20140327

Steve Tills


Critical Thinking class issues

Quite frankly, I believe it is immoral
to "teach poetry." Everybody knows that Mr. Pound
said that there is no money in it and it
may even land one in a kind of Debtors Prison.
Who would want to make a living teaching
the wealthy to go to jail? [Actually, that's not a bad
idea, but seriously] who thinks it makes perfect sense
to teach ANYTHING other than "Critical Thinking"
and "Argumentative Writing" in order to make good
and useful thought for advancing science and defeating ugly
political behaviors, and leave all the real poetry learning
to the actual practitioners who are willing to get jailed
for what they believe and who take responsibility for their words
and deeds? Self-study gets the best the furthest in advance
of profit taking and losses of anonymity, therefore losses in matter
and they shall get someplace new with or without the university's financial
assistants, accountants, WHAT the heck forever, is this
a declarative sentence, a rhetorical question [Gestaltists
would turn those into direct demands, not passive-aggressive
poetry play], or a kind of truth that lasts until it arrives at the line-
break. Why would you, Steve Tills, be telling anybody crap
like that, anyhow? It's just an old faux-authority tone, couldn't
I hear that coming BEFORE I placed [actually, merely typed]
it onto the page for further regurgitation. I like the irony and self-
effacement there, I do, it's damn fun, I mean it, I really mean it,
but is it genuinely TRUE? Again, for about as long as it takes to break
the line [into more Kerouac amphetamine prose]? No, I don't do
drugs like that, just the nicotine gum overthecounter and over-
priced but cheaper than the brand Nicorette [no, not Humboldt
Skunk, either, although I think there's still some of that tucked
away where my wife won't find it since we got married, and
I quit smoking cigarettes because they were hospitalizing me
and FRANKLY "suffocating" is a TERRIBLE FEELING],
that's another passive-voice sentence, both grammatically and
existentially — it should be [not "You," but] "I kept hospitalizing
myself with cigarette poisoning," thereby "taking responsibility"
for the action, not assigning blame on/to some other "subject"/agency
in the world, and being a stronger sentence, also, as it thus uses
a strong action verb and not one of those vague "to be" verbs, but
then, some writing IS about being, not a proposition one likes
to treat with prepositions always. Fk-it, this is silly, just ENTER-
tainted Meant. That's fun, though, too. For me. The writer guy.



Ummm, the bad humans, whatevers

You are here, you know, Steve Tills,
and making more than small talk, as you have
for so many years now I am never sure
who is who anymore. The talk, as always,
is too, too big to be small poetry and big
poetry is too tall to be raw thought. What
do you think about that without writing
IT on white space to read your mind, my
mind, a kind mind, G. Gudding re-minds,
a too kind mind [once in youth], mindful,
but none of this is carefully planned by good
chance procedures or log rhythmic restraint
to constrain spontaneity OR "habituation," hence,
a bad risk or a good risk or both. You know,

Reader, that the corporate prisons here, "they"
are no less corrupt than the ones in the North
and the South Koreas, and throughout Southeast
Asia and South America and not so Far-elsewhere
the inmates of Poverty must sell their organs
or be forced to contribute to the Harvests
that will serve the second cousins and third world
friends of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. No wonder
that so many of us are scared all the time? But
seriously, the genes are still the same throughout
the entire species' history, so will the many children
ever really let the older sister or older brother bully
their moms and dads, NO, the fittest will survive
and those modern day Nazis will succumb to OUR
relentless communication and family connections.
In sum, just POINT THEM ALL OUT. We can watch
and reprimand them together; they cannot stop the whole 99%
of the rest of the gene pool from sticking close to the other
99.9% of organic matters helpless and threatened by the bad humans.



Private codes last night at 4:30 a.m., Slather, blather

U10:07, tell me the real reason that you would "never" write
or complete a screenplay or a novel!

U10:19, you would never write or complete
a screenplay or a novel, would you?

U10:22, I would never write or complete anything.

U10:23, I am not sure that I would ever write or complete
a screenplay or a novel. Or that I wouldn't. Who's asking?


"Would you ever write or complete a screenplay or a novel?"
"Why would I? Why waste the time?"
"Why are you asking such a preposterous question
in the first place? Who the fk sits down and writes a whole
fk-ing novel? Novels are written by blokes
who want to make money from their writing;
all I'm interested in is taking care of myself, my
family, and my friends, and writing a few things
that I can enjoy and get some [reward] REWORD for.

Those who have possessed themselves of reasonable fear
of $$$$$$$ but not succumbed to their fear or it —
Ellsberg, Mandela, Thoreau, and millions of women, you
turd habituation. NOT Gandhi, King, Lennon, and millions
of women [c'mon, YOU, get out of there and join the human race already!]

