Let's start a fire.

JCC · 07-29-2008, 04:21 PM

I can see you Ginsberg,
frowning pale-faced in the walls and on the ceiling,
watching mediocre minds submerged in the endless cock and balls,
starving hysterical naked
and afraid to say 'cunt'.

Whatever happened to the passion, Rimbaud,
the rage and the hunger?
why is the cerebrum sleeping?
why is controversy in cardiac arrest?

Let's start a fire with these depressing soggy logs.
I want to start a forest blaze
and piss from the rooftops
and teach poetry not as words but as an idea.

Let's make the bluebird sing, Buk,
and wail and howl and caterwaul
of a time more exciting than the sterile
Age of Convenience.

Let's all watch the world burn
if the people get interesting.
The planet's so much prettier
when the minds in it are
ugly.

PortraitOfSanity · 07-29-2008, 04:25 PM

I don't know enough about poetry to tell you exactly why I like this, but I do.

HumanePain · 07-29-2008, 04:27 PM

Evocative and pungent, truly poetic spice this poem of yours. It's anything but boring as it was intended.

KontanKarite · 07-29-2008, 06:34 PM

I'm starting to notice a small outcropping of intelligent poetry on here lately. Good work.

JCC · 07-31-2008, 10:46 AM

Thanks for feedback.

Anything else?

Disaffected Shoelaces · 07-31-2008, 01:28 PM

Love it.

Partly because it evokes the Joker. Hahahaha, it's a Joker-evoker! I kill me.

Anyway, lame puns aside, it's good. It has... guts. I don't know how else to put it. Not "has guts" as in is brave, but it has a kind of jagged core to it. It sure beats all the pretty-pretty crap mpst people I know seem to write.

dre bin laden · 07-31-2008, 05:35 PM

dude. last night i had a dream that i started a forest fire. armed with that information, you writing this is a little creepy.
other than that, i don't know who those people are but i assume they are controversial authors/writers? anyway, i absolutely love the message. my favorite is "lets start a fire with these depressing soggy logs", it made me smile a lot.
also, i love the "the planet's so much prettier...", and i love when poems have that one word on the next line, but i feel like here it sticks out from the rest of the structure. this can easily be fixed if you just use the same technique on other single words throughout the poem, separating them from their respective lines. if this last word was the oddball of the structure intentionally and for the sake of emphasis, i don't wish to interfere with your creativity and acknowledge that you and others may like it better that way, but for some reason i personally feel that particular structural device works, looks, and sounds better when used throughout a piece instead of just in one part.
that was not put there to criticise your work or to piss you off, just to put in some friendly input, as i thoroughly enjoyed this piece and hope to see more from you. actually, the more i read it, the more that "ugly" fits in there, but im still not sure about it.
regardless, this poem is about a hundred times better than 99% of any other poems ive read on here.

Aaroneet · 07-31-2008, 05:45 PM

Well-written; I especially like the references.

LadyStardust · 08-06-2008, 06:27 PM

A caged tiger. That is what this poem reminds me of. Or more accurately, the aspect of our personality caged by political correctness, social norms and a conservative (talking morals here, not politics) majority.

You have a knack for writing in a way that has me feeling you are speaking directly to the reader, inviting her, coaxing her, seducing her to shrug off these chains of convention and - if only once - to truly . . . what? "Truly live"? Too cliche, and your words are anything but. Words fail me, as they usually do, but you know what I mean.

And again, kudos on - as is your way - words slung together in such a way as to make them sing.

JCC · 08-07-2008, 05:43 AM

Here's a quick rework of this which I think works better:

I can see you Ginsberg,
frowning pale-faced in the walls and on the ceiling,
watching mediocre minds submerged in the endless cock and balls,
starving hysterical naked
and afraid to say 'cunt'.

Whatever happened to the passion, Rimbaud,
the rage and the hunger?
why is the cerebrum sleeping?
why is controversy in cardiac arrest?

Verlaine is broke from his drugs habit and Baudelaire
is working at the supermarket. I'd ask Hemingway what to do
but he blew his money on the horses and Dostoevsky is
robbing corner shops for change. Is this what minds
were made for?

Let's start a fire with these depressing soggy logs.
Poetry is pissing from the rooftops,
not wearing sweatshop shoes.

Let's all watch the world burn
if the people get interesting.
The planet's so much prettier
when the minds in it are
ugly.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 10:33 AM

I would like feedback, be rough with me.

xParadigmx · 08-13-2008, 10:39 AM

i like the new one alot more. i guess i enjoy hearing what a person has to say so much more when they are telling polite company to go fuck themselves.

Disaffected Shoelaces · 08-13-2008, 11:45 AM

The new one is great. But then, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the last version.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 12:19 PM

I thought the first was cheesy. So is the second, but less so.

gothicusmaximus · 08-13-2008, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC

I thought the first was cheesy. So is the second, but less so.

You are correct.

LadyStardust · 08-13-2008, 12:36 PM

I'm a little disappointed you omitted the second-last verse from the first version. I really liked that one.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

You are correct.

