a legitimate update

I meant to write a legitimate update tonight, but then I didn't.

I feel really upset because the only girl in my workshop who I think has the capacity to understand my work had dropped the class. I don't think that I'm better than the other people in my class, I just don't think they're equipped to talk about my poems. This workshop, like so many others, is going to be a waste of my time.

I'm really excited to put out a zine soon. It won't be my best work ever or anything, but I think it will feel really good to just put something out. Perhaps too good.

Titles I'm considering for the zine:

Sorry So Sloppy

PoemCo Industrial Catalog Volume 1

Words And Images Non-Congruent

I feel partial to the last one.

I feel a little upset that Megan Boyle didn't respond to my e-mail, but I'm actively trying to feel okay about it. I wish she had responded and sent me a short story I haven't previously read. I'm reading Murikami but I want to read more Megan Boyle. I want to stop using proper nouns and end this blog post.

POETRY STRIKES ME

I read one book and it made me want to read more by Tao Lin. I found out that he was

one of those people who does a lot of stuff on the internet and thought that I am savvy

to that sort of thing that people are doing today. But not as hip as maybe somebody who

was really good at blogging and had a strong internet presence. I found his thing on

Google and found other people who wrote in a similar way and wanted to read more so

I did and found that I liked to read more but was distracted by the urge to do other things.

And then I felt that I recognized elements in my own writing that I wanted to bring out

the way other people do. That happens to me whenever I read poetry that I like. I like a

lot of different kinds of poetry but doubt that there is anything important left to say.

Then I read a poem I like and discover that there is but that somebody else has already

said it. Then I stay up all night and smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. Sometimes I think

of lighting a cigarette and realize that I’m already smoking a cigarette and I am able to

laugh at myself for a moment. I want to read more blogs and poems on the internet.

I don’t know anybody who thinks that the same things I think are important are

important. I want to show somebody my poems but I don’t know why. I very vaguely

want some certain people to like my poems. I very vaguely want to like some certain

people but I don’t know why. If I had something really important to say, I

don’t know who I’d tell. Maybe I would post it on twitter. I think that’s what I like about

blogging.

The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life

Blogging makes me feel dramatic, because I am announcing everything to everybody. But not a lot of people read my blog, literally nobody reads this blog, so I wonder if I'm just feeling dramatic in that way you can really let loose when you're singing in the shower or dancing naked when you think nobody can see you.

People lose a lot of their ambitions when they think they are anonymous. On chatroulette I've seen a lot of guys jacking off their dicks. I saw one guy with a dick piercing and that image has really lodged itself into my brain.

Marie pierced her nipple today and when I saw it right after there was blood and it was all red and I thought it didn't look much like a boob or a nibble at all. It was gross, but I was really upset I didn't get to see her get it pierced.

I asked the girl at the counter a lot of questions about getting a tattoo, but didn't get one. I don't know if I'll ever commit to a tattoo. It seems like too final a gesture. I like to think I can undo all my actions. I don't like to think that I can make any choice that will permanently unmake all other decisions. I saw a cop giving a homeless guy shit on the street today and for a moment thought about shoving the cop briskly with my shoulder but decided that later in the day I wanted to steal a camera from Urban Outfitters and that if the cop caught me he would think I was the asshole from before. Of course if he caught me there would be no mercy on his part no matter what, but I didn't like the idea of the cop "making up his mind about me," and thinking that I was a scumbag. But I don't know why.

Later I did steal the camera, but I bought some jeans and felt bad about giving money to Urban Outfitters, except my dad let me charge the jeans on the credit card. I felt bad for not paying for all my own stuff. I paid for vicoden.

At some point I thought about the camera I stole and decided that I liked the retro-design and aesthetic of the camera more than I wanted to take pictures. I put the camera on display in my room and thought that if I never used it I would still be happy with how it looked, and how it suggested the possibility of taking cool pictures, and all the cool stuff I could maybe see one day and take a picture of, and how if I did that I would have a cool picture of a cool memory. I don't know what I was thinking of when I thought of cool pictures but I imagined skinny people, partial nudity, cigarettes, and people drawing art on the walls. I imagined that there might be a song or a joke I'd attach to a photograph and that I'd look at it and think "That was the guy who...That was the night I...."

I thought people might see the camera and think I was affecting an artistic aesthetic and that they would be right, but what can I do, I am. I want to take at least one roll of film before I get bored. I am horrified of getting bored but I get bored almost a hundred times a day.

Lately I've been writing a lot but I think my style is changing or I'm affecting a new style and it hasn't yet come together. I think it will come together or I'll write like a jerk forever.

I really want to win this poetry competition, but I am almost one hundred percent sure that there is no way to reconcile the poetry I really value and the poetry that will win. Previously I was considering drastically altering my style just to win, but I don't think I can do that either. I think I wasted a lot of time trying to write to please people. I feel really confused about my history as a student and a writer. There is a strangely consistent theme of self-doubt and shallow preoccupation in all of my journals. Sometimes I feel as though I've never changed, but I feel entirely disconnected with who I thought I was before, when things were different.

I'm trying to just really give up and effect a sort of ego-death. Lego breath. Eggo meth.