You Better Get Used To It

[E.A Rumfield]

I try not to think too much
they say it's bad for you
so I sit around smoking rolled cigarettes
and reading several books at a time

I don't write unless I am inspired to
and I don't go out often, because
usually there is nothing to do,
and sometimes, peoples company
bothers me more than solitude
so I learned to make a friend
out of the four walls

you are going to be around
yourself for the rest of your life

so

you

better

get used to it

Anyway
there are
worse things
than being alone
and the sooner you learn that the better

but sometimes the four walls
start to stare back
and close in
and when that happens
I like to think of all the beautiful things

like an evergreen forest
after the first snowfall
with a pair of footprints
leading to a lonely frozen lake

or

my insomnia
as you sleep, peacefully next to me
with your hair fanned across the sheets,
an ode to randomness

And even though you're gone now
your smell remains,
for now at least
though I don't miss you
like I don't miss that scab
I picked off this
morning
but sometimes I think of you.
I light a cigarette
and write one more line
as
the
walls
close
in

[Hawkman]

I'm afraid this really doesn't read like a poem, more a blog or a diary entry. It's good prose with some nice humour though.

Live and be well - H

[Alexander III]

I don't write unless I am inspired to
and I don't go out often, because
usually there is nothing to do,
and sometimes, peoples company
bothers me more than solitude
so I learned to make a friend
out of the four walls

"Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses." -Michel de Montaigne

It is good advice for any writer, because while ones own nose may be fascinating to them the rest of the world finds it quite boring. I am not belittling you, just giving some advice which will help with your poetry.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I must agree with Hawkman. As is a very common problem among contemporary poets (those of LitNet definitely not excluded) this just seems like prose broken up with odd line breaks. I think it's mostly a problem with the first two stanzas. I think the last two stanzas are quite good, though.

[Emil Miller]

I try not to think too much
they say it's bad for you
so I sit around smoking rolled cigarettes
and reading several books at a time

I don't write unless I am inspired to
and I don't go out often, because
usually there is nothing to do,
and sometimes, peoples company
bothers me more than solitude
so I learned to make a friend
out of the four walls

you are going to be around
yourself for the rest of your life

so

you

better

get used to it

Anyway
there are
worse things
than being alone
and the sooner you learn that the better

but sometimes the four walls
start to stare back
and close in
and when that happens
I like to think of all the beautiful things

like an evergreen forest
after the first snowfall
with a pair of footprints
leading to a lonely frozen lake

or

my insomnia
as you sleep, peacefully next to me
with your hair fanned across the sheets,
an ode to randomness

And even though you're gone now
your smell remains,
for now at least
though I don't miss you
like I don't miss that scab
I picked off this
morning
but sometimes I think of you.
I light a cigarette
and write one more line
as
the
walls
close
in

Sixty years ago, you would have been hailed as a beatnik but they belonged, albeit as a temporary aberration, to another time.

"Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses." -Michel de Montaigne

It is good advice for any writer, because while ones own nose may be fascinating to them the rest of the world finds it quite boring. I am not belittling you, just giving some advice which will help with your poetry.

This may be true but it's worth remembering that Montaigne, a man whom I am also wont to quote occasionally, didn't live in an age when physical communication had been reduced to conversation by electronically transmitted signals via the Internet and similar devices.

[stlukesguild]

I must agree with Hawkman. As is a very common problem among contemporary poets (those of LitNet definitely not excluded) this just seems like prose broken up with odd line breaks. I think it's mostly a problem with the first two stanzas. I think the last two stanzas are quite good, though.

Thomas Disch called it "snapped prose":

Take any piece of prose you like
and snap it into lines of verse
like this, using the end of the line

as a kind of comma. You can create
a further sense of shapeliness
by grouping the snapped prose in stanzas, so.

[hillwalker]

It is very prosey as others have already pointed out (blogs are rarely as well constructed), but I still think it has certain merits.

My only piece of advice would have been to make it much shorter. You had a great exit line with

so

you

better

get used to it

but for some reason you stretched the idea to its limit and beyond.

H

[Alexander III]

This may be true but it's worth remembering that Montaigne, a man whom I am also wont to quote occasionally, didn't live in an age when physical communication had been reduced to conversation by electronically transmitted signals via the Internet and similar devices.

