Volume 2, Issue 20 September 13 - September 27, 2000

My ex-boyfriend used to write me poetry. Poor guy. He was a nice kid (even though he still owes me $300, but that's another story), and he spent hours writing lines that rhymed "pretty" with "kitty" and "flowers" with "April showers" and so on. What he didn't understand (and what a lot of you may be thinking as you groan at the idea of reading poetry) is that a poem doesn't have to be icky-sweet or even beautiful to touch your imagination.

Have you ever heard a poem about a toilet? Well, James Dean (that's right, Mr. Rebel himself) wrote a hardhitting piece of work called "Ode to a Tijuana Toilet." It's all about the acidic mixture of love and hate the actor had for his father. Amid images of angels' asses and matadors' shadows we get more than the saccharin cliches often associated with poetry. We get a cold, brutal glimpse into a man's psyche.

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry finds poets in all sorts of unexpected places. From jail cells and biker bars to universities and painters' studios, you'll meet them all. Where else could you find Richard Pryor, Tom Waits, Hunter S. Thompson, Jackson Pollock, and Che Guevara sharing the same pages with more established writers like William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Henry Miller?

When you pick up Outlaw Bible, don't go for the poets you already know. Definitely avoid the Beats. You can read their stuff anywhere. Find titles that intrigue you like "I Ate Fig Newtons Until I Puked" (S. A. Griffin), "Punk Rock Royalty" (Iris Berry) and the "Night of the Living Tits" (David Lerner).

"Scab Maids on Speed" by Maggie Estep was one such oddly titled poem to catch my eye. In this piece, Estep tells the story of two high school dropouts turned drug addicts turned hotel maids...

We were subsequently fired for pilfering a Holiday Inn guest's quaalude stash which we did only because we never thought someone would have the nerve to call the front desk and say, THE MAIDS STOLE MY LUUDES MAN.

Estep isn't the only poet to avoid run-of-the- mill topics in favor of the absurd, the outlandish, and the scary. Sapphire's "Wild Thing" dramatizes the thoughts of a young boy as he begins a violent crime binge. In "Career Move," Penny Arcade takes the words "THERE'S A BIG FUTURE FOR YOU LICKING ASS-HOLES IN THIS TOWN" and makes them tragic. Ted Berk's "Manifesto for Mutants" sings with images of "burping" and makes the freaks inside all of us seem downright poetic.

And I guess that's the secret to all the poems in Outlaw Bible. The poets here know (unlike that ex-boyfriend of mine who still owes me money) that beauty doesn't just come from safe rhymes about flowers. Poetry comes from the everyday experiences of life. So the next time you sit down on a toilet, do what James Dean did. Think of someone you love and write a poem.

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