simpleRECURSION || poet vs. poem

February 7, 2007

poet vs. poem

3:35 AM

The impatient can click here to skip straight to the poem. I think that this poem is one of the best (if not the best) that I've ever written. It's perfect in terms of ideas, themes, images, wording, rhyme, rhythm, sound, feeling and visual appearance. It took seven edits and five hours of straight writing (which for me is unusally long) to complete, and it just feels perfect. (See? The editor in you is your best friend, MLP; by the way, welcome back! ;)

The poem is honest, admitting the accidental origin of its purpose. To explain, the other day I was reading Mayakovsky's "Как делать стихи" ("How to Make Poetry"), where he mentions his idea of the amateur poet, whose work kind of trails off, either because his idea wasn't fully mature or developed enough to begin with, or he just doesn't know how to finish the poem...

So there I was, on a tremendous manic high, brought on by too much coffee earlier in the day, into the poem at just over a dozen lines with the inspiration (read: manic high) about to run out and run off, when I decided to bite the bullet, admit to my audience what happened and see what will come of it. In the end, the poem turned out to be not too bad, did it? ;) Well, enjoy.

P.S. Oh, yeah, here's a real monkey wrench for your works, right here (you'll love this one, Mite...if you've read this far): try rapping this piece, especially to the tune of the classic "Rapper's Delight". It works! I kid you not! I have no idea how this happened, though you better believe it...G. ;)

P.P.S. Since I'm being honest about stuff, I guess I might as well admit that the idea for this poem's title was inspired by (read: shamelessly appropriated from) Alan Becker's awesome Flash movie, Animator vs. Animation (here's a Newgrounds link, better for playback, and here's the hilarious sequel). How's all this for intertextuality...bitch? ;)

To Coffee and Bipolar Disorder

poet vs. poem

i am the master
of alabaster
the best of
athens and troy

the pussy's hitter
and the largest
bullshitter
i eviscerate and destroy

the song of the marrow
and entropy's
arrow
and keyboard remappings galore

i see no reason
why the cruelest
season
shouldn't be my cockring whore

at the slightest
wiggle
joggle or jiggle
of syllabic erratum or glitch

i see no cause
why the poet's
pause
shouldn't be rhymezone.com's bitch

giggling don't bite me
and tumbling
backwards
in spite of my want to appease

manic depressive
in present progressive
we aim
and we cum to please

shifting with weather
and carnal pleasure
i court
and avert disaster

i am the best
of the unimpressed
breathing in
coffee faster and faster

the head is the king
and the left hand is
queen
and the index finger is god

to the bland
plebeian
everything
or the childhood you never had

and the moon is red
and the night is young
to slowly chew
and enjoy

for the master of
alabaster
and marble
the best of athens and troy

the poet
transfixed enmeshed
intermixed
intertwined interwoven and whole

inalianable
and indissolute
doesn't know
how to finish his poem

so he climbs
to the top of his rhymes
and observes
paper tigers in thrall of sex

and he listens
and slowly recalls
from his scrawls
the regression of y on x

and the poet
boy
deploys a decoy
and attempts his poem to end

but the poem
now
with a mind of its own
refuses to comprehend

so he pauses
and thinks
and grows desperate
breaks rhyme scheme and scansion and rhythm

but the poem
itself
a poet now
has in mind a cute algorithm

if A is B
and B is C
then the and A and the C
can now mate

and make D
and E
and then maybe F
that will futher procreate

and will yield G
H and I
which will see
to J and K

and the latter
not to be
outdone
will LMNO convey

the N and the O
P and Q will beget
which the R and S
won't mind

and those two
will father
T and U
little Vs running behind

the U will
split then
asexually
Ws producing next

and then X
and Y
and maybe even Z
will then have some crazy old sex

they'll conjugate
and pluralize
and do
other dirty tricks

while the poet
already sick
of their games
will begin his poem to fix

he will write
to the bird
gimme back my words
and will make friends with an elephant

who will stomp
and stamp out
la revolución
and will make punctuation irrelevant

he will eat
periods
by handfuls at breakfast
and then snack on semicolons

he will make
love
to the interrobang
and then put into comas the commas

he will make
a sculpture
of his own flesh
and will then stay forever stung

and will get
sight rhymes
to always stay fresh
law of gravity his weltanschauung

and his lines will get
longer and longer
yet
and the day that he will cease to be