abbattoir vigilante

I’m not sure what to think of this man. This man O’Hara. It seems to me these are not poems so to speak. Poetic journal entries maybe. But then we can argue who’s to say what is and what is not a poem. Who is to judge what is and what is not art. Well someone must judge it, because there are paintings we hang in museums and paintings we hang on the refrigerator. The classic saying “my 4 year old could have painted that” , anyone could have painted that. But they didn’t paint it, the person who painted it painted it. I could have written poems like O’Hara. Anyone could write poems like O’Hara. I guess he wrote them first. Or maybe he was only recognized for them first.
The problem I have with them is such simple poetry seems forced. O’Hara’s poems seem forced. The appears to be so much effort put into what affects to be casual. His attempts a nonchalant poetry, for the sake of being nonchalant but still notable, fall short for me.
In the poem entitled “POEM” on page 19 O’Hara starts out by saying
“Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it,” fl This line is observational and interesting. It carries the feeling I assume O’Hara had wanted to communicate. The detached and observant, the Parisian walking through life. Unfortunately though I think he ruins most of these beautiful lines by following them with insightful rhetoric I find destructive to the rest of the stanza.
“and a phone call to the beyond which doesn’t seem to be coming any nearer.”
Now this line immediately ruins the poem for me because I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about. And the line which comes after this gives no clue or explanation. When O’Hara offers lines like these it appears to me he has only thrown them in as in effort in sounding poetic, while the simple observations he starts with are for me much more poetic than the poetic attempts that follow. Read the whole poem:

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn’t seem to be coming any nearer.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
on the poetry of a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?

So this poem is all over the place. I find it confusing and every other lines comes off as a filler. Comes off as “shit let me throw in something that sounds intellectual and thoughtful, but also romantic and bohemian”. Every other line comes off as crap.
Here is the poem with my edits (yeah I took the liberty):

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died?

Written this way the poem has a much strong affect on me than before. To me this version is much more insightful as well. By leaving out the pointless lines of poetic explanation I think the reader is able to come to the conclusion of the poem by his/her self. What O’Hara states so obviously should be left to the discertion of the reader.

The problem with this movie is that New York City is in no way a central part of it. This is not a movie about New York, it’s a movie about friendship. Any major city would have been a suitable setting for the main characters. Because of this reason I had no idea why we watched the movie in class. Many big cities have prostitution. The fact is many small towns do as well. If this was the main character’s reason for moving to New York you would have thought he could make more money as a cowboy prostitute in Texas, where it’s still cool to be cowboy.
Friendship can exist anywhere. Maybe that is the point of the movie. After all unlikely friends going to florida. Even in death friends sit next to each-other on the bus.

To The Brooklyn Bridge.
This poem has some meaning to me. My grandparents have this framed version of it in the foyer of their apartment. The poem is laid out of some gaudy tracing modernist looking 70’s art print of the bridge it’s self. The bridge is a black outline in the print and the background is this awkward orange sunset color. The poem it’s self is written in this weird chicken scratch kind of “I don’t give a damn” all capitals handwriting. It was how I always pictured all new york beat poetry should be drawn as a child. I’m not sure this is beat classified though. After my parent’s got divorced my father asked me if it was possible that I could request to inherit the painting of the poem and then give it to him (they were my mom’s parents), because it had always been his favorite work of art in their apartment.
I sometimes wonder who did the painting and if it was the poet himself. I mean HArt Crane is somewhat famous, and my grandparents are art collectors. Anyways I never assumed I’d read the poem for school but as soon as I saw that Hart Crane at the top I said to myself “shit I know this poem”. My grandparents aren’t even jewish.
I would say I find the poem somewhat enjoyable. I often wonder about peoples constant relation of New York City to god and religion. Something with all this filth must be so holy. OH holy holy holy hell. I hate that poem though. I guess the image of gates will always reflect an entrance into a greater realm. The gates to heaven, the gates to the city, even the gates to a pasture. A bridge after all is simply a gateway that passes over water. And in a greater realm anything is possible, so if you believe. Believe anything is possible. Believe in god.

I’ll take a picture of it the next time I’m there.

I was going to write about the upper east end of the east end, of Manhattan. But Monday night at 2 am I was awoken by a man hurling a 2×4 consistently against the door of the apartment complex across the street from me. He was yelling “you mother fuckers, this is a mother fucking emergency, let me the fuck in. Yah thats right pull the blankets over your ears sleep in your god damn cozy beds while people are dying”. The cops were called. He reappeared again at about 4 am.
The Astral apartments. Home to many old people, affordable to students, an overall trash heap. Bedbug problems are rampant, you must remember to never approach any furniture left for trash pick up. In fact cross the street on trash pick up days because no consequence is worth it. There have also been claims of serious toxic molds and fungi infesting many units. Some tenants say they have found small mushrooms growing from their ceilings.
On top of this a new Astral episode of debauchery has also occurred. It seems the superintendent who would be responsible for exterminating these little mushrooms has been occupying his time by filming amateur porn instead. Not only but shooting boudoir photography! It can be viewed on such websites as “Model Mayham.com”.
The Astral it’s self has a nice little history though. It commissioned by… CHARLES PRATT!! in 1867. Charles Pratt was the once owner of Astral Oil Works, with the slogan “thee holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil”. LAter of course Pratt built thee now famous Pratt INstitute one of New York’s finest art schools. The apartments themselves were built in 1885-1886 as housing facilities for the refinery workers. The Astral was designed after the Peabody Apartments in Southwark, London.
Pratt became a multimillionaire by the way of Astral Oil until he of course sold the company to an even bigger company, John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.
Oh my.

