Love is life's last dissapointment
09/24/2003 05:35 a.m.

love is life's last dissapointment by Lacy D Davis this line has been bouncing around in the back of my head like a pop song gone horribly wrong for the past three months or so. I've been trying to build a poem around it. Really pulling out all the stops. Total fiction, stream of consciousness, chant, rants, personal to the extreme...and it just isn't coming together. And everyday, I'll be putting my contacts in and I'm staring into my eye in the mirror and its stinging like it wants to jump from its socket, and there it is "Love is life's last dissapointment". I'm at work with a 40-pound tray on my shoulder, an over-done 10oz sirloin about two centimeters from my cheek--"Love is life's last dissapointment". I'm feeding gas into that schone maschine of mine and "Love is life's last dissapointment" It's clear that it's not going away till its written. I just don't have the heart to write it. Dimgray, not a mistake. Silver, not a lining in sight. 05/30/2003

I am currently Detached
I am listening to Sheryl Crow--Riverwide

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Cheese and Crackers
06/09/2003 05:19 a.m.
My friend, Dave, today asked me to go up to Bloomington with him for a poetry reading. My reply was that he could go to a reading anywhere and get about the same vibe out of it, so why waste the gas to drive to Bloomington? Well, he likes Bloomington, he says...and there's this one poet that he has heard of that he wants to see. Oh, really, you actually keep up with the local poetry scene (which is more than I can say for myself)? Well, no, he doesn't, but his Creative Writting teacher has recommended this guy and had him in to class to read some of his own work. {Oh, and I
need to explain that Dave is totally in love with his creative Writting teacher, "Cracker Boy" I call him because he has this book coming out of short stories that only middle-aged white suburban guys will fully appreciate "Big Wheel in the Cracker Factory" it's called. } Anyways, Dave is all in love with Cracker Boy, because he's one of those cool teachers that you only have once in a lifetime. {And in love with him in a kind of Cheese Monkeys way, too, I think, though Dave is far too Catholic to ever come out of denial about it.} So he's all about going up to Bloomington to hear this guy read again. And so I says, well, let me see this guy's stuff that you guys had to read and then I'll let you know. Well, Justin's there too I forgot to mention, and of course he wants to read this stuff, but he's got his nose stuck in the Japanese dictionary that I threw at him for cracking on my sense of humor. So I just start reading out loud this guy's poem. Some attrociously long title about not blinking on I-69 blah blah blah. And it's not half bad, but I'm on a cold read, so I would be flying by the seat of my pants except that I have a skirt on. Anyways, halfway through the thing Dave has to stop me and say something along the lines of wow, you read it just like the guy who wrote it did. And I stop, leaving off at just the point where the guys see head lights up ahead, and stare Dave down. And I'm all like, Dave, dude I'm a poet. This guy is a poet. As long as we have at least that in common, then how the hell could I mess up a read? I mean, if you're a poet, then you get it, and you can't not do the thing justice, right? Well, Dave doesn't get it. He just thinks I'm a really good reader. I'm not. I don't even like reading my own stuff out loud. I'm just a poet and I get it, is all. Get it?

I am currently Better
I am listening to Kaelin Love

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Sdoic, the lava lamp
12/11/2002 01:51 a.m.
Why Sdoic is the poet I'll always strive to be, but probably already am to a lesser extent...

She's my twin gone sane, the reason I'd drive cross-country in one day if she ever needed me to, the metaphorical yin to my yang, the only reason Montana is cool in my eyes (well, except for maybe Frontier House)...ya'll get the point, on with the show.


I had never read a style quite like the one I was developing when I first came to Spyder's a few years ago. I wasn't sure then whether that meant that what I was doing just plain sucked, or if all the published works I had been reading were as awful as I thought they were. But I was on a mission, after years of literary quarantine, to find the newest, hottest, most cutting edge poetry I could find. I obviously wasn't finding it in published works, so I turned to the internet.

After many maddening nights at the keyboard wading through the inane scribblings of 16-year-old girls with crushes and men of retirement age who thought they would have made a fine contribution to the Beat era, I nearly despaired. (No offense to either of the afformentioned groups, by the way. I've known a few young girls and old men with exceptional talent) Then one night, a stroke of luck, the hand of fate, god's intervention--whatever you want to call it--led me here.

I remember when I first read Sdoic, I was disheartened. I couldn't believe it. That style, the pacing, the use of decorative rhyme, the imagery...everything. It was like I had written something and tucked it away and forgotten it, but now there it was. Only, I knew it couldn't have been me. These works were more clever, more vivid than anything I had ever managed before. And what was even more amazing than finding a poet with a style that fit somewhat with mine was the realization that this poet, whoever he or she was, had gained the respect and adoration of nearly everyone on the site.

