i saw this lady speak....
great stuff

AFTER GREAT PAIN

I talk to you about writing poetry
as if it were like opening a vein
as if there were some kind of gain
in seeking the dangers,
as if I sought them myself—those nights
of terror, those days of weeping
on the streets;
as if anyone would actively seek the thrill,
or cultivate terror for the sake
of song.
What I don't hear in your voice
until after you've gone
is the strain
the monumental
pain you have risen above,
rise above daily
in isolation—smiling,
ordering your life,
refining a formal feeling,
doing everything not
to open a vein.
-Karen Alkalay-Gut

"people say that suicide is the wusses way out and the people who do it are self centered b/c they aren't thinking about the people their death will affect..but like i mean those people r the self centered ones- only thinking how the death will affect them and not the person who is hurting"
-R.M.

Mein Kampf
By David Lerner


all I want to do
is make poetry famous

all i want to do is
burn my initials into the sun

all i want to do is
read poetry from the middle of a
burning building

standing in the fast lane of the
freeway
falling from the top of the
Empire State Building

the literary world
sucks dead dog dick

I'd rather be Richard Speck
than Gary Snyder
I'd rather ride a rocketship to hell
than a Volvo to Bolinas

I'd rather
sell arms to the Martians
than wait sullenly for a
letter from some diseased clown with a
three-piece mind
telling me I've won a
bullet-proof pair of rose coloured glasses
for my poem "Autumn in the Spring"

I want to be
hated
by everyone who teaches for a living

I want people to hear my poetry and
get headaches
I want people to hear my poetry and
vomit

I want people to hear my poetry and
weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding,
eat their television sets, beat each other to death with
swords and

go out and get riotously drunk on
someone else's money

this ain't no party
this ain't no disco
this ain't foolin a (no idea what goes here)

grab-bag of
clever wordplay and sensitive thoughts and
gracious theories about
how many ambiguities can dance on the head of a
machine gun

this ain't no
genteel evening over
cappuccino and bullshit

this ain't no life-affirming
our days have meaning
as we watch the flowers breath through our souls and
fall desperately in love

this ain't no letter-press, hand-me-down,
wimpy beatnik festival of bitching about
the broken rainbow

it is a carnival of dread

it is a savage sideshow
about to move to the main arena

it is terror and wild beauty
walking hand in hand down a bombed-out road
as missiles scream, while a
sky the colour of arterial blood
blinks on and off
like the lights on the Broadway
after the last junkie's dead of AIDS

I come not to bury poetry
but to blow it up
not to dandle it on my knee
like a retarded child with
beautiful eyes
but

throw it off a cliff into
icy seas and
see if the motherfucker can
swim for its life

because love is an excellent thing
surely we need it

but, my friends...

there is so much to hate These Days
that hatred is just love with a chip on its shoulder
a chip as big as the Ritz
and heavier than
all the bills I'll never pay

because they're after us

they're selling radioactive charm bracelets
and breakfast cereals that
lower your IQ by 50 points per mouthful
we got politicians who think
starting World War III
would be a good career move
we got beautiful women
with eyes like wet stones
peering out at us from the pages of
glossy magazines
promising that they'll
fuck us till we shoot blood

if we'll just buy one of those beautiful switchblade knives

I've got mine

-David Lerner

i can't stand you playing with my mind.
I'm the control freak, the one who wants to know the answer
tempting i dismay the results
i don't know right from wrong
hot from cold,
it is all confusion.

what have i chosen?
do i ever speak..or is it only silence
muffled conversations
brief moments of nothingness

i want to know more about myself
but i cant dig hard enough
i fear what i don't know
why i think
i ponder,
there little ideas of sanctity
more of my sanity,
why i live upon these waves of surrender.
i don't image, i dream
what little control do i have
so i wish for
what i want,

an empty head.


i feel dead.
like a little kid looking in the store window.
stuck against the glass.
searching for happiness in a bottle
on the shelf,
tightly wrapped,
and only sold
in exchange for my soul.

and again, she writes a boggler...

obstructive thoughts
dismal, outraged,
my own ideas keep behind the trees.
I'm hanging on the branch,
holding on as the wind flies by.

tears whitewash my face
eating the stains off the clothing.
i don't know why,
rainstorms ravish my eyes.
these drops of regret
a surreal reality
that my plastic past
kills.

i try to mold the clay,
but my face won't fit.
i am still stuck here,
on the paper board box
reading:

I'm joyous envy,
do you have rational thought?

"everyone is fucked up inside..but it is only the bravest people that can admit to it."
-me

Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900.

19. I Sing the Body Electric


1

I SING the Body electric;  
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;  
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,  
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.  
  
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;          5
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?  
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?  
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?  

go here for the rest of the poem