I thought it was interesting once again that most of the images shared were these depressing depressing pictorials. I guess I have to reevaluate my viewpoint of most of the photography to correspond with the genre of journalism. Though I wonder the same thing now, why it is that newspapers and magazines focus on the horror filled instead of the uplifting. I had been looking forward to a photo of a dog watching hot dogs spin. There was no photo of a dog watching hot dogs spin. There was a lot of murder and child labor. There was no dog. I must assume pulitzer prizes are not won by dogs watching hot dogs. There is no shattering truth to be revealed by the hot dog dog. Maybe my favorite picture is the newsies smoking. Kid’s these days don’t know what it’s like to work a real job. to be out there slaving away for minimum wage, which is now $7.50 an hour. Kids go to high-school then right into collage, but when this photo was taken collage didn’t exist. People didn’t have time for collage because then there would be no one to deliver newspapers. If the newspapers didn’t get delivered then no one would ever see these daring photographs. it’s the circle of life. Maybe.

Colson Whitehead made me fall asleep on the subway. I had heard of things like this happening in New York. I was going to be raped on the subway while sleeping. I was going to have my wallet stolen on the subway while sleeping. Everyone who falls asleep on the New York subway, must endure these two experiences. But I got lucky, and was woken up by a homeless man. He was puking liquor all over my lap. Unfortunately my book was ruined. I’m scared.

I live in new york. I live on the island of brooklyn. My apartment is the top of a 3 family house. The house is painted grey. The front door has an awning that hangs over it. The landlords have hung icicle lights from the awning. The landlords live on the first floor. The icicle lights stay up year round. I am certain the house is the ugliest house on the block.

From my bedroom window you can see trees. The other view is sky. I like to look out at the trees and sky. The window in the kitchen is the only window with a view of the city’s skyline, but all the buildings are cut off except the Chrysler. This makes me feel a lot better about things. On the fourth of july I saw a few fireworks from the window in the kitchen.

I live here. Sometimes I forget my house is in New York.

There is something wrong happening. A movie called the cruise was shown in class. I watched it and thought about why the movie was assigned. I thought about the same thing for a long time.
A man was the narrator. He worked as a tour guide on a bus that drove around New York City. Riding on the bus was what he called “cruising”. I thought the movie was going to be about a ship. The man would point out to tourists where writers had lived and died in Grenich Village. All of the writers had died of a terrible causes, including suicide. It was very depressing. I wondered why the teachers at school wanted students to have that image of writers. I wondered if I would ever be a writer. I wanted to be happy.

I decided I would rather be happy than be a writer. The man who is the narrator seems to be upset. He was yells that New York City is about exhibitionism and art. He yells that he doesn’t want to work for a living. He doesn’t want to wake up in the morning to work. This doesn’t make sense to me. A lot of night jobs are available for people who would like a different schedule. The narrator got mad again. He is mad at his boss for asking him not to wear a ripped jacket to work anymore. The narrator hates his boss. He yells “I’m trying to grab these people by the collar and show them culture, this jacket is culture”. I don’t understand most of this movie. I don’t understand culture. People wanting to be depressed in order to make their lives miserable. I really want to be happy and have good things happen to me.

The narrator is depressing. This makes my heart feel weird. The narrator is very angry at the world for no reason. He comes up with a reason, anger is his “just reward”. The narrator wants to tell off all the people who alienated him. He doesn’t actually yell at the people. The narrator yells at the brooklyn bridge. He is mad at the brooklyn bridge for reading a friends screen play instead of his. The friends screen play and the bridge are both “pieces of shit”. None of the things yells are about people alienating him. The narrator is mad over the accomplishments of his friends. The accomplishments are “pieces of shit”. The narrator hates his friends. He also hates his parents. I feel sick. My head hurts, my stomach is hot. Maybe I should go home.

The school has confused me. My left arm fell asleep. The school wants us to be angry and depressed. Being angry and depressed isn’t something I want to do. I want to write. Before I went to the school I felt better. Talking about exhibition and art, New York City makes me feel bad. I am confused about a dated stereotype. I am attending school to learn how to be a “writer”. My body feels terrible and I wish I hadn’t seen the movie. I went home after class to eat mango raspberry sorbet. The sorbet makes me feel a little better.