Local Youths Practice Parkbench Poetry

While skipping home from my posh part-time job on yesterday's sunny evening, I noticed that someone had written a few poems on a park bench that I pass by regularly. These were definitely a new addition. My feet ached a bit from standing and walking all day in my sweet new Spalding sneakers that are still breaking me in, so I decided to park my can on the park bench and peruse the local literature. What follows is a recollection of pieces of two poems. I've taken artistic license and fused them together for your edification and amusement:

Speed weed birth control
Drink a forty smoke a bowl
Stoners live & stoners die
And in the end we all get high
If at first you don't succeed
[Expeletive] it all, smoke some weed!

Mind you, it's not exactly iambic pentameter, but this is a poem that could be sung, and I have to say I am impressed. I mean, I've been stoned before, and I've written poetry before, and I've written stoned poetry before, but my stoned poetry never had anywhere near the rhythm, rhyme, or clarity of message that these kids are producing. That's a quality poem, even if it is a bit simplistic and in a special interest genre.

Of course, just because they claim to be stoners doesn't mean that they are writing stoned poetry. Come to think about it, they had to be sober to write something as jingly as that. True stoned poetry is Jim Morrison, Allen Ginsburg, and perhaps John Ashbery (how else could he have come up with "White Roses" or become mtvU's poet laureate?)

I should clarify the difference between stoned poetry and stoner poetry. These literary categories and sub-genres can be confusing for the layman. Stoned poetry, besides being exemplified by the likes of the classic examples listed above, is quite simply poetry written by an individual while under the influence of a stoning drug, such as marijuana, opium, or Teletubbies. Some critics include poetry or lyrics written by someone who is or was chronically stoned, including performers and poets such as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dave Matthews, Pavement, and William Blake. Stoner poetry on the other hand is a bit less hardcore, if you will. The work is characterized not by the glazed opacity, mysticism, or aloof abstraction and vagaries or true stoned poetry, but instead seeks to glorify, glamorize, fetishize, idealize, stylize, and uphold the life of the stereotypical stoner. As such, it is chock-full of references to drug use, drinking, sex, general apathy towards challenges and problems, and a sense of self-aggrandizement or ego-trippin'. The above poem, then, is an excellent example of this style of poetry. Other stoner poets and performers include Snoop Doggy Dogg, Cypress Hill, Sublime, and Jack Kerouac.

For more on stoner poetry, I recommend listening to albums by the above performing artists or hanging around with the local stoners in your own community. For a deeper experience of stoned poetry, I recommend that you smoke a dank bowl and listen to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and then get out pen and paper and try your hand at the craft.

Have a nice trip.