A poem should help you rob a bank.
A truly remarkable interview with CAConrad, this excerpt does not do it justice...
Tom Beckett: What do you think poetry does? What do you want a poem to do?
CAConrad: A poem should help you rob a bank. What kind of fucking poem wouldn't help you rob a bank? A bad poem wouldn't be able to drive the getaway car. You better be certain you've got the right poem behind the fucking wheel, things are tight these days on the streets, they'll kick your ass unless the poem behind the wheel is the right poem.
But I really do LOVE when a poem strips down, gets on its back and holds me in the air with its delicious feet, and lets me feel naked flight. A child should come out, a new one, a wonder, the poem makes everything that new to the sudden brand of alternate realness it makes. There are poets whose poems do this to me (with me) (for me) nearly every time.
It goes way back, this Great Love. Photograph of a camera in the front room. Then four or five more photographs of cameras in the hall. There's a large cabinet and our wild guess of eight, maybe nine hundred snapshots of cameras in the drawers. Sometimes it's different angles of the same camera. And you might stand in the room with me wondering about the camera that took the pictures of the cameras. Or, was it more than one camera? Or, are some of the cameras in the photographs the cameras used to photograph the other cameras? We spend a good half hour looking everywhere but there are no cameras, just the photographs of cameras. In the end there's a box of cherry tea. Have you ever had cherry tea? Me neither, let's have a cup.
A very expensive, very old vase was accidentally broken in the British museum recently. The BBC cameras got as close to the flower and branch design as they could so that our eyes could SEE the repair. See, look, do you see the epoxy? Yes, that's it. The reporter helped us see. See? Yes. And many hours and much money was spent in the reparation of this vase. Yet British and American troops are responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's being brutally killed or injured. Museums and libraries burned to the ground. Tax dollars and patronage to fix a vase. Tax dollars and private interests to wage war, and then to have the NERVE to "give" "aid" to "rebuild." Just like, just days ago, on the news the reporter said that America was expediting bombs to Israel, and a semicolon later said that America was THE FIRST to arrive in Lebanon with "aid." Bombs and bandages. It was SO SHOCKING! You send bombs to Israel, NOT JUST send bombs, but EXPEDITE them because they're not getting there quick enough. And almost at the same time send medical supplies to Lebanon to "help" with the injuries caused by the bombs, GEESH! Were the bombs and the bandages in different planes I hope? Good old American cost effectiveness could very well send everything in one load. We can all relax now though that the vase has been repaired in the British museum. The camera zoomed in to let us see WHAT AN AMAZING JOB was done. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for saving the vase!
Sometimes on the news the cameras show us a car crash. They zoom in, and flames, blood, spraying water, it's all there. Recently on the news the camera gave us details of a very still pile of hair poking up from behind a seat. It's just like a movie, the news. Wow, super duper, it's like it's not even real. Is this what we've been working toward? I have a notion to go to the car wrecks on Philadelphia's highways with my giant bags of potting soil and tomato plants and make a little garden on the charred hoods and roofs of the wrecked cars. And glue poems to the windows. This protest will be called HOW LOVE IS WHAT THE POEM IS GOING TO DO TO YOU! EAT A TOMATO FUCKER!