I used to write a lot of poetry but I gave it up around 2003, deciding prose-poetry matches my skill-set better. There are some pretty poetic portions of my novels, but still, hallucino-poetic prose is different than poetry.

I suppose this made me (for a while, anyway) one of the five people in the world who read poetry but don’t write it!

However, one day in 2008 when reading Kate Braverman’s poem Ladies Night #2, I kept reading words different than the ones on the page. I was rewriting the poem in my mind, much as, when I listen to music, I often hear my own mental improvisations rather than what’s being played in the outside world. So I wrote down my Goertzel-ized Braverman, and was also unable to resist mixing in some of Bukowski’s poem back to the machine gun and the lyrics to the Hendrix song Third Stone from the Sun.

But, the whole thing is not plagiarisms and mutations — there is plenty of original unadulterated Goertzelitude in there as well…

Though there are some bright spots, overall I was clearly in a dark mood when I wrote this, frustrated by aspects of my relations with the “fairer” sex. When I’m in a perky mood I don’t think about poetry, I play music. (Actually, music is great regardless of my mood 😉