I was fearful. Having just been reamed by Michael C for a newbie offense, I wouldn't dare post a piece that was near to my heart lest someone (particularly Sdoic) pick it apart; or worse yet, if it was ignored and no one posted a reply to it at all. But the more I read and was inspired, the more my need to be included consumed me. Finally, I posted a piece called "About 5'9"...and waited. And do you know who posted back to it? Yep, that's right. And we lived happily ever after. Well, after the initial discoveries that Sdoic was a girl, and learning the basics like the math stuff and that whole business of living on the coast.

We never did a whole lot of that getting to know each other stuff. We never really had to, I guess. From the moment I first started really reading her stuff, I knew what she was all about. I was hooked, like a crack addict. And in a sick kind of way it was really a self-centered thing for me to do, being a fan of Sdoic. We were so much alike in our writting, but so very different in our lives. It's a weird thing, and something that I don't think happens to many people--to love someone you've never seen with your own eyes and call them friend from a thousand miles away, to find a carbon copy of your values imposed on a life lived so unlike your own that you begin to wonder just who you would be if you hadn't made the choices that you did at the very moment you made them. It's a weird thing.

Here is where I don't have to say how much inspiration and support I've gotten from Sdoic. I don't have to. But I think I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyways: That night we talked on the phone for a little while, and it was just like old friends catching up, not at all like a couple of awkard strangers meeting for the first time. And your voice sounded just like it had in my head all those times, and I didn't even get embarassed when you complemented me flat out. And how I can absolutely picture you walking naked through the Castro (whatever that is) muttering a recitation of Hank, and thinking you're so *brave* to do that, and aren't you cold? And brave, too, for letting a man in your life the way I was never able to, and actually *trusting* him. How I didn't know your real name for so, so long and it never really bothered me until Andrew pointed out that I didn't know it; and then I just HAD to know, but would NEVER ask. And even when I did know it, I couldn't remember who had told me, but I know it wasn't you 'cause I guess you just assumed that I had always known. And then I forgot it, after all that trouble, until you e-mailed me from your school account. I'm laughing at myself now. How Tom Robbins is just as great as you said he would be. And how "Bay Poem for Berkley" is just about the most perfect thing in the world when I wasn't thinking of anything in particular and then there you were, waving out of the pages of Cisneros with a big cheesy Montana smile on your face. And how do you pull off a cowboy hat in California? Only you.

And since I can't find that phallic poem, here are two others. At one point, the poems of Sdoic's that were the most impactful on my little virgin ears were the dirty ones, the ones that revealed her to be a sexual being. There was this one about a man eating out his girl while she was on her period that was just about the most hillarious and oddly touching thing in the world. I still remember Michael C's reply to it being something snide about earning his 'redwings'. God, I laughed for days. Then the Sdoic poems that got my attention most were the one's about being emotionally screwy. And then there are the ones about the plain old shit that happens in life, and how fresh and imaginative it all becomes when described in the right way, Sdoic's way. Those are my favorites now.

The third stanza of "Only Crazy on the Outside" is about the best metaphore ever, but who needs metaphores when you can create imagery like that?


I am currently Festive
I am listening to Josh Groban

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A Certain Faction (a greatly extended metap
01/23/2002 11:51 p.m.

