deepundergroundpoetry.com
There to here: Journal Poem Crud (***Filler / Long***)
(1)
This is a journal, a list poem, an excuse,
Silence in the Mind, swears, cruds of nonsense...
Leave the useless concessions, scratched-off rehearsals, clouds of rain following me everywhere, roads fifth-gear smooth, too fast over the tracks, still too heavy a load, poisons of the past still swallowing...
The search for gas stations, raindrop windshield races,scraggly swamp and tree, pulled-off sleep into the tiptoe leaf-fall deep, first snowfalls in the tundra, billboard prophecies and casino entertainments, the only form of education around...
An epic hillside passed, remember the past, the times you didn’t ask, closing remarks, no hints of death and demise...
Long miles again, deception of time, stopping nowhere to pee, just strange patterns in the bark of trees, no whispers of Promise in the breeze, just thoughts of sitcoms and scenes of ease...
Yes I’m rhyming on purpose, I always do, it’s all I can do, waiting through the days, watching whatever reaches the haze of a Dream-Filmed World once within my reach...
Now just bent in postures askew, inside the clothes just put on for weather, with thoughts just luckily found, through the mid-drug refusals of death, stuffing my brain as a package of candies, the repeated collage of witty experiences, reaching for the ashtray, laying down my crucifix of dollars for another meager sip of industrial blur, bring back guarantee to the life-grain...
No more do my eyes turn clouds into shapes, I’m just choking on the logic of others, dishes shatter, exclaiming it’s over, clap and move on, and when the clock slows, it’s all in the mind they say...
No it isn’t, the Mind is Pure and Free, at least mine is, I think, I pray, I fake another scene of immortality...
(2)
Finally the flatland begins, the West begins...
Ontario is over!
Faster speed limit, sunset red over novembered grass, which is the sunset over my doom of destiny, I guess...
I can’t get rid of the humour, my iambic pentameter of shit...
When will I ever be serious and candlelit?
Staring at parking-lot traffic, in my stale-urine cab of dusty tattered upholstery, boringly munching down a gas-station sandwich, trying to remember how to do anything...
Scared it will all go away, thinking about what it takes to do what’s next, putting it off, trying to pack the right things in my pockets for the next Advancement...
Time goes on, the cab heat leaves, I shiver, I continue on with nothing accomplished, through the halloween cloud-glows of rural night...
Then the 7-Eleven concrete-crackled streets Of Winnipeg, litter and shit, slim slavik grunge-girls and foul native slots, just like the night before on the billboard read: "Uncover The Mystery : Visit Our Casinos!"
But I’m a 34inch man in the army-surplus aisles, I can’t find my pants..!
“This man has dangerous thoughts, but we need them!”,
Say the newspaper editor reviews on the back cover of the book for the Age of Unreason...
(3)
Four lanes to two lanes, pavement to gravel, off the main roads now, thick flurries of snow, endless straight lines, music through blizzard-light into the night...
Sunrise in the wheat, breakfast-field patterns, slight wilderness, slight rain, evidence of oil drilling...
The whole sky smells of fuel...
Fuel for what?!
For more suburbs and walmarts?!
For more sedans and pickups, big black roads leading to more excuses for the ordinary folk to open and close their doors, and walk across the acres of parking lot pavement in crisp blue jeans?!
I’m not being prejudicial or critical,
But everyone wears jeans in these parts...
(4)
And so I reach my epic destination,
A crumbly industrial subdivision by the side of the freeway...
No houses nor trees, no place to stretch or sit, wasteland of fences and power lines, no place to piss or shit, except the truck-stop complex...
Failed 35cent phone calls, the fever to get out of the way of everybody's eyes sets in, nothing cheap for a room to hide in, not a phone book for hundreds of yards...
Too tired to care or be scared about the body being killed by the choices you make, or the excuses you take for avoiding the upright Grace through hardship...
(5)
I sleep without writing, in the gas-tank rattle, awake to the dull concrete skies, use the bland facilities of sewer-water sinks and supernatural-glowing hand soap...
And step into the proletariat cigarette haze of the truckers restaurant, order the buffet, forced to sit at a single table in the middle of caffeinated right-wing atheist mormon fascists...
I open the book and nothing comes, all I can do is complain, oh my tired endless volition spent on justifying the inherent crappiness:
“Oh poor me, Oh poor parent-fed me!
