2003-06-26

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Mainly because it keeps slapping me in the face every time I turn around. My father has been battling with heart problems and never listens to what the doctors have to say, and last night I found out that one of the Wayward Poets, Rev. Electromagnetic Impulses died either earlier this week, or late last week. It always affects me particularly badly every time one of our poetic voices dies. It also really bothers me that I have to say that, because it's not the first time, and won't be the last while I'm apart of it. It also bothers me that I have always maintained this "distance" from most of the poets, no matter how much I like them as people, especially when someone dies. I always try to be friendly with everyone there, because I appreciate the things they write, even if I don't always agree with them, and all of them are good people as far as I can see, even in his own way "the railroad martyr", but I'm not close to any of them really. Matt Keepers, Lauren, and Rayne are pretty much the only exceptions, and with Lu-Lu, it mainly because I was pretty good friends with her before she started coming out to the readings. Rayne had "invaded" the social circle I was already sort of a part of, and I've grown quite fond of her, so that's a good thing. As far as Matt goes, I'm not really sure why he became an exception, but I'm glad for it. Even Nate and I aren't as close as we probably should be, for people that are around each other as much as we are. We used to be closer, but I think I've put a bit of distance between us, and I'm not sure whether it was a conscious decision or not.

Part of the reason I tell myself for not being close to the poets is because I tend not to appreciate the poetry as much if I know too much about the subject. This much is at least true, inside jokes aside, a poem is much better if a person can take the poet out of it, then place himself inside it and still be able to relate, while at the same time seeing it from the unique perspective of the poet himself. I don't know if that makes sense to any of you, and it seems a little contradictory, but it goes soemthing like this, we can all relate to love, pain, joy, anger, and the entire range of emotions in the human vocabulary, but no one feels them exactly the same way. It is sort of hard to be able to relate to a poem, however if you know the subject, because then you can't place your own version of the subject in it's place. For example, with unrequited love poems one might think, "What the hell do you see in Her/Him, that makes you write that, he/she is not all that wonderful, get over it", rather then just being able to relate to the feelings expressed. This is also why I get slightly annoyed when people ask me who a poem is about, because I know that they can't appreciate that individual (*usually*) in quite the same way I do. I try my best to answer honestly, however, especially now. I used to tell people that they didn't really want or need to know and leave it at that.

Jen-Jen is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Now I've written some decent poems about her, nothing Earth-shattering or anything, but good nonetheless. Jen however, will probably never think so, no matter how well I write them, no matter how much emotion I pour into them, but she loves the old poems about Micha. Let me tell you something about those poems. The MLE poems are UTTER CRAP compared to what I've been writing, not that the ones I've been writing are all that great, but by comparision the new stuff looks like Robert F'n Frost when held side by side with the old Micha crap. Some of them are funny, I'll give them that. I laughed for about a half-hour over the "crying over spilt sperm" line, but for the most part, absolutely horrible stuff.

Wow, have I gotten off track, or what? The point, I think, was that because of the death of someone, I realize that I'm not as close to most of my fellow poets as I probably should be, but I hesitate to get too close to them because I might lose some of my appreciation for thier work. As far as my opening statement about thinking a lot about death goes, the one thing that keeps running through my head is this, "how many people will be glad after I'm dead", kind of a shitty thing to think about oneself, isn't it?

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