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Mashed Poetics
25 September 2009 11:55Hey everyone! Last night, I performed at Mashed Poetics. The house band played the entirety of Nirvana's Nevermind and in between each song, a Vancouver poet would take the stage and read a poem inspired by the song they were assigned a few weeks ago. It was a magical, amazing night. I started off the night with a poem inspired by Smells Like Teen Spirit after the cover band played the song.
Special thanks to Andrea Daniels, Sue McIntyre, Nora Smithhisler, Warren Dean Fulton, RC Reslowski, Kimothy Shaugnessy, Chris Gilpin and Sean McGarragle (performing as Seven Dollar Bill), Sue Cormier, CJ Leon, and Amnesia Jane Smith. Trevor and Clint were awesome on the guitar, base, and vocals. They practically channeled Nirvana. Trevor broke a string on the second strum of the first song! : ) Perfect.
The whole night just felt fated. The order of the poets, the songs themselves, and all the subject matter covered was diverse and magical. It was by turns dark and funny, uncomfortable and light. I led a small mosh pit near the end. As a coincidence, we found out a half-hour before the show that last night was actually the 18th anniversary of the album being released! We had no idea.
Beautiful. Here's the poem I wrote. I silenced the place. People said to me later that I really set the tone for the entire night. I'm glad it went well.
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Smells Like Teen Spirit
You burning house of a man. You sent yourself to me and I felt stupid and sacrilegious for not getting you. You told me that the only thing left that’s true anymore is performance and I watched them take that from you as well. They drowned you in contracts, options, credit, attention and money. What used to be terrifying for you became routine. Your eyes were windows to the selling out. You soul was sanded smooth in front of us until cash came out of a shotgun and you left us bewildered while the older people shook their heads at what they saw coming as obvious as a train.
You broken staircase. You were hiding behind yourself on the small stages of Seattle for ten years. It was a life that gave you comfort. It was an existence that held a small portion of predictable chaos, secular confusion, and security in its random poverty. It was creative. You had something to staunch the flow of life that hemophiliacked out from you. It was a balance of new scabs never being allowed to turn into scars. It was dark and safe in a cave that you thought was permanent.
The spotlight of the music industry and the public’s thirst for something real tore you from this life of relative obscurity and put you on the operating table. A generation’s murder took place on MTV. Your dollar-store salvation army sweaters resonated on catwalks in Milan as ‘grunge’ became big time. Seven-hundred-dollar jeans designed to look comfortable and second-hand rattled down the conveyor belts. Little plastic versions of you hit toy shelves. As a race, we whittled you down to nothing with our television sets, CD players and concert tickets.
You patron saint of ladders missing rungs. If you had won four grammys, you would have borrowed a sheet of plywood and made a table. You hated humanity the way that a librarian hates fire. You screamed at us. And the more real it got, the more we wanted. You sent us suicide notes and we gave you applause.
You loaded up on guns but didn’t bring your friends. You lost because you didn’t pretend. You were never bored or self-assured. Danger found you but you only turned the lights out once. We told you that we were here. We demanded entertainment and our stupidity was contagious. You showed us that you were great at what you did best. You died for a living. Your little group was put under a telescope and pushed far into the space occupied by gods but only you achieved a certain immortality by leaving. You taste because it makes you smile but you grimaced when we force fed you. You talked about how hard it was to find but in the end I think you were surprised by how easy it was. There’s always a choice. There’s always an option. Plan B, Door number two, the escape hatch, a trigger of an exit strategy. Your life was practice. Your exit was your life. You denied your want for death until we forced you to make a choice.
I can’t never mind. You’ll occur to me every time I hear you scream on the oldies station or an elevator when I’m fifty.
I’ll turn to the teenager next to me, maybe a stranger, maybe my child, and I’ll say “Smells like Teen Spirit” and they’ll say “What?”
tags
Special thanks to Andrea Daniels, Sue McIntyre, Nora Smithhisler, Warren Dean Fulton, RC Reslowski, Kimothy Shaugnessy, Chris Gilpin and Sean McGarragle (performing as Seven Dollar Bill), Sue Cormier, CJ Leon, and Amnesia Jane Smith. Trevor and Clint were awesome on the guitar, base, and vocals. They practically channeled Nirvana. Trevor broke a string on the second strum of the first song! : ) Perfect.
The whole night just felt fated. The order of the poets, the songs themselves, and all the subject matter covered was diverse and magical. It was by turns dark and funny, uncomfortable and light. I led a small mosh pit near the end. As a coincidence, we found out a half-hour before the show that last night was actually the 18th anniversary of the album being released! We had no idea.
Beautiful. Here's the poem I wrote. I silenced the place. People said to me later that I really set the tone for the entire night. I'm glad it went well.
----------------------------------------------
You burning house of a man. You sent yourself to me and I felt stupid and sacrilegious for not getting you. You told me that the only thing left that’s true anymore is performance and I watched them take that from you as well. They drowned you in contracts, options, credit, attention and money. What used to be terrifying for you became routine. Your eyes were windows to the selling out. You soul was sanded smooth in front of us until cash came out of a shotgun and you left us bewildered while the older people shook their heads at what they saw coming as obvious as a train.
You broken staircase. You were hiding behind yourself on the small stages of Seattle for ten years. It was a life that gave you comfort. It was an existence that held a small portion of predictable chaos, secular confusion, and security in its random poverty. It was creative. You had something to staunch the flow of life that hemophiliacked out from you. It was a balance of new scabs never being allowed to turn into scars. It was dark and safe in a cave that you thought was permanent.
The spotlight of the music industry and the public’s thirst for something real tore you from this life of relative obscurity and put you on the operating table. A generation’s murder took place on MTV. Your dollar-store salvation army sweaters resonated on catwalks in Milan as ‘grunge’ became big time. Seven-hundred-dollar jeans designed to look comfortable and second-hand rattled down the conveyor belts. Little plastic versions of you hit toy shelves. As a race, we whittled you down to nothing with our television sets, CD players and concert tickets.
You patron saint of ladders missing rungs. If you had won four grammys, you would have borrowed a sheet of plywood and made a table. You hated humanity the way that a librarian hates fire. You screamed at us. And the more real it got, the more we wanted. You sent us suicide notes and we gave you applause.
You loaded up on guns but didn’t bring your friends. You lost because you didn’t pretend. You were never bored or self-assured. Danger found you but you only turned the lights out once. We told you that we were here. We demanded entertainment and our stupidity was contagious. You showed us that you were great at what you did best. You died for a living. Your little group was put under a telescope and pushed far into the space occupied by gods but only you achieved a certain immortality by leaving. You taste because it makes you smile but you grimaced when we force fed you. You talked about how hard it was to find but in the end I think you were surprised by how easy it was. There’s always a choice. There’s always an option. Plan B, Door number two, the escape hatch, a trigger of an exit strategy. Your life was practice. Your exit was your life. You denied your want for death until we forced you to make a choice.
I can’t never mind. You’ll occur to me every time I hear you scream on the oldies station or an elevator when I’m fifty.
I’ll turn to the teenager next to me, maybe a stranger, maybe my child, and I’ll say “Smells like Teen Spirit” and they’ll say “What?”
tags