In smooth-road, running-water, light-switch, locked-door, climate-control society!
Oh the many pains to go through!
Oh poor me, Oh poor G8-Nation me!”
My soul is a sales tag, I’ve lost my color, I’m a shade of dollar, tumbleweed in barbwire...
I cocooned in the wrong season, looking forward to school on a sunday night, a scrawny guitar-kid among beef-eating brats...
I feel their eyes as I write this, they want to corner me down at a dead-end with their hick-up trucks and beat the art out of me...
The poor wind that has to raise their flags...
This place has too much money...
They leave their engines running...
Money over matter...
“Bill please...”
Hmmmn no tax, I better leave a bigger tip then...
And leave as invisibly as I came...
I need to get the hell out of here.
This is a journal, a list poem, an excuse,
Silence in the Mind, swears, cruds of nonsense...
Leave the useless concessions, scratched-off rehearsals, clouds of rain following me everywhere, roads fifth-gear smooth, too fast over the tracks, still too heavy a load, poisons of the past still swallowing...
The search for gas stations, raindrop windshield races,scraggly swamp and tree, pulled-off sleep into the tiptoe leaf-fall deep, first snowfalls in the tundra, billboard prophecies and casino entertainments, the only form of education around...
An epic hillside passed, remember the past, the times you didn’t ask, closing remarks, no hints of death and demise...
Long miles again, deception of time, stopping nowhere to pee, just strange patterns in the bark of trees, no whispers of Promise in the breeze, just thoughts of sitcoms and scenes of ease...
Yes I’m rhyming on purpose, I always do, it’s all I can do, waiting through the days, watching whatever reaches the haze of a Dream-Filmed World once within my reach...
Now just bent in postures askew, inside the clothes just put on for weather, with thoughts just luckily found, through the mid-drug refusals of death, stuffing my brain as a package of candies, the repeated collage of witty experiences, reaching for the ashtray, laying down my crucifix of dollars for another meager sip of industrial blur, bring back guarantee to the life-grain...
No more do my eyes turn clouds into shapes, I’m just choking on the logic of others, dishes shatter, exclaiming it’s over, clap and move on, and when the clock slows, it’s all in the mind they say...
No it isn’t, the Mind is Pure and Free, at least mine is, I think, I pray, I fake another scene of immortality...
(2)
Finally the flatland begins, the West begins...
Ontario is over!
Faster speed limit, sunset red over novembered grass, which is the sunset over my doom of destiny, I guess...
I can’t get rid of the humour, my iambic pentameter of shit...
When will I ever be serious and candlelit?
Staring at parking-lot traffic, in my stale-urine cab of dusty tattered upholstery, boringly munching down a gas-station sandwich, trying to remember how to do anything...
Scared it will all go away, thinking about what it takes to do what’s next, putting it off, trying to pack the right things in my pockets for the next Advancement...
Time goes on, the cab heat leaves, I shiver, I continue on with nothing accomplished, through the halloween cloud-glows of rural night...
Then the 7-Eleven concrete-crackled streets Of Winnipeg, litter and shit, slim slavik grunge-girls and foul native slots, just like the night before on the billboard read: "Uncover The Mystery : Visit Our Casinos!"
But I’m a 34inch man in the army-surplus aisles, I can’t find my pants..!
“This man has dangerous thoughts, but we need them!”,
Say the newspaper editor reviews on the back cover of the book for the Age of Unreason...
(3)
Four lanes to two lanes, pavement to gravel, off the main roads now, thick flurries of snow, endless straight lines, music through blizzard-light into the night...
Sunrise in the wheat, breakfast-field patterns, slight wilderness, slight rain, evidence of oil drilling...
The whole sky smells of fuel...
Fuel for what?!
For more suburbs and walmarts?!
For more sedans and pickups, big black roads leading to more excuses for the ordinary folk to open and close their doors, and walk across the acres of parking lot pavement in crisp blue jeans?!
I’m not being prejudicial or critical,
But everyone wears jeans in these parts...
(4)
And so I reach my epic destination,
A crumbly industrial subdivision by the side of the freeway...
No houses nor trees, no place to stretch or sit, wasteland of fences and power lines, no place to piss or shit, except the truck-stop complex...
