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Joined:	Dec 18, 2008
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Location:	Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Last visit:	Friday, May 17, 2013 (05:08:23)
My Occupation:	Private Financial Servicing Industry, Prose Poet
Interests:	https://www.facebook.com/thejperry
Signature:	"A page of good prose remains invincible." -- John Cheever "And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.‎" -- Raymond Carver
Biography:	J.P. is a native to eastern Tennessee where he calls "home". He enjoys reading Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and the poetry of Bukowski. He works in finance but considers writing his prosaic poetic ditties, as he calls them, to be his passion. He enjoys, above all else, sharing stories with others and the company of interesting people. He won't refrain from a good cheap American beer and a Merle Haggard song to remind him of the culture and surroundings he so cherishes and loves.

JPerry1980's Last 12 Poems [ All \| Favorites ]
The Weary and the Wary: For George Jones Terrorist And The More Things Change... Lovely Dark Bloody Girl Who Loves The Sisters	Poetry, Why I'm Leaving You After December This Realist Doesn't Know What The Hell You're Saying The Ballad of Jessup Bean	The Crippler and The Preacher The Brother of the Wayward Wind A K-mart Blue Light Special on the Eve of Rome's Fall Dorothy, You've Lost Your Ruby Slippers

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Nicotine for the Soul: A 21st Century Poem

Nicotine For the Soul:
A 21st Century Poem

1 February 2009

Drunk again, but how sick and weary I grow,
grow tired of those who think they can throw their four or five stanzas together,
and call their 20 minute recreational process a "poem".

In the back room those who I love, Beatniks on their twelfth beer,
they kick T.S. Eliot's ass, as I weep over the beauty of holding,
holding within my dear hands, the soul of Whitman.
Walt, raise yourself from the darkness,
Walt, I hold you within my hands...
(For I am also with you Carl Solomon, rise from your slumber!)
My dear Walt, you are right in that we are our soul's upon the page....

Vomiting, I profess that I am tired,
tired and weary of the souls who believe that a poem must be,
as if ex cathedra from the source of God, a structured beacon,
as if within some lazy haiku.
Fine that may have been, if we had lived in 1302.

An ape can find structure,
(wake me, Ginsberg, from my own lost madness),
but cannot find the human soul.
Distinct, apart, we are our hearts.

How dare anyone ever state that a poem should be dictated by style,
by the way in which the words are stated,
by the way in which the words are printed,
how dare anyone ever state that a poem must follow
some rhyming fucking structure,
or be dictated by some "legal process".

Pall Mall and Pabst Blue Ribbon,
Lucky Strikes as poets past,
I miss the heart of our being,
I wish I could have known those who have passed,
I wish I could have held you Kerouac,
lifted you from those train tracks,
in your darkest darkness, held you as a brother.

For I am a poet,
for lifting me from the ashes of the great Gertrude Stein,
Lizzy Smart,
golden Allen Ginsberg
(for I too, Neal Cassady, am with you, secret hero of poetry!,
as our minds have been lost by madness!),
and the gods of printed past,
I am a poet,
and to those who question the words that flow as molten streams of beauty from me, than I hope you find your peace in Hell,
but it won't be Milton's, for he is sided by my side.

For we are already controlled enough by too much government that dictates our minds,
our hearts,
our souls,
in what we may and may not say,
but so can the world rot before I am told that my soul must follow some "structure",
in expressing my poetry upon the printed page.

I think you, Poe, I think you, Burroughs,
would sit as we cut the eight ball, and split it,
and took it within us, as an insufflated satisfication,
and lament the death of our failing nation.
knowing that only our words are our lives.
Even if all else, alas, should depart from us.

You may have my life,
you may have my being,
but so you never will have my soul,
and so shall my soul proclaim the song of my words,
and you will not defecate that I must write only 10 or 12 verses,
in which I must state some non-sensical "flowery" dung.

Poetry is an expression of the soul,
of that which is within us,
and to all those who proclaim that it must be dictated by some stylistic guidelines,
than I say piss off with you.