DDJ on DWjr. Cocaine, it goes down in a Floridian place. DDJ's buddy
on the son's yacht did the time. DWjr's old man got the adult aged
sob off the plank. NH got sent up for 4 years hard but was likely
protected in there. Another time, the brat parks the Lamborghini
in the employee's parking lot next to their Chevelles and Dodge Darts.
The old man makes him park his silly babe magnet off the property lines.

You believe that you have enough friends. You should NEVER recommend
that others young and unempowered take the risks, either. IMMORAL
and COWARDLY and FLAT OUT WRONG. DDJ also told the story
about the local $$$$$$$ buying his kid an Excavation Biz to keep him
off the real premises and then the Business thrived. These fellows KNOW
that money corrupts, too, in their own ways. Maybe his wearing Republican
Uniform is just a front. Why do so many people tell me this stuff.
They want me to pass it on? They tell me "secrets." They trust me
with them or they [underestimate me] figure I don't know what to do
with certain information. Or won't. Am I a truth-teller? Is that WHAT
they see in me?

Actually, I've been completely WRONG about certain guesses, too.
What is the poet's TRUE CALLING? To tell/reveal/determine
the Truth? Or to explain how best to form and frame it? And then
what is any given pomer's TRUE CALLING? To tell (reveal)
[unveil], actually determine the truth or to explain (or "update")
how best to form and frame it? Put IT, this way and some will jump
(with joy) the bones in the old closet: "The Dorn and Beat pack outed
truth and the Lang Pomers focused on 'Form,' perhaps particularly
the forms and frames that expose lying and treachery and injustice
and systemic untruth and deceit in the [mostly American-English
speaking] signifying patterns, habits, compulsions, and power structures."

But is that a false dichotomy? In fact, it's such an easy one to bulldoze
into a heap of money, stature, and pure shit. I do believe that some have
much further to go in determining TRUTH and revealing "Truths."
I do believe that too much "money" has been made by those who "master"
style and turn their nose up away from substance. But how much "substance"
can boys and girls from the Harvards and Yales make themselves privvy to
in the first place? The "dirt" is, well, "down in the dirt." The BEATS,
don't they make a pretty panhandler's penny romanticizing "the down
and the dirty," though, too? What deeds a Dorn does missing the point
about LGBT or a Baraka missing his own bigotry or a Ginsberg taking advantage
of younger "students," and the list goes on and on until the end: they
are all fighting EACH OTHER that they can get their cute little paws on
AS IF it's WrestleMania and "he" who garners the most belts makes
the most Male Anthropological "God" almighty R-E-P-U-T-A-T-I-O-N.

For What? The object is TRUTH, not "regard."
Oh, the glorious pissing fights of youth, Old Boys?
"Who's keyboard is bigger and more ergonomic,
mine or yours, Ernest? Don't matter, F. Scott,
I've been going premature, if at all, and Quit Drinking!"

The Lang Pomers ain't got the groceries on DW,
[but I know a guy because I'm Italian]. [Half, dickhead!]
And they couldn't trash the brass like D.E. because D.E. WAS
a member of the band. And Dorn and Co. cannot
reveal "the Real" if they never cowboyed up
to drop their hardware at the Ok Ok corral.
They say everybody's got a share of the truth,
but what does that mean, we're ALL INVESTED
in it or divested of it?

The Bullshit GUY fears "truth," too, especially
the sort the sordid can buy since the criminals
and the rest of the Tri-lateral crew's coup of 2000-2008.
I must protect the Michael Moores and the Krugmans
and the Jon Stewarts and the Gabby Giffords and
the Rachel Maddows. That's the truth. Fk the Pulitzer
Prize Fights. That's Kidd Rock and Cat Scratch Fever.
Let me tell ya an old story about "Carlton Cheston,"
a true and secret one from some wise guys who
actually knew him back in the original day...
Want to hear another about the snow in A.P.'s
head covers returning from Mexico in the 1960s?
Listen. One word, two syllables, LISTEN.
Then "Flip 'em!" Of course, "Reader," you
needn't wait until Big So&so from "here"
or Big So&so from "there" gives you a scoop.
Both here and there are all kind truths, "they reveal
by WHAT they don't frame and package, too. You,
"You," read the gift into the package, you can.



Steve Tills is the publisher of theenk Books (http://theenkBooks.com) and Hank’s Original Loose Gravel Press (http://hanksoriginalbooks.com/). He’d love to romanticize the notion that he “works in a factory,” but actually that would be entirely pretentious. He’d love to contrast his “day job” with his leisure activities, but that would be equally silly. He loves his wife, his dog, and his friends. Enough scribbled.
 
 
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