Failed 35cent phone calls, the fever to get out of the way of everybody's eyes sets in, nothing cheap for a room to hide in, not a phone book for hundreds of yards...
Too tired to care or be scared about the body being killed by the choices you make, or the excuses you take for avoiding the upright Grace through hardship...
(5)
I sleep without writing, in the gas-tank rattle, awake to the dull concrete skies, use the bland facilities of sewer-water sinks and supernatural-glowing hand soap...
And step into the proletariat cigarette haze of the truckers restaurant, order the buffet, forced to sit at a single table in the middle of caffeinated right-wing atheist mormon fascists...
I open the book and nothing comes, all I can do is complain, oh my tired endless volition spent on justifying the inherent crappiness:
“Oh poor me, Oh poor parent-fed me!
In smooth-road, running-water, light-switch, locked-door, climate-control society!
Oh the many pains to go through!
Oh poor me, Oh poor G8-Nation me!”
My soul is a sales tag, I’ve lost my color, I’m a shade of dollar, tumbleweed in barbwire...
I cocooned in the wrong season, looking forward to school on a sunday night, a scrawny guitar-kid among beef-eating brats...
I feel their eyes as I write this, they want to corner me down at a dead-end with their hick-up trucks and beat the art out of me...
The poor wind that has to raise their flags...
This place has too much money...
They leave their engines running...
Money over matter...
“Bill please...”
Hmmmn no tax, I better leave a bigger tip then...
And leave as invisibly as I came...
I need to get the hell out of here.
Published 20th Oct 2014
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 0
reading list entries 0
comments 1
reads 638
Commenting Preference:
The author encourages honest critique.
Alas! Many apologies to you fine followers with the usual latenesses of my explanatory commentings! I have been up at the folks place for these last few months, on a ten acre woodlot, and a bit distracted, it's that time of the year when the mosquitoes are gone, and I can go off into the wood and brood moodily on the Deeper Things for great period of time...
Anyway I was hoping not to post this particular piece until I had gained another follower (to make true of my earlier declared policy of purposefully posting an offensive composition after every new follower, to test the waters of their new allegiances, etc), but since I am following this frigid anthological structure of posting, I have come to the end (or beginning, if you are reading these poems from first page to last) of this featured writing phase, entitled graciously "The World of Work", and alas, due to such forced-upon momentum, am required to post it now.
It's offensive because I am revealing here to this site and the internet world, the most despicable biographical aspect of my life - my part-time occupational involvement with the oil industry! Really, there is nothing so offensive as this - saying you support primary resource industrial development - the only thing more offensive than that which I can think of is saying you support Israel (which I do). I mean you can post anything on the internet from nazi genocides to sexual mutilations (to even the odd profile pic of a slimy foot up the ass, ahem!), you can post any such amoral proclamation of depravity and viscera, and be applauded for it, it's art it's Art it's ART!!! - but supporting the oil industry and Israel are the two most evil insensitive politically incorrect things you could ever do! No forgiveness could ever be granted!
Of course, if I was able to get on social assistance or had pre-acquired inherited wealth, then I definitely wouldn't be working out there. And if I wasn't a Useless Artistic Fuck-Up then I'd definitely be behind a less-emitting indoor desk job in an office tower somewhere. But alas, such are not the cases, and I have gotten myself into this cyclical rut, at least until the limberness of my limbs permit. And I'll be packing my bags once again for another round of this death and downfall in a couple of weeks.
This poem then, written about this time of the year just over ten years ago, was my initial voyage out there, via my rusty little red stick-shift Jeep pickup across the stick-n-swamp lands of the great Canadian Nation. I had run out of my youthful savings and investments and visa credit cards, had just gone through a terrible health ordeal and a month or so of antibiotics and sleeping pills. Being a skinny bent up artsy type, I was definitely not the proper roughneck type to sling the chains on a rig, but I found a somewhat addictive little position slogging through the waste-deep snowy woods marking things up with a GPS unit, and have been stuck there for most of the winters since.
