Overnight Non-Music Thread

More stuff from my good friend Roy.

Roy Bentley - The Idea of A Rescue Dog

Janet Jackson's Titty

While I write a lot of poetry and attend a fair number of poetry readings, I have never been much of a fan of slam poetry. Too often, slam poetry becomes more about an over the top performance rather than about the poem itself or it morphs into a contest of who can be the most shocking. I have been to several poetry slams and enjoyed a good number of them, but I usually tend to walk away thinking.....'when are they are going to do the poetry part?.' Still, I have always enjoyed this.

Overnight Non-Music

Roy Bentley - On the Diamond behind Garfield Elementary, Melvin White Proves There Is but One Boog Powell

Roy Bentley

I got an email from a friend complaining that I don't do enough poetry and as a poet, I should be doing more. I have spent a good part of the afternoon looking for The Wreck Of The Barbie Ferrari by Roy Bentley. Even though I haven't talked to Roy for years, I still consider him a pretty good friend and have always been a pretty big fan of his poetry. I got to know Roy through a poetry reading I used to run with a friend here in town. We were lucky enough to make Roy a bit of a regular among our group and considering the awards he has received and the publishing credits to his name, it was a pretty big get for us.

So Lefty, here is your poetry.


Roy's The Trouble With A Short Horse In Montana.

Poetry

3:30 am and I can't sleep. Thank goodness for Poetry Daily and this. I'm a little troubled by all the capitalization. It throws off my reading a bit, but the last line is just killer.

Nothing else that dies is exactly so blue.

I am convinced beyond a doubt that the last line in a poem is as key as the guitar solo in a rock song.

Poetry

An old favorite of mine by Julianna Baggott.

Billy Collins

I'm sure there are a number of amateur guitarists who when they heard their first Jimi Hendrix solo stopped and thought 'I wanna play just like that.' Billy Collins was that guitarist for me and that solo was The First Dream. To say that I am a big Billy Collins fan would be a big understatement.

As much as I like to read Billy Collins, I like to listen to Billy Collins even more. Luckily, for those who share that view the power of youtube allows that. I wish I could have found The First Dream, but no such luck.

Billy Collins - Now And Then

More Poetry

I'm sure that I will scare off anybody who actually happens to stumble upon here with all the poetry. Since nobody does, I can do whatever I want without the worries of alienating my readers. Anyway...

I'm not a big fan of complicated poetry. Of course, complicated poetry to me might just be poetry that I don't get. Since I refuse to believe that, I have another theory. The trick to a good poem is simplicity. Let the reader find the depth in a work, don't create false complexity simple to show of your English or Creative Writing degree. I've read a good deal of criticism of modern poetry being too much story telling and not enough poetry. Frankly, I think that criticism is full of shit. Ed Ochester does a pretty good job of demonstrating simplicity in a poem in The Origin of Myth.

The Origin of Myth

That summer I was drinking
apple cider vinegar because I read
in an obscure book it was good
for my health. A tablespoon or two
in a glass of spring water, with a bit
of honey or raw sugar. Controls weight,
the book said, flushes harmful toxins
from joints, tissues and organs.
"Doctor George Blodgett drank it
every day, and remained vigorous
until his death at age 94."
One reads
and perhaps believes almost anything
when one has lived alone for a while.
I felt good, doing it, though perhaps
that was because I walked on the beach
every day, swam, then walked again,
collected beach glass smoothed by the waves.
Pale blue and green, like solidified air,
dark green like emeralds, very rarely
sapphire blue and once a tiny piece
of red round as the pupil of an eye.
No one was on the beach because it was
September, and I had a white cabin
to myself. I swam and walked and read
and ate sparingly. I had come there
to be alone, and to think things through.
Every morning I drank my vinegar.
I read that the soldier who gave Jesus
vinegar on a sponge did so not in mockery
but in pity, to offer a restorative.
After a week I set the "red eye" on my desk
so we could watch one another. At dusk
the mist far out over the water looked like
distant hills, and I understood how
an earlier inhabitant might have thought
these were mountains that rose at nightfall
and disappeared with the dawn.

Poetry

I helped run a poetry reading with a good friend of mine several years back. We didn't really run it as much as guided it, giving it the occasional push in the right (and sometimes wrong) direction and the rest of the time just holding on for the ride. One of the most interesting aspects of the whole thing was the number of people that wrote poetry. A good deal of it was bad poetry, but the number of people who have little black books of poetry hidden away was a real surprise.

The most disappointing aspect of the reading was that very few of those people that wrote poetry actually took the time to read poetry. I think a lot of that has to do with high school English teachers forces students to read shit poetry. So....for those of you who write poetry but don't read poetry (or listen to poetry) I offer you The Benjamin Franklin Of Monogamy and Janet Jackson's Titty.

The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
Jeffrey McDaniel

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice
the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end

of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds
of women—those you write poems about

and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction

lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast

as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don't have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power

never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,

as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed
antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long

regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don't know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light

of a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that's just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffing

into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn't make the silence
any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses

I scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years

to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate

to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn't be said.

Janet Jackson's Titty - Andy Buck