Once We have Bled and Drooled and Driveled

• No, as Landru pointed out, I don't carry a gun or a K-Bar Knife in my car, so if I had stopped to help the deer die I'd have had to strangle it with my hands.
• It's possible one of the blinkering busily tapping at their phones had murder weapons in their cars, but I didn't stop to ask.
• I went home determined to be Kinder to Jess. I scratched her between the ears, she... she's too freaking needy, she's the coworker who's too motherfucking ingratiating, too eager to be your best friend, whose Smackability Quotient peaks when he's seeking your approval most.
• Jess drools when she purrs. Snurfles. Farts in bliss. I.... was Kinder, but not by much, will keep at it, fuck me.

• Jackie O Motherfucker, motherfuckers.
• Morning in East Aleppo.
• Reminder: motherfucking Obama.
• The end is always near.
• Reaching out about reaching out.
• The veneer of factiness: NPR and its listeners.
• What's wrong with Literary Studies? Of interest if it's ever been of interest, but it's just this year's model of the same old debate.
• Cahokia.
• Lawrence English interview. I'd already committed to Jackie O Motherfucker for today, but English soon, I promise. It's been a while.

THE BARBARIC WRITERS

Daniel Borzutzky

       “This is my last communiqué from the planet of the monsters.”                                                                  Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star

When I watched the Barbaric Writers defecate on my

manuscript, I felt a great sense of relief, a great sense of

fraternity with these men who loved literature enough to

destroy it, and I recalled a poem I had once written, but

never had the confidence to publish, about a so-called

poet who shat himself into a toilet, only to float on his

back as torrential downpours of power filled the bowl and drowned

him. I have always know that constipation is essential to

poetry, though what I did not realize, until recently,

was that poetry itself is repulsive. Words on their own are

bad enough. But when placed alongside other words, when formed

into rhythmic lines and stanzas: no act of creation is more

hideous. In the salons, I have often watched, before my turn

came on, our local poets reciting their verses. They speak

politely, and with grace, to an audience that sips wine and

chuckles at the words that flow not from their mouths, but from their

plugged-up behinds. What a holy mockery of literature!

Were the barbarians to see such a spectacle, no

theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter. No, poetry

is not what I want. Only defecation on poetry. For

after years of humiliation, I have finally learned that

to humanize our poems, we must shit on them. We must shit

freely, with arms raised, as detectives in blue sport coats examine

our feces for sustainability, all the while fighting

off other detectives in bluer sport coats who take our

poetic leakage to their laboratories to search for

parasitic demons, or diamonds, depending on the angle.

We smear what drips from our self-inflicted wounds onto our verses,

combining blood and ink into new poetic forms in which we

rub our faces, the better to smell our disgusting children with,

the better to drool on our disgusting children with; and once we

have bled and drooled and driveled, we declare our poems complete, the

better to wipe our asses with, before submitting them for

publication. We smear our typewriters with pus and semen, and

chastise any fool crass enough to declare himself a poet,

an offense punishable by confinement in a cage

surrounded by Barbaric Writers who expectorate between

the distinguished author’s eyes, his hands tied behind his back to

prevent him from cleaning his face. For poetry is hard work! It

is hard to create such filthy, vile putrescence.