So alas! If there can be one thing I may be Eternally Criticized for, it is thus! I agree, I must be Criticized and cast away in Shame for being so mentally ill that I blew my youthful potential to the activities of flooziness, and didn't make a million dollars with my works or get set up on a disability pension, allowing me to finish my works in low-emission peace! But I will defend myself by saying that although the emission-per-day ratio of my existence while on the job is higher than that of the average person's job is everywhere else, my overall net hydrocarbon combustings will inevitably be lower in the end than the average hoggish western-worlder. For when I am off the job, I don't go gallivanting around the world on airplane rides for this trip or that, I hibernate in apartments writing poetry and essays and recording music and I eat cold unheated leftovers for days, wear the same clothes for weeks and shower once or twice a month. Plus I will likely die in my thirties without propagating, for eating to much raw garlic and spending too many 30hour plus days on end, so my net emission output will be much less than an individual who insists on kicking around these parts up to their nineties and hundreds, and so on...
I could continue on with this comment, and am not including what I did continue on with, as it gets a little annoyingly ranty - I promised I would only post poems and songs here, and get into my sordid politics, ecology and ideologies elsewhere. But if you ever want to hear of them, PM me up and I might then serve you up with a fine many pageful of copy and pastes..!
Anyway I was hoping not to post this particular piece until I had gained another follower (to make true of my earlier declared policy of purposefully posting an offensive composition after every new follower, to test the waters of their new allegiances, etc), but since I am following this frigid anthological structure of posting, I have come to the end (or beginning, if you are reading these poems from first page to last) of this featured writing phase, entitled graciously "The World of Work", and alas, due to such forced-upon momentum, am required to post it now.
It's offensive because I am revealing here to this site and the internet world, the most despicable biographical aspect of my life - my part-time occupational involvement with the oil industry! Really, there is nothing so offensive as this - saying you support primary resource industrial development - the only thing more offensive than that which I can think of is saying you support Israel (which I do). I mean you can post anything on the internet from nazi genocides to sexual mutilations (to even the odd profile pic of a slimy foot up the ass, ahem!), you can post any such amoral proclamation of depravity and viscera, and be applauded for it, it's art it's Art it's ART!!! - but supporting the oil industry and Israel are the two most evil insensitive politically incorrect things you could ever do! No forgiveness could ever be granted!
Of course, if I was able to get on social assistance or had pre-acquired inherited wealth, then I definitely wouldn't be working out there. And if I wasn't a Useless Artistic Fuck-Up then I'd definitely be behind a less-emitting indoor desk job in an office tower somewhere. But alas, such are not the cases, and I have gotten myself into this cyclical rut, at least until the limberness of my limbs permit. And I'll be packing my bags once again for another round of this death and downfall in a couple of weeks.
This poem then, written about this time of the year just over ten years ago, was my initial voyage out there, via my rusty little red stick-shift Jeep pickup across the stick-n-swamp lands of the great Canadian Nation. I had run out of my youthful savings and investments and visa credit cards, had just gone through a terrible health ordeal and a month or so of antibiotics and sleeping pills. Being a skinny bent up artsy type, I was definitely not the proper roughneck type to sling the chains on a rig, but I found a somewhat addictive little position slogging through the waste-deep snowy woods marking things up with a GPS unit, and have been stuck there for most of the winters since.
So alas! If there can be one thing I may be Eternally Criticized for, it is thus! I agree, I must be Criticized and cast away in Shame for being so mentally ill that I blew my youthful potential to the activities of flooziness, and didn't make a million dollars with my works or get set up on a disability pension, allowing me to finish my works in low-emission peace! But I will defend myself by saying that although the emission-per-day ratio of my existence while on the job is higher than that of the average person's job is everywhere else, my overall net hydrocarbon combustings will inevitably be lower in the end than the average hoggish western-worlder. For when I am off the job, I don't go gallivanting around the world on airplane rides for this trip or that, I hibernate in apartments writing poetry and essays and recording music and I eat cold unheated leftovers for days, wear the same clothes for weeks and shower once or twice a month. Plus I will likely die in my thirties without propagating, for eating to much raw garlic and spending too many 30hour plus days on end, so my net emission output will be much less than an individual who insists on kicking around these parts up to their nineties and hundreds, and so on...
I could continue on with this comment, and am not including what I did continue on with, as it gets a little annoyingly ranty - I promised I would only post poems and songs here, and get into my sordid politics, ecology and ideologies elsewhere. But if you ever want to hear of them, PM me up and I might then serve you up with a fine many pageful of copy and pastes..!
