than diamond

and stars have died so that you may live

you need to remember these things when you say that you are weak and worthless

birdseyetheory

This is a poem by a tumblr user that I decided to reblog and write a response to. The first time I read it I felt very inspired. It's a beautiful, empowering poem about how important each and every person is, even if they don't realize it. I love the reference to the stars - the idea that things as beautiful and blazing as stars have sacrificed themselves for you makes you feel so much more important. I think poems that lift the individual up like this are very influential, especially in a day and age where people are made to feel unimportant every day and are ridiculed for taking selfies and being proud of themselves. Everyone is important. Everything is worth something. It's poems like these that deliver this message and help people realize their true potential.

#responses

when i think of beauty

i imagine a glow of warmth pulsing in and out

a fluttering beneath my palm

neverending movement and sound

a superhighway of life beneath my skin

veins and vessels and valves

an organic machine

the steady pump at the center of everything.

"a love letter to the human heart" - rr

#original

"Where Are You?" by Tyler Joseph and Mark C. Eshleman

This is a poem about bullying - specifically cyberbullying, and its devastating effects on young people. The poem is based on a metaphor of a line between good internet behavior and bad. On the good side, the "plus" side, Tyler realizes that there are consequences to his actions online and vows to treat people the same as he does in person. On the "minus" side, he is a bully. He harasses a person from his school over the internet, and when they get to school on Monday, spreads rumors and lies about them, reminds everyone of the horrible things he said about them online. A few days later, the bullied kid doesn't show up at school because they have committed suicide. Having considered his two options, Tyler chooses the "plus" side, and asks the viewer, "where are you?"

This piece is very powerful. The use of typography and Tyler's rhythmic speech helps drive its point home. Bullying, of all kinds, is a dangerous, harmful thing, and this poem urges us to realize that and choose to be good.

#responses

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