Here is a new blackout poem I managed to pull together during a little mental break at work.

“Massacre”

Who will survive 
real-life horror
what will be left

grave robbing and cannabalism
a reign of terror
an insane family

animal and human bones
a mask worn
molded from human flesh

massacre
bizarre and brutal
massacre

brutally real original crimes
what happened is true
now that's just as real

I had to fudge some elements of the stanzas below, but this is generally how I see it. For the most part, the structure is simply reading from top to bottom. I also chose three line stanzas for a relative sense of pace and a slight sense of unity.

And I did keep the spelling of “cannabalism” from the original ad copy.

I like it. The spelling, not the eating people.

A Thing, Perhaps?

I work a couple of jobs and finished my time today in one role, the writing center, only to head upstairs to my office for my office hours. However, I felt like I needed a break, so I searched archive.org and stumbled on a 1974 newspaper ad for the theatrical release of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I felt that spark and spent about 15 minutes or so finding my words and blacking them out. It felt good, I am pretty pleased with the result, and it provided a little mental break.

I also saw there is a nice collection of these kind of clippings and ads, so I think I might dive into more. It feels like it could be a fun little project that allows me some poetic practice while being a little crafty. Plus, it leans into my love of horror.

Win-win-win, I think.

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It’s even more hilarious given the fact I am currently teaching poetry, right now, to eager creative writing students looking to explore different genres.

So here is a poem carved from a newspaper this Monday. My students tried there hands at blackout poetry and I could help doing the same myself.

“Water Budget”

Translated from my rather sloppy blackout work, the poem follows as such:

70% of water 
exhausted

3 billion people
are in decline 

excessive pumping of
major aquifers

worsens the
risk

water bankruptcy is
like financial bankruptcy

manage your
budget

Again, with regards to Ian James of the LA Times.

Blackout Poetry and Influences

Blackout poetry is very fun because as long as you can scribble and have a pool of words from a sheet of paper, you can create a blackout poem. It can emerge from a newspaper, a page from a book, or an office memo, for example.

When I think of blackout poetry I think of two people.

First is Austin Kleon, who did a TEDx Talk that I use in my English C1000 classes to introduce the concept of stealing like an artist. It is a valuable lesson for my students and they seem to largely enjoy the video.

The other person I think of is my former professor at CSUSM, Francesco Levato. He was newly hired to CSUSM when I approached him to serve as my thesis chair for my M.A., but he took to the task readily and I learned a lot from working with him.

One of the kindnesses he did for me after I had graduated was provide me with an opportunity to review his book Arsenal/Sin Documentos for a literary mag that sadly has vanished off the web. It was quite a great experience, and I wish I had saved a copy of the webpage.

In any case, Levato’s book is a fantastic work of blackout poetry with particular relevance to today:

Arsenal/Sin Documentos is a documentary poetics project that examines the criminalization of Latin American bodies through U.S. policy. It consists of a series of linked documentary poems composed of appropriated language from U.S. government documents, such as: the Immigration and Nationality Act; the U.S. patent for Taser hand-held stun guns; materials from the Office of English Language Programs designed to instruct immigrants on assimilation into U.S. culture; and the U.S. Customs and Border

From the CLASH Books publication listing for Arsenal/Sin Documentos

So I guess in a small way this little blackout poem reflects the kind of work he was doing in his collection, just not nearly as skillfully. Please check out his work over at his website while you’re here.

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This is a problem as I will be teaching an introduction to creative writing course in the Spring, which is a dream opportunity for me. But I have to teach poetry and how can I teach it when I feel so unsure about it? I mean, I will need to teach poetry no matter what. I want to teach poetry, but I want to understand it further.

But this left me at a strange moment, especially given the current amount of stuff I have going on in my career. I do fully intend to write and update blog on that eventually.

For now though? Poetry. Man. What do I do?

The Seven Hells Project

It’s been kind of a weird couple of months for me; certainly pleasant but not without it’s challenges and more exhausting moments. I realized I need to familiarize myself again with the form and dust off my collections for building the class in the future.

For now, though, to teach I must do, and do I did.

What I have hear is a series of seven poems of varying forms (see if you can identify them) about depictions of Hell; not as a physical realm, but the agonizing, disorienting, painful hells of contemporary life. It helped make this particularly busy week a bit less agonizing.

Anyway, here are the Seven Hells.

First Hell

The boil of blood fills my ears

Every step leads to tears

Endless steps, endless climb, cycle unbroken

Labored steps to the small home where I may rest

I had arrived to find the elevator broken

After a twelve hour day bitter lamentations now spoken

I am not sure of how many years

I can keep my body going with such stress

Concrete walls, steel steps, every sound and grunt reveals me: a mess

Elevator down for a week, more or less my life, I guess

Second Hell

Grace and opportunity afford me salvation

But in my hubris I fell into old patterns

I keep telling myself to break the cycle

But I cannot help but fall into the same

Old habits

Another night with little sleep, stucco ceiling gazing back at me

The popcorn abyss above threatens to swallow me

I feel sweat on my pillow as I turn my head

I smell a sour tang

I can be better; I must be better

But those old habits are hard to conquer

I slap myself, heel of palm to the forehead

It hurts but the worry hurts more

Failure hurts more

Money is my problem – there’s never enough

Money haunts me – it won’t let me sleep

Money promises an escape – if only I was smarter

Money is my solution – if only I was good with it

Third Hell

Fourth Hell

It is a long night of uneven sleep

as the mind wanders through a maze of doubts

fueled by the previous falsehoods that

shook the foundations of what I knew of you.

There remains a distance; seemingly wide.

Too wide, too treacherous, despite desire

to move past it and find normality

I crave for safety, for comfort, for love.

Radio silence at midnight, of course.

There are valid reasons, I know as much

But again, those nagging doubts nip at me.

The paranoid mind is what it is, yes? 

So the rat mind wanders the maze searching

for reasons – the why of you – solutions

to the cruel question: what are we in

this experimental era of doubt?

Fifth Hell

This world is a goddamn fucking mess

Smoothbrains seem content

Accepting the words of those who hurt them

Cloaked aspirations toward their opulence

They don’t fucking see the world is on fire

They don’t fucking now they’re already drowing

They don’t fucking know they’re already dead

Distracted by hostility to those they’re told to target

Elmer Fudd falls for the sign switch

Fascist Bugs Bunny pulls a swift one

Daffy Duck’s face blown away in the trigger pull

They don’t fucking see they are hamburger

They don’t fucking see they are the product

They don’t fucking see the fat man is fed

Go back to the system they cant afford

Even meager pleasures cost more

Sixth Hell

Tick. Tock.

Idle eyes watch the hands.

Tick. Tock.

Serious in ambition. 

Tick. Tock.

But merely playing at the process.

Tick. Tock.

Weighty expectations.

Tick. Tock.

Desire is not effort.

Tick. Tock.

Worried.

Tick.

Now.

Tock.

Work. Tick. 

Work. Tock. 

Not. Tick. 

Done. Tock.

Tick tock tick.

Self-imposed goals (ticktockticktock) are (tick) the (tock) most (ticktock)

dev (tick) as (tock) tat (tick) ing.

Tick. 

Tock. 

Tick.

Seventh Hell

Thanks for Reading

We’ll see how successful I was by any comments or criticisms that emerge in the comments. Overall, though, I think the private Hell of expectations regarding my future creative writing class just got a little more manageable by the creative process. If you have suggestions for things I should be reading, please let me know.

I’m not expecting to open up a dedicated poetry category any time soon. But who knows – the world is uncertain anyway and that’s the Hell of it.

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