Would you say that this is now good, shit but not as shit, or just generally awful and I should disregard its existence completely?

gothicusmaximus · 08-13-2008, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC

Would you say that this is now good, shit but not as shit, or just generally awful and I should disregard its existence completely?

Shit, but not as shit. Too much of the poem is comprised by a literal litany of your problems with society that fails to incorporate sufficient imagery or metaphor, for which reason the best stanza is this new one:

Quote:

Verlaine is broke from his drugs habit and Baudelaire
is working at the supermarket. I'd ask Hemingway what to do
but he blew his money on the horses and Dostoevsky is
robbing corner shops for change. Is this what minds
were made for?

Though the "is this what minds were made for?" part is weak, as it seems to assume that the reader is too retarded to ask this question himself. You made this same mistake in 'as if were are old', needlessly stating forthrightly at the piece's conclusion what the prior stanzas had adequately illustrated through metaphor, but you later corrected it.

I personally would omit the 'call to action' element of this poem, as it just sounds overwrought and hammy. A suitably vivid description of the grim state of affairs will provoke the audience to righteous fury more than cliches like "let's watch the world burn" will.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 04:36 PM

Thanks. I wish more people would be brutal, this shit's important.

gothicusmaximus · 08-13-2008, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC

brutal,

My creative writing teacher wrote 'lacks empathy and compassion for others' on my report card in my senior year of high school. Yes, for some reason she felt compelled to notify the parents of an eighteen year old that their son wasn't nice enough.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

My creative writing teacher wrote 'lacks empathy and compassion for others' on my report card in my senior year of high school. Yes, for some reason she felt compelled to notify the parents of an eighteen year old that their son wasn't nice enough.

You should've been like "I'm totally compassionate and empathic, you're such a bitch, jeez."

Update:

I can see you Ginsberg,
frowning pale-faced in the walls and on the ceiling,
watching mediocre minds submerged in the endless cock and balls,
starving hysterical naked
and afraid to say 'cunt'.

Whatever happened to the passion, Rimbaud,
the rage and the hunger?
why is the cerebrum sleeping?
why is controversy in cardiac arrest?
The drunken boat is experiencing some seasonal sobriety
pushed into rehab by neo-conservative parents.

Verlaine is broke from his drugs habit and Baudelaire
is working at the supermarket. I'd ask Hemingway what to do
but he blew his money on the horses and Dostoevsky is
robbing corner shops for change.

Poetry is pissing from the rooftops,
not wearing sweatshop shoes.

gothicusmaximus · 08-13-2008, 04:51 PM

The only part remaining that I hate is "The rage and the hunger? Why is the cerebrum slipping? Why is controversy in cardiac arrest?"
These are important ideas though, so rather than simply omitting them I'd say you should rephrase them, possibly through the 'great intellectuals consigned to squalid occupations' metaphor.

JCC · 08-13-2008, 04:54 PM

Yeah, I hate that part too. Are we connected by some sort of invisible telepathic device?

JCC · 08-13-2008, 05:09 PM

Hey Gothicus, get on MSN.

blackwater1110 · 08-18-2008, 07:42 AM

I LOVE the first stanza, it sounds so much like Ginsberg. Oh wait--it is. I can see why you'd rip off the 'starving hysterical naked' bit, for the sake of the next line, which works, but some sort of acknowledgment that you stole his line might b nice.

The Rimbaud part pisses me off too. I'm OK with 'Controversy in cardiac arrest', mainly because I like the image and the words also flow nicely, but the other questions are failures.

I think you're correcting it in the wrong direction. Don't mention neo-conservative parents, itmakes you sound like an angsty teen, which you're really not at all for a fourteen year old.

Get rid of the 'poetry is pissing from the rooftops, not wearing sweatshop shoes' bit. It sounds like a slogan you'd put on a button, like 'dumpsters are for lovers.'

I have no problem with the original piss from the rooftops, because the way it hits you, you expect the ever-cliche "shout from the rooftops" but continuing the destruction-to-relieve-impotence idea with piss instead.

I don't like the new paragraph with the authors. At all.

I don't like the way soggy logs sounds, or the imagery it evokes, but perhaps that's a good thing since I'm not supposed to like metaphorical soggy logs. Something about that phrase makes me feel more sick than angry, though, so I don't want to burn down the forest, I want to escape it. Other's reactions may vary and this may simply be my escapist nature.

I like your original final line: The planet's so much prettier/ when the minds in it are/ ugly." Just the way it is.

The verse with Buk sucks. It sounds like two old men talking about how things were "In my day," and telling each other how "they don't make 'em like they used to," before yelling at some kids to "get off my lawn!" If you get my drift.

That's all for the criticism. I hope some of it is helpful. Now for the praise.

I really do like this poem. The original wording, mind you, where you kept your intellectual references to a minimum and stuck with clever wordplay and universal symbolism. But that's because that's what I like in a poem. You could take the same structure and basic message and rework it one way to suit my tastes and another to suit GothicusMaximus'. Find YOUR voice, and even if I don't like the poem half as much, I'll respect you for it doubly so.