An American Prophet

[leesharks]

I posted this poem at the same time as another poem. Both of them weren't really poems, though they are. They are poems in the sense that I presented them as if they were poems; but they're not poems, they're simply fancy displays of spite and bitterness. My aim was self-indulgent inaccessibility. After the fact, I tried to read more into them, after I'd initially distanced myself from them by carelessly throwing them together. I made a few minor changes to make them less accessible and fixed some typos. That was it. Then I got more interested in the character speaking. And that's what I care about. But what other people say about the poem as a poem makes perfect sense in the context in which it's presented. But I have no intention for this poem to make sense. It all spins on the point of saying, "That is the point." What is the point? There is no point. It's a very inspired nihilistic thing. You can say whatever you want about it or take it any way you want. I don't like the poem. It was just another point for me to spin on and from.

Hmm... am i understanding you correctly to be responding, in part, to my comments as comments intended to help the poem make sense?

My comments were actually intended to address the poem's not making sense qua increasing and perfecting its not making sense.

Those were suggestions I felt would help it not make sense more perfectly.

[rowens]

I didn't give much thought to the last lines when I wrote them. Days later I figured that they meant the speaker needs others' stupidity and his wisdom. But they were nothing but kind of like cop out lines when I was writing the poem.

It was warm a few nights so I bought something to drink and planned on sitting outside and drinking when night came, but when it got cold I got mad and wrote this poem. I was mad about other things too. Writing this poem was ritualistic. I think it makes sense. Though as a good poem or as art it doesn't. It's a ritual and an external monologue.

[Erthona]

Well and one has to be serious to make the poem work, if your not serious then the poem can't work in any non-meaningful way, but no matter how much a poem works, it rarely makes any money, and certainly not enough to support itself, so in that sense a poem is like an ugly girl, which is to say they are better left dead. At least that's what Lee and Han Son told me before Carrot Sale made a damn fool of himself again, but he can't help it because he's too stupid to know he is doing it, so in that way too he is like a poem. When you think about it everything is like a poem, except a poem, which is a poem.

[rowens]

Like most everything in my life, my worst poems get the most attention. But then I did grow up thinking about Hot Rod when he said, When I'm good I'm good and when I'm bad I'm better.