Don't Look Back

I’ve been thinking about poetry a little, lately, so I decided maybe it would be fun/interesting to go back through some old notebooks, find some poems I wrote a million years ago, and see what I thought of them now.

First of all, never go back through your old notebooks. Don’t do it. If you find yourself thinking about doing this, leave the house immediately, go do something else. It’s miserable. Everything you thought was a big problem 15 years ago is either pathetically dumb or still a problem, which is even worse. Trust me.

Yeah, I wrote a fucking ton of poetry between the ages of like 15 and 22. Pages, endless pages. Pages scratched out revised, and then revised back to their original form. How many hours did I spend debating the best way to complain about Hot Topic in poetry form? Apparently around 100 hours. No wonder all those problems from like 15 years ago are still problems today…

Thing is, if you’re being honest—yes, you—you’ve got some poems in your history, too. Admit it. The number of people I’ve met in my life who I’d honestly believe never ever wrote some scraggly poem in that same 15-22 age range, I don’t even need my hands to count. I can count that on my dick. One and a half.

Crude, but once I typed that out I can’t bring myself to delete it.

Moving on.

The most straight-laced friends I’ve ever known had some poems scribbled down in a notebook. I’m not naming names, but let’s just say that the world being full of gates and doors stuck with me, and you know who you are. The most deranged, hazy people I’ve ever known (and let’s face it, I’ve known some deranged, hazy people) had some poems, usually balled up in the pocket of their poncho, usually about how being high was alternately great or a drag, or else about their parent’s failings. See if you can track the pattern there.

I think it’s a universal shameful secret, right? Why is that? Is it because we look at poetry as this kind of arch, heavy emotional thing, perfectly prepared to help us process emotions we don’t have a better outlet for at that age? Is it because translating our feelings into metaphor and imagery allowed us an outlet for whatever without forcing us to actually confront our shit head on?

One guy I knew, he’d proudly tell everyone he was a poet, wore a beret and showed up to parties with this little notebook he wrote his poems in. He’d stare at some girl, tapping that notebook with a pen, until she asked about it and he could unload upon her what a thoughtful, deep motherfucker he was. I don’t think it ever got him the desired result, unless the desired result was to find creative inspiration in the dull thud of rejection.

Another guy, he used to write these long sonnets, was all into romance everything until I loaned him a Bukowski book. After that all his poems were suddenly about catching a peek at some pubic hair jutting up above a bikini line, or jerking off on dead bodies or something.

I’m trying to think of why I spent so much time working on these things. I certainly never thought I’d be a great poet one day. I certainly didn’t really like reading poetry that much. Maybe I just enjoyed screwing around with language? I don’t know, probably not. Judging from the anger on display in most of the poems I found, it was definitely an outlet.

The first two poems  I ever wrote, which are lost now, were about smoking weed and STD’s, respectively. This was years before I ever smoked weed, years before I ever kissed a girl, let alone had to worry about getting an STD. I think I wrote them because I was sick of my classmates and their shit about how their grandma’s death really put things in perspective. People thought they were funny, I remember. In fact I remember at one point—this was ninth grade—some kid I didn’t know standing up and lunch and reading them both aloud, claiming he’d written them. Not the last time something like that would happen to me, actually. I guess that sounds like bragging but c’mon, give me something.

I had this Creative Writing teacher in community college, he was a poet, so that was an inspiration. He was a great guy, had this wild sustained energy like watching a bottle rocket frozen mid-explosion, just seething in the sky, lighting everything up, never losing its intensity. I remember him telling us that our job as writers was to write until our armor fell off, until all the shit blocking the free flow of ideas from our heads down our arms and out onto the page was demolished and it all flowed like water. I e-mailed him the night after he said that in class and told him I wanted that more than anything, asked him what I had to do to get that to happen to me.

I think he responded but I don’t know what he said.

Anyway, I thought I’d look through these poems, find something worth sharing, share it. Say something funny about what was going through my head back then. But again, and I can’t stress this enough, going through those notebooks was a bummer. And I didn’t really find much worth revisiting. But okay, follow through, here’s one:

I think this one is broken

I’d like to trade it back

I tried a newer model

And I think it suits me better.

No,

I like the color

Yes,

I like the ride

But my hair won’t blow as freely and I

Think I might have made a big mistake.

Took the new one for a test drive

It felt so smooth and cool

When I got home to the old one

It seemed boring

Dark and dull

Okay, so there’s no trade in

Right now I just don’t care

We can run off to the coast

I will leave the old one here

You can have it.

Too many miles

Not enough torque.

The title of that poem is ‘Wife,’ a joke that only works (even then barely) if I tell it to you after you read it. I wrote this thing when I was like 20 years old. Why did I have such a view of marriage at age 20? I wrote this for that community college class, where many of classmates were either married or divorced, and man did they think it was funny. Maybe there’s something there about how you develop as a writer or something, first figuring out what works or what people will like before figuring out what works for you, what you like, what’s actually authentic. But then it strikes me that I still don’t necessarily know what people will like, so maybe forget that.

And I still don’t totally know what torque means. I know it’s from physics…something to do with…rotation? Momentum? It’s a car word, I know that.

One more…this one doesn’t have a title.

Split my chest wide open

And crawl inside of me

Twist my guts around your chest

Rest your head against my heart

And sleep

You’ll be safe and warm

And I will be at peace

Hm. I wrote that one for a class, too. Well, for a girl, but also for a class. I read it for the class and after, this girl who looked just like the girl from that movie Amelie asked me if she could have a copy. I wrote it out for her and handed it over and she said, in like a rough Russian accent, ‘For one so brutish to write so sweetly, astounding,’ which was exactly what I’d always wanted someone to say to me, at that point.

The teacher thought it was gross. When I finished reading it he did this big exaggerated shiver. I was never sure if it was the image or if he thought I was being creepy, or naïve. I figured I’d know when I got a little older/smarter/more experienced. But damn it, I’m still not sure. Maybe it is naïve, or maybe there’s something there about consuming another person that’s unhealthy?  Remember what I said about realizing that the problems you had 15 years ago are still the problems you have today?

I don’t know. I kinda like that one.

I don’t know if there’s anything to learn from this. I don’t know if this turned out interesting.

You know? I just realized that I lied to you a minute ago. The first poem I wrote was actually about my brother dying. About how lonely and jilted I felt that he got to be dead and all relaxed up in heaven while I had to slave away like an asshole on earth. Wow. My parents got it framed, I think it might still be hanging on the wall in their bedroom. Damn. That thing was fucking sincere. So I bounced from that to the two goofy ones about drugs and risky sex…

Maybe that’s the allure of poetry, then, to a young ‘un. It’s sincere. And when you’re at a certain age you have some feelings that are big and overwhelming and sincere as hell but it’s freaky to admit that, unless you break it up into stanzas and call it art.

Or maybe everyone (almost everyone) just goes through a couple years of being an asshole, wanting to be an artist, tapping their notebook at the party, waiting for an opening.