You told me,
You told me, last week, you were playing checkers. But then what happened? You never told me, this week, are you still playing checkers?
You told me,
You told me, last week, you were playing checkers. But then what happened? You never told me, this week, are you still playing checkers?
here’s some things we forgot to think about:
making money
on the road
they could bet money
yes
one of them could be amazing at cards
and that’s how they meet the card guys
aha. and that gives them enough money to continue on their journey
they should also be open to finding money
lost money everywhere. just have to find it.
if you found a wallet money in it, what would you do?
try to give it back to whoever owns it
now, what if you just found the money,
with no ability to trace who had it last
it would be yours
well, then let’s try looking for some
where to look?
parking lots of course
coin returns in vending machines
it’s not worth the time, but if you have
no money and nowhere you need to be
why not?
what if we just find free stuff, or people give it away
then you can try selling it and making money on it
not a bad idea
sing a song for some money
draw pictures for money
dance for money
recite poetry
this is being a scavenger
This site is always
a work in progress,
so – please – click around
+ if you get lost,
please try to find me.
On the subject of writing good or bad poetry, it’s important to know that there really is no such thing as a good or bad poem.
Here is the only thing you need to know when it comes to analyzing a poem:
The only relationship that exists in poetry is that of the reader. The writer has no bearing.
My husband Ray, who has a bachelor’s in literature, explained this best in one of our recorded conversations together that I later transcribed:
As the reader interacts with the text, they come up with an interpretation. Multiple people have multiple interpretations.
So then you say, well, how can we prove that that interpretation even exists?
They have to have a defensible, or defendable interpretation, in which they use text directly from the poem. The interpretation must support their thesis on how they classify the poem.
So for me, there’s no such thing as genres.
There’s only text and there’s only a reader. If the reader’s a cowboy, he interprets it as a cowboy. If the reader is a modern day person, they’ll interpret it through modern day lens. Only thing that matters of substance is how that text, how they react to it, how they relate to it and can they defend their interpretation using text.
So they must use the text from the poem, explain how they interpret it and how they classify it. And that’s all there is to it.
Multiple people will have different interpretations. Therefore, I believe that there is no such thing as a poetic structure, only that there’s multiple interpretations. And those interpretations must be defendable by the reader.
Without a reader, a poem is nothing. And the writer technically has no bearing on it because the writer, if they want to tell you what the poems mean, that’s great, but it doesn’t mean that that’s what the poem’s about because there are only one person who’s interpreting. They too would have to use text to argue their interpretation, even though they wrote it.
I’ll give you a good example. Axl Rose (Guns and Roses) wrote a song called Mr. Brownstone. Later, he was in court and the prosecuting attorney said is your song about heroin? You’re singing about Mr. Brownstone. He’s been knocking. He won’t leave me alone. These are all heroin. He’s like heroin is a brown rock.
To which Axl rose with a long pause replied, Mr. Brownstone can be about anything, any type of habit that you don’t like. And he’s like, some people might interpret Mr. Brownstone as a neighbor, who’s been driving them crazy. And he said it is a song. I think interpretation is up to the listener. So could it be about heroin?
If that’s how you feel, Mr. Prosecutor, that you personally see it as a song about heroin then to you. It’s a song about heroin. But to me, it’s a song about overcoming obstacles. That was his answer in court acts on one, and then the prosecuting attorney lost that case. Nice, right? Cause it’s true. Anything you write has no meaning until there’s a reader or listener.
Arrogant college professors + scholars go around and try to classify things and try to tell other people what poems mean when nobody should ever tell someone else what a poem means. If I write a song, I don’t want some “expert” to tell everybody what my song means.
I want it each listener to interpret it in their own way, but they have to be able to defend their arguments, using lines from my song. Otherwise you could just make things up. You could say it’s about a dinosaur that learns how to hang glide. And I would say where in my song, did you get that from, if they can’t point out the lines, then they’re just making stuff up.
I don’t like classification of any poetry and, or song. The woman writing that poem was not sitting there thinking, well, how are they going to classify this? It’s true. It only exists for the reader – and if you find themes, moods, symbolism, you have to then use the text to defend your argument.
my soul mate
is a rockstar
who would
bat the eyes for me
Zudley grew up to be a psychiatrist, with a big brown leather couch.
He had papers in stacks everywhere, and I could tell he didn’t have life figured out.
He told me I was crazy, I told him to go fuck someone else.
I quoted him the Bible, that part about Jesus and asked if he lived in a glass house.
I said, “There ain’t nobody on earth who’s perfect, and you better keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Is keeping your thoughts to yourself why you feel so mad? You know it’s not healthy to keep everything all bottled up inside.”
It all starts with a phone call the words of your mother and your father's fall the bed is shaking, your leg doing that thing it always does when you're nervous and you're ready to run You're a runner and always have been it's the fastest way to get away from these things
Roses are red Violets are blue I can hit the. space keys. and s. p. a. c. e. out to you. It's a beautiful poem surely –– you'd agree but maybe there's something crazy about mee?
sometimes i want to be someone else when i write, so you don't know how crazy i really am = and yet, that would not be mee if you did not know me and all of my bad poetry and so maybe you could call me someone else or something else but it really doesn't matter one flip what you call me because i will always be me with an extra e