The moon calls us out to freeze in its cold stare...our thoughts thawing again in that certain hour of evening where the shadow of a valley leaves just the canvass of trees around tipped tangerine. We are those few who know we'll never touch true happiness if only owed to the fact that we know too much of happiness to believe in it. Those of us who, in a world where knowledge has become a liability and innocence a weakness, still cling to old noble ideas (or perhaps the ideas of old nobility) are reluctantly romantic (or romantically reluctant at any rate). We are united, but not a force. We are superbly lonely amidst our own company, reach out to the masses with our most earnest, but are touched little by the face of modernity. We find much in which to believe today, but a poverty of ideals substantial enough on which to base our beliefs. We place our trust in the memory of strangers like our sneakers deposit scuff marks on gym floors, leaving just a bit of ourselves to be rubbed over and swept away by uncounted other tread falls upon the same ground, only rarely marking deep enough to make any lasting impression. As it was said by Louis Kronenberger that "the trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned into prose, but that it has turned into advertising copy", so we wage great campaigns through verse in the art of marketing ourselves if only to ourselves. Where penmanship and correspondence once reigned, we pride ourselves on words per minute and ever scrolling 'buddy lists'. We get a lot of Dennis Miller's esoteric banter. We know heads of state (not personally, but to be able to name them in relation to their position somehow sets us high and above the majority). There is always talk of travel someday to old countries whose languages we'll never speak but always say we'll learn. We sometimes grow nostalgic of the campfires of youth, after which we construct smores in microwave ovens, by some means always having the appropriate ingredients on hand. We insist that those of high school were indeed not the best days of our lives, though agree that it’s doubtful our days now are at all better. We oscillate between brilliance and disgust at our inadequacy. Vague goals of improved vocabulary and an endless reading list remain in the musty corners of our minds. We know our time to be inconsequential to the arc of human history, but we still consider ourselves crucial to the saga. We are alternatingly anemic and obese in our conversational appetites, sometimes starving for days for the sound of our own voices raised in agreement or testimonial. We are not weak alone, nor strong as a whole. Fatalism and existentialism along with a thousand other quasi religions war amongst themselves in our forebrains; though we've managed to piece together enough of a quilt of ideologies to smother the pale flickering flames of hopelessness, confuse lust, and to tame our inherent guilt into a manageable workhorse. We are not the tide on which trends swell into the popular conscious. To see us you'd think fashion as yet holds no sway over society. We do not condemn nor condone any of which our peers indulge; yet we make no practice of withholding judgment on our contemporaries. Much to our dismay, we can never keep a houseplant alive. We are never as educated or as well read as we'd like to be, nor are we as spontaneous or clever. We do not fail in our own eyes, but our successes never quite match the measure of our disappointments. We are not lost, but have yet to find ourselves in relation to our purpose. We haven't the brilliance of those we've read and admired, but account for this in passion and complexity. Name-dropping highbrows, the harassed Ivy League hopefuls we are not. We swear, but are not disposed to much else in the way of vices. Forsaking all else, we question; though this trait does not denote we have not our own answers. Each finds his own dilemma, his individual bliss, his particular brand of drama, his own strangling albatross to nurse; and, likewise, manages a tenuous grasp on happiness unique to himself, and a proximity to love. No sacred brotherhood are we. One passing another on the street would scarcely spark recognition or suspicion. We are merely a loose alliance, a kindred spirit that pervades. We are dreamers, but not by the classic definition. Our very constitution suggests a constant merging, reformation, defection, and cessation. We're all we can't help from being, slave to our noble intentions, victims of convention. And so we are, the American future.

I am currently Bothered
I am listening to the hum of multiple computers

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Write what you see freely
11/13/2001 05:36 a.m.
Do you know why typing is better than writting? Because you don't have to look when you type. You can't sit in Pandora's uptown and write what you see if you're only seeing half and the other half you're seeing is what you're writting. See??

But then there's that nostalgic...give me a quill and some parchment or give me death gestalt that we all get off on. You know Freud had something to say about that. (fucking fruitcake--probably had something to say about fruitcake too) And you don't really look like a poet sitting under a tree in the park with your PDA. But then you don't really feel like a poet when nearly the last bastion of the American written verse is the internet...

And I have this whole theory about the modern poet anyways. Something to do with Gioia and Jell-O....but I'm really too tired to go into it now.
I am currently Calm
I am listening to Dennis Miller's color commentary on Monday Night Football

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Quotes en massse
11/05/2001 10:04 a.m.
I'm no good with words, so here're some things some people said about something I do that I happen to agree with, or at least find beauty and truth in...:


"All genuine poetry is in a sense the formation of private spheres out of public chaos..."--W. H. Auden


"You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you."-- Joubert


"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things."--Emily Dickinson


"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history"--Plato


"Most people ognore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."--Adrian Mitchell


"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."--Robert Frost


"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them."--Charles Simic


"Poetry isn't a thing which you get. it's a thing which gets you. All you can do is go where it can find you."--Winnie the Pooh


"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement."--Christopher Fry


"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned into prose, but that it has turned into advertising copy."--Louis Kronenberger


"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."--Oscar Wilde


"I have nothing to say and am saying it and that is poetry." --John Cage


"If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money."--Robert Graves


"Science is for those who learn; poetry is for those who know."--Joseph Roux


"Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry."--William Butler Yeats


"I'm a poet, which means I'm unbalanced as far as the public is concerned."--Anon


"A great poet, really great poet. is the most unpoetic of all creatures. But inferior poets ae absolutely fascinating."--Oscar Wilde
I am currently Stimulated
I am listening to Tori Amos -- Strange Little Girls

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