HALF-BAKED EMO BALLADRY ALERT ...

I'll bet I'm not the only one here who's had the following experience:

A. Suffer the loss of a primary, intense and passionate relationship.
B. Pour out one's pain, angst and passion onto paper in some kind of poetic form.
C. Get on with one's life, get long since over the failed relationship in question and forget all about the poem.
D. Come across said poem years later.
E. Laugh hysterically and compulsively.

I mean, wow, that's some of the most overwrought, labored and overall forced writing I've ever seen. And I remember writing it. And I was an adult at the time -- a fairly antique adult by the standards of Writers of Angsty Breakup Poems (in my thirties. But oh my, this is funny stuff. Funny in the Ed Wood, TV-Batman, accidentally-used-horseradish-instead-of-vanilla-in-cake-recipe kind of way. (No, I didn't do the horseradish thing. But it sounds as if it would be horiffically funny in a way, no? I have made coffee without remembering to put the pot underneath -- more than once.)

Actually, this wasn't the real post-breakup-angst-and-pain-spattered poem. That poem has been viewed only by the woman in question and, having found its rough draft along with the poem I'm writing about, I can attest that it's perhaps the most embarrassing thing ever written. No, the poem I find so hysterical was my attempt to ruminate, a few months post-breakup, about how my little life-paradigm-shift really isn't a blip on the world screen -- everything else in the cosmos (photosynthesis, geopolitical relations, physical and mathemetical constants, economics, etc.) goes on -- and that I would too, but probably not right then. And I tried to do it in a rhymed ballad form. And used all manner of weird juxtapositions, both of content and of tone. It's like the Ultimate Emo Geek Poem, and I never thought of myself as geek, emo or all that ultimate. And, considering how removed I am from the emotions in question and how bemused I am about the whole thing now in retrospect ... this poem has me in stitches.

I won't transpose the whole thing, thanks be. But here are some excerpts. You'll see what I mean.

They still grow tobacco in North Carolina;
they're still making cars in Detroit --
but I find myself leaching loss onto paper
attempting a requiem for joy ...

leaching loss onto paper. a REQUIEM FOR JOY ... Holy flaming prunes, who wrote this stuff? Oh, wait ...

A circle's still measured by squaring the radius
then multiplying by pi.
Washington still serves as sycophant haven;
salmon still spawn, then they die.
Grease will still spatter, and squirrels still chatter,
the wealthy get fatter, the poor never matter --
but as for my cosmos, I've found it uprooted
exposing the errors and lies ...

Aside from the uprooted-cosmos bit, which is the great-grandmother of mixed metaphors, the bit that gets me is "salmon still spawn, then they die." There's a bit of Hemingway in there, methinks.

Finally, get this:

Four fifty-one Fahrenheit still ignites paper;
livers are still making bile.
Fire still needs oxygen, crops still need rain,
I still need to wait for a while ...

Sigh. I don't mean to ridicule the self I was back then (and we're talking more than four years ago, folks, longer than most of you other than mrgoodwraith and michaelhinman and my occasional visitor from my college friends have known me). But oh my, that's funny stuff. Even while striving to be Oh So Serious.

Any of you-unz had a similar experience?

Sounds & Images: "Christmas in Washington" (Steve Earle)
State O'Mind: Amused