she's mad, but she's magic

Crying Bench

Quote: Charles Bukowski, An Almost Made Up Poem (full poem can be found here)
Photo: taken at Camden lock, by me. 

lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. 

Alysia Harris, Guinness Skin

Rachel Wiley, 10 Honest Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy

1.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me 
hard.

2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.

3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls’ phone numbers.

4.
When we hold hands in public, 
I wonder if he notices the looks —
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.

5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.

6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.

7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful. 
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.

8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop 
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.

9.
The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty. 
I am not a fucking novelty.

10.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says, ‘No. You are so much more’,
and kisses me
hard.

F. poems

Love At First Sight
Natasha, I love you
despite knowing love is more
than seeing you


(Untitled Fragment)

The angles of your wrists
preserve a certain mystery,
unknown by any lips
or written down in history.

To measure their degree
would solve the oldest question -
providence and alchemy
answered in your gestures.

But god and gold will never rival
the way your fingers curl.
They hold my breath's arrival
like a rare and undiscovered pearl.

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski 

Anthony Anaxagoru, If I told you

I went to a talk yesterday on racism,  oppression and percepticide, this poem by Anthony Anaxagoru was played at the end:-

broken hearted

'It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now"

- Allen Ginsberg, Indian Journals, September 6th 1962. 

Picture credit: taken by me, graffiti by unknown artist, Lisbon  

angelheaded hipsters

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 

connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 

up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 

cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 

contemplating jazz"

- Allen Ginsberg, Howl 

Allen Ginsberg

I'm re-reading Dirty Havana Trilogy at the moment, and in the first chapter it referenced Allen Ginsberg, I've never heard of him before, but been curious I did a quick google. It turns out Allen Ginsberg was a major Beat Generation poet, and wrote a surprisingly decent poem about his Sphincter, "I hope my good old asshole holds out/ 60 years it's been mostly ok".

Ginsberg is a poet I should probably have been aware of, being an Eng Lit grad, but my course focused on British literature rather than American. So I'm pretty ignorant about the Beat Generation, I've attempted to read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but I found it pretty dull- maybe I should give it another go? 

From the brief research I've done Ginsberg seems like a interesting character, the kind of guy it would have been cool to go to the pub with. He was a man of strong convictions, he was a nonconformist and an advocate for sexual freedom and homosexual rights. His poem Howl, published in 1955, became the subject of a obscenity trial. The poem was controversial as it depicted heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy and homosexual acts were illegal in the United States.

A recording of  Allen Ginsberg reading Howl is available of youtube:-

I thinking I'm going to investigate Allen Ginsberg a bit further, as what I've read/seen so far is pretty intriguing. Has anyone got any suggestions for other poets/authors from the Beat Generation?

Best minds of my generation

"who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, 
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening 
to the Terror through the wall" 

- Allen Ginsberg, Howl 

The Chaos- G. Nolst Trenite

Below is a poem, by G Nolst Trenite all about English pronunciation. I have complete sympathy with people who have English as a second language or are trying to learn it. The poem is really interesting, it clearly shows how completed and unruly English is  

Try to read it out loud:-

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer

Just compare heart, beard, and heard, 
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Tupac Shakur- The Rose that Grew from Concrete

The Rose that Grew from Concrete was unexpected birthday gift from my younger sister's boyfriend, he's trying to educate me about conscious rap. Although I had heard of Tupac, I wasn't aware he was a poet. The poems in the collection are more insightful and political than I was expecting.

My sister's boyfriend had given me a brief introduction into the true meaning of' Thug Life' and Tupac's history and activism with the Black Panthers.  The poems are a refection on racism, empowerment and love.    

In America you can take courses on Tupac's poetry and music and I think they'd be really interesting to attend. From an English Lit prospective, the poems would be fascinating to breakdown and look at the symbolism, syntax and influences.

 One thing I noticed was Tupac's preoccupation with sight, seeing and blindness. The poems are introspective, Tupac looks at himself and society and the repetition of 'see' 'I' and 'sight' emphasise this. I really want to write/read a compassion of The Rose that Grew from Concrete  and The Great Gatsby. Both Tupac's poems and Fitzgerald's novel examine the gaze of society. Both Gatsby and Tupac are outsiders looking in, and they are in turn looked at and judged by mainstream American society. 

"With my eyes closed I can c 

we have a chance 2 discover ecstasy 

but the clouds of doubt have made u blind"

- What I See! Tupac Shakur    

One of my favourite poems was 'Black Woman', as it is the complete opposite of the misogyny often found in rap. The poem is a celebration of female empowerment. The male voice of the poem is not emasculated by the strong women. He praises her and acknowledges it is her endurance and strength that enriches their relationship.      

If you are unfamiliar with Tupac or not a fan of rap, I still suggest you give The Rose that Grew for Concrete a try, it may surprise you. The collection give a reflective, inspiring and considerate insight into issues of racism and Black pride.  

The Rose the Grew from Concrete

Tupac Shakur 

Starry Night- Tupac Shakur

Starry Night
Dedicated in Memory of Vincent Van Gogh

a creative heart, obsessed with satisfying
This dormant and uncaring society
u have given them the stars at night
and u have given them Bountiful Bouquets of Sunflowers
But 4 u there is only contempt
and though you pour yourself into that frame
and present it so proudly
this world could not accept your masterpieces
from the heart

So on that starry night
u gave 2 us and
u took away from us
the one thing we never acknowledged
  your life

-Tupac Shakur