love beau/ make a wish

Posted on September 30, 2014 at 9:04 pm

how apropo that I happened to burp. I had to do a few takes to not sound like I was rejecting the words as they were coming out of my mouth. I went to that place where the armor is absolute because the pain is too shameful. I allowed myself to feel rejected on principle to execute the piece. I want to capture the energy of these moments. I know that there are many poems with this energy of pre-emptive rejection of love. I want to keep going there and digging through the nuance of it. The changes in sequence, the time in my life, the state of my supposed love life at the point of creation. I am thankful for the last line of this poem. It’s a seed I didn’t understand that just added itself to the end. why such quantity in my love demands? if these wishes were all granted, would they form a wall to protect me from having my heart broken? what did I really want that I believed all of these things provided? do I have the answer now? is it the same as it was back then? I wonder what taught this kid to think this would be an improvement in his life. that this would change the way he saw himself.

love beau/ in another hour it will be 6am

Posted on September 30, 2014 at 6:30 am

The title reminds me why the poem is written the way it is. The late night rambling of a college student trying to make sense of what he has no experience with. The desire of a confused child to make everything us v. them, me vs. others, black vs. white. It’s difficult for me not to judge my old poems. To not judge the kid who wrote them. I have to fight feeling a certain stupidity reciting the lines out loud. I am floored by how specific I believed that I was and how that specificity is kind of shallow and myopic. These poems where I am criticizing everyone else are quite revealing as to how invisible I thought I was. Especially to all the women I wanted to love me. And in my memory, there were many women invisible to me. But that wasn’t the narrative of my life in most of these love poems. It’s not the energy in them. There is a connection in my voice having to honor each time I have lived in the recitation. I am struggling with allowing that process to be full. I am resisting the strain that lived in my voice when fear controlled so much of my thinking and choosing. Did it? Am I being too hard on myself? I can hear the scared kid in the poem desperately wanting to control. I can feel his words trying to hammer the point to prove to himself as much as everyone else. I want to love this kid. I have a hard time not just dismissing everything of my youth as lame. But there is a power in willing to be perceived as foolish. There is a need to even embrace the times in my life I may have spent years running from.

love beau/ running the herbertstrasse

Posted on September 26, 2014 at 5:29 am

I didn’t hear much about the woman this poem is about. All I heard was me, my feelings, my desire to take a situation and expand it into a relationship. I don’t believe there’s much written to indicate how magical this woman was. Only investing in my experience of magic and wanting her to come and continue it for me. It sounds like demands and memory with no offering of love. No true giving in the text. This is not to hate the poem. This is to see where the poem is at. Where the author is at with love. The distance I placed myself from the people in my life in order to create an ideal situation for us to imagine in. I can hear the dip in my voice at certain words. The tone dropping noticeably to me, as if my voice now is unsure of the line. Needs a deeper resonance to help follow through. To commit to the sentiment in the words. How has voice revealed our true relationship with our writing? Our willingness to love? I wish I remembered more about her. I only have this poem and a night in Hamburg. And that night in Hamburg is more the memory I’ve given it than the experiences I had. I still embrace this poem. Just like the others, it is so true to me at the time. It shows how ill-equipped I was for more than fantasy. A lovely fantasy. That I believed a poem would be all that’s needed to make real.

Blog Process

love beau/ make a wish

love beau/ in another hour it will be 6am

love beau/ running the herbertstrasse