Once there were the great kings,
that held within their realm,
those the keys of the great kingdom,
the keys that would open the doors,
as if Pandora would dissipate,
upon their beatific shores.
(Wake thee, Whitman! For our country needs you!)
And yet, no more....

But as long as my soul rages,
as long as life is within me,
as long as my pulse beats,
than my words will stand --
and to those who argue against,
than bide your time,
for even if I am gone, my words, like you great gods of past,
Stand.

-- j.

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JPerry1980's recent Blog entry.	A Love Affair With Raymond Carver ( 1341 reads)	Tuesday, January 22, 2013 (05:06:00)

Every writer has his/her one favorite. The one writer that stands above the rest as being the: "Aha! Yes, he/she got it! He/she truly understood!" - an infallible doctrine of knowing and understanding that unites the individual writer with his/her mentor. I've read literally hundreds (if not perhaps thousands) of writers in my life. In each of the writers that I've read I've taken something profound from there is usually an element that speaks to me, that grabs me by my soul and says, "Yes, I'm speaking to you directly - though we may be separated by time and space and even the place from which we know as Home: I know you, for you and I are the same." If I had to select one writer who stands above all the rest for me, who speaks to my soul in a way no other writer I've experienced has managed to do, it would have to be Raymond Carver. Reading Carver for me is not as if I'm reading a written work for enjoyment. For reading many of his works pains me. Reading Carver is not for mere distraction from the causes of the day - for his work does shut out everything else around me, but this is not a pleasant experience in reaching for literature as enjoyment either though there are many moments his work does please me. Reading Carver is like coming home to a drunken uncle who is your blood and you have no respite but to ensure a blanket is stretched out across his passed out body. You hate that you have to take the time from your day to sacrifice of yourself for this cause - but you do it because your uncle is family and you can't let him sleep there in the cold without a blanket. You have no choice but to act upon the moment. Reading Carver for me, with the pain so much of his work causes me because I understand, truly understand, in a way I can't express as words (and I'm supposed to be a writer!) what it is he is saying that grabs every fabric of me. Reading Carver is like coming home to your very flawed but, yet, all the same family. Reading him is coming home. I attempt to avoid melodrama - but I can't help but to express how much I love this man's wisdom and his words. It is, as if, there is a connection between his written thoughts and the experiences of my life. We are two brothers communed together over a twelve pack of beer and we grow closer to one another through the spaces of our silent words. Though deceased for many years, Ray and I share cigarettes in the wee hours between night's fall and dawn on a regular basis. For me, Carver stands as what I believe to be the shining example of American literature. We find ourselves in the mundane. Our lives are largely comprised of the mundane moments between tragedy and the random moments of heroism and truly reaching above ourselves for just that one simple moment. But, between it all, there is the dirty realism that we confront on a daily basis in the simple moments of it all. And this is good enough - this must be good enough to accept and to acquiesce to the simplicity of it. We do not find our words in the histrionics of greatness and the darkness of the deepest despairs - but somewhere in-between the two. It's the quiet moments. It's the simple things where we discover the nature of ourselves. Carver understood this. His works were comprised of these moments. So, take from this as you will, this is my simple tribute to who I believe to be not only America's finest writer of the world we live in between the extremes - the little moments that comprise the majority of our lives - but the essence of who we truly are as people. Ray, I love your words - I love your truth brought to life on the page. And if, in my life, I can be half the exposed individual of the world around us as you achieved with your life's powerful words, I'll truly have risen above just the mundane - as you did, my friend, in giving life to the truly simple as something so much more. The Cobweb A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck of the house. From there I could see and hear the water, and everything that's happened to me all these years. It was hot and still. The tide was out. No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing a cobweb touched my forehead. It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned and went inside. There was no wind. The sea was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade. Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath touches it. A fine thread. Intricate. Before long, before anyone realizes, I'll be gone from here. - Raymond Carver j.p.

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