A Couple Raw Eggs from the Compost Pile
I've got this brown leather journal I call Compost Pile 2009-2010. Here's a short piece from it, written in October 2009, around the same time I wrote a poem called "Both, er..." — which I thought I'd already blogged but now can't find online (maybe I'll post it next). I added the last word to this poem on 10/16 (at first it ended with "Be") and the title today.
(Ain't Too Proud to Be) Egg
Bang bleed
Blank it
Bing!
Oh!
Be itch
Be scratch
Be hatched
Yeah, now you know why it's in the Compost Pile.
Here's another (written 15 July 2009 at LCCC's Spitzer Conference Center) that's more finished — though its merit remains debatable. The last word was originally "Struggling," but I changed it on 6 August. Its best line (arguably) was stolen from Robert Fripp, who (I discovered today) stole it from Prince Far I:
Stimulus
Seeing
Things
I don't see clearly
Minding the child within
Understanding only obliquely
Living
Under heavy manners
Starving
A brown Italian leather journal?
Reply to this
It depends on your definition of Italian. I bought it on clearance at Marshall's for about 4 dollars last -- from an American store, it's embossed "italian designs" but bears a sticker that says "Made in China." Here's a pic of the inside of the back cover:
Reply to this
Well that figures...they even can make reincarnations of the Buddhist Lamas in China these days. I remember an Italian leather journal that I bought in Italy and thought it might be like that one.
Reply to this
Ah, yes! That one has a fleur de lis on the front.
Reply to this
I like that 'The Zero of the Signified' in that Wikipedia article.
Reply to this
I wish I still had that album - very cool. "The Zero of the Signified" is probably my favorite track on it, followed by "Under Heavy Manners," which featured lead vocals by David Byrne of Talking Heads. It's out of print on CD, but I'm gonna see if I can find it on mp3 thru Amazon or iTunes.
Reply to this
wich wikipedia article is Lady referring to?
Reply to this
The Fripp one, I imagine - since it is his song she mentions.
Reply to this
good things come out of journals.. even messy ones. I can say hands down mine are far messier than yours... I jumble things together that don't go together, qoutes, and phrases that catch my ear... scratch out things, tear out pages.. stick them back in... But they are a treasure trove of ideas I pick up often in varied places. So like a gold mine to sift thru for ideas to put together or juxtapose...
Yours is neat by comparison...
Reply to this
I avoided showing you the messiest pages.
There's a lot of shit in this journal. But several poems I think are pretty good came out of it as well - including several that ended up in my chapbook 6/9: Improvisations in Dependence, a couple others that are forthcoming in Rusty Truck and the Muddy River Review, "Bier" (which appeared in Mnemosyne), "O Shun" in Fuck Poetry, several that have appeared on my blog in the past year (like "OT," "Visible Voice" and "Christianity"), and several more that I've kept offline to submit to "major" journals.
Reply to this
a journal is better than my usual way of capturing ideas--little scraps of paper that flutter out of my pockets (or get reduced to pulp in the washing machine!)
ps: what was going at Spitzer that you were visiting campus? (And did come visit the bookstore
Reply to this
I write on a lot of paper scraps, too. Though some are stuck in my journal like bookmarks, others find their way into books I'm in the middle of reading or other unexpected places. Although it's cool to find something neat I wrote a year or two ago and totally forgot, it bugs me when I discover I forgot to date a scrap. Not sure why dates matter so much to me -- must be my inner historian.
I was at Spitzer after the stimulus bill was passed and LCCC was advertising that they could provide funding for 99% of the county's unemployed to return to school. Turns out I was in the 1% they couldn't help, since I'd already received two years of Dean's scholarships in the 80s, 4 or 5 years of Pell grants, and had defaulted on a supplemental student loan in the early 90s. Didn't visit the book store that day because I was broke and depressed....
Reply to this
I have the same issue with dates, especially now when I go back to stuff I did in H.S. or right out of college. Drives my nutty!
Totally sucks about the stimulus bill... sometimes the system makes no sense. I had someone telling that her sister could get the money only if she didn't work at all. So you're encouraging people to go on welfare so you can send them to school first?? Where is the logic in that when she can't afford rent or to feed her kids?
But out of that came your poems so all was not totally lost
Reply to this