As a recently turned 20 year old (my birthday was last week), who goes to university and lives with a group of 5 other fellows - I have no idea what you are talking about. Modern technology allows me to stay in touch and communicate with my friends in real-time and without cost from Singapore to Argentina regardless of where I am in the world. When I have the benefit of being in the same same physical location as a friend, communication occurs as it normal has occurred for millennia. The case is the same for other 20 year olds.

Naturally there are children who all sit at table texting each other instead of talking, but considering the quality of conversation of the average 12 year old, I cannot help but feel grateful that instead of communicating out loud and polluting the environment with their noise they do it in the most silent of manners available. I also cannot help but feel that it is your lack of understanding viz modern technology that produces your hostile and rather inexplicable opinions.

[Emil Miller]

As a recently turned 20 year old (my birthday was last week), who goes to university and lives with a group of 5 other fellows - I have no idea what you are talking about. Modern technology allows me to stay in touch and communicate with my friends in real-time and without cost from Singapore to Argentina regardless of where I am in the world. When I have the benefit of being in the same same physical location as a friend, communication occurs as it normal has occurred for millennia. The case is the same for other 20 year olds.

Naturally there are children who all sit at table texting each other instead of talking, but considering the quality of conversation of the average 12 year old, I cannot help but feel grateful that instead of communicating out loud and polluting the environment with their noise they do it in the most silent of manners available. I also cannot help but feel that it is your lack of understanding viz modern technology that produces your hostile and rather inexplicable opinions.

As someone who was working with computers even before DOS, I think my understanding of new technology is probably greater than your own.
However, I suppose that one does have to make allowances for 20-year-old undergraduates.

[E.A Rumfield]

What does any of this have to do with what I wrote? Most conversation is trying and I'd rather avoid it then fake my way through it. For the few people out of every hundred that has something interesting to say I am a participant. And if it is not poetry what would make it so, should it dwell in some abstract realm of faux meaning. It is quite straight forward instead I say what I mean nothing else.

[Jeos]

some parts of the text relate to poetry, others not or less... nevertheless there is something inside it that retains the attention of the reader.

[Charles Darnay]

Poetry is not grounded in faux meaning, or even heightened meaning (unless it's a sonnet) - but it has a rhythm. Anything from structured, to blank, to free verse has a distinguished rhythm that is not just lines broken up based on arbitrary pauses.

[Alexander III]

As someone who was working with computers even before DOS, I think my understanding of new technology is probably greater than your own.
However, I suppose that one does have to make allowances for 20-year-old undergraduates.

I have had a dcik since I was born, doesn't mean I know how to use it. Faulty logic comrade.

Besides the opinions you expressed are so stereotypical and at odds with reality that what else am I to assume if not that you resort to false stereotypes, and cliche generalizations because you don't know how to use this modern technology, and thus it appears ebil...?

Most conversation is trying and I'd rather avoid it then fake my way through it. For the few people out of every hundred that has something interesting to say I am a participant.

Have you ever considered the fact that the problem is you and not everyone else? I mean based on the views you expressed about contemporary culture in another thread, the majority of peoples views are too mature for you. Instead of rejecting them because they are not like yours, why not try to pay attention to them?

And if it is not poetry what would make it so, should it dwell in some abstract realm of faux meaning. It is quite straight forward instead I say what I mean nothing else.

No one here is saying that it is not poetry, they are just trying to say that is is not very good poetry. And one of the chief reasons that it is not very good is that it is too prosaic and lacks art.

[Emil Miller]

I have had a dcik since I was born, doesn't mean I know how to use it. Faulty logic comrade.

Besides the opinions you expressed are so stereotypical and at odds with reality that what else am I to assume if not that you resort to false stereotypes, and cliche generalizations because you don't know how to use this modern technology, and thus it appears ebil...?

This merely underlines what I have said. Your views, as with anyone else, would have more conviction were they to be made personally rather than by use of the Internet. A face to face conversation will always be more meaningful than one carried on over an Internet chat line between people who don't have any personal connection.

[E.A Rumfield]

I disagree and I never liked the stink of art anyway. And Charles it is not broken up arbitrarily it has its own rhythm and is pleasant to read I thought. But never mind dwelling in the past is useless and the goal is to master new terrains and while this is unfamiliar ground I am sure I'll gain my footing soon enough.

And behold another pathetic pissing contest on a windy day where no one wins and everyone smells like urine.