2.21.13 thoughts on alt lit and poetry

i.

love comes in waves but i would rather it  be a constant gentle whirring

a white noise humming gently lulling everyone

to forget its presence

          its there under the surface

helping us sleep or relax or live

iia.

sometimes i wish i never went to college

i did this before college

and it’s not like college is responsible for my craft

it was like joining the most expensive book club known; with contests held every few weeks for written work on the read work and yeah; but more like swimming b/c that’s always a contest between yourself and the clock

iib. 

alt lit: it's hard to know/recognize sincerity (don't get me wrong; i love irony, but i find it hard/disengenous to pull off) 

alt lit: a warm embrace by a community of people looking for a voice amidst confusion

i have always believed that any one can write and read poetry

which makes it so beautiful

but of course i am speaking with bias

iii. 

w/e you decide to label it, poetry is embedded in humanity itself

we produced poems long before anything else

ancient rhythms/modern rhythms/post modern rhythms

all signifiers

to indicate a time, a cursor blinking on a line of data of human history

somehow i think we moved away from this

as a result of war and technology

but alt lit is a way to give poetry back to humanity

to bring it back to the vernacular

allowing the mundane/fascinating story of this century to be told

we live during simultaneous wars

i don't think the romantics ever could have imagined something more frightening than tuberculosis (the “a bomb”; “drones”; “aids”; “world war”; “famine”; “malaria”...et al)

iv. 

this is all i can do

all i have ever done

as long as i can remember

so...

v.

i want to write about love and triumph and defeat of neo barbarians

i want to write a love poem to your consciousness that you share with me

i want to write a love poem to the singular and the masses

i want to write to a world that doesn’t yet exist and make it into existence with my fiction

i want to tell a story of love and triumph

but i already said that

vi.

i was never comfortable with irony

in terms of audience reception

like do you think they’ll get it?

who cares says my other self;

they are 2 sides to one coin

for lack of a better metaphor

see: taoism

see: buddhism

the middle path

between darkness and light

epilogue:  

i have given away so many of my possessions and i always feel light weight afterwards

and i think some other girl will be able to wear that dress and feel confident like i did when i used to wear that dress