Reality is Fatality.
It happens to rats & cats, and it happens to me and you.
That's the way it is here, fatso! You don't mind my calling you that, do you? You are overweight.
So don't look back. Mr. Death is right behind you, and he will only make you feel more nervous than you already do.
Got the jitters? Take a pill, have a drink or two. The worst that can happen is you'll die sooner than later, because you're gonna die sometime, dullard. (Excuse me for that one. It was out of place.)
But there is a another way.
Forget your political poetry, guys, your rants. If you hate the Republican Party and John Boehner in particular, I understand, but that's not literature.
And, babe, I don't want to hear your version of The Vagina Monologues ever again. If your boyfriend has a big dick, that's fine, but it's not literature.
But there is a third way, an escape from the usual dumbness and numbness of this numb dumb world.
You can call it The Alternative Club: other voices, phantom rhythms, unending melodic variations, the extended cadenza, cœur de coeur, l'esprit de l'esprit, l'âme de l'âme, de de de.
It's beyond the fixed idea, the frozen notion, the freaked-out nation, the used-car theory of almost everything not worth knowing about, and the old grudge, as sweet as that may be.
It's also called The Incredible Hunt for Something Fresh and New, or searching for something out of sight, out of mind, hidden, forbidden, concealed, congealed, around the corner, down the dark alley. But let me warn you, it involves hard work. If it is a thing you are after, it may not be the thing it seems to be; you may have to look hard and long at it. You may have to prod it, probe it, take it apart and put it back together until it reveals its secrets. If it's a person, it may not be an easy hanger-outer welcoming you with open arms because, well, it may be a picky, prickly son of a bitch. You may have to cultivate his or her acquaintance, even bring it a little gift or two. Simply put, as some like to say, or put simply, as others prefer to put it, I will simply state this: It doesn't seek the companionship of compromised lives. (I do hope you're not living one of those miserable things!)
Une deux, une deux trois
Une deux, Une deux trois
Be a little prodigal.
Feel like a pheasant hunting the hunter, he he he! Bang!
And if you're a peasant, be a prosperous one with Champagne and caviar instincts fully engaged. Bon appétit, mon cher!
Because the two kinds of poetry are simply a bore;
Let us open the door to damnation or redemption, straddling the edge of doom and paradise. Let us live dangerously, tempting both the devil and the good Lord to crush us for our impudence and swaggering ways.
Let us walk not just on water but in the sucked-out, hollow gourd of the universe projecting bold ideas out into empty space; and let us fill the vacuum with our precious presence, voiding the nothingness of all nothing, invalidating the rights of the null and void. (Those bums, what did they do to deserve 'em?)
Let us turn nothing into something. What could be more miraculous than that? Christ turned water into wine, they say. Let us turn nothingness into Scotch Whiskey!
Let us drift like clouds over the ocean, and let us be pure devotion to Being and Seeing and Scotch Whiskey.
Une deux, une deux trois
Only the rhythm and frequency
of an angel's heartbeat and the strumming of harp strings and heartfelt humming
can help you escape the dungeon of darkness and the tortured words chained to its walls, wailing prisoners of this World's War of Words.
Shame on rats, rants, cats, and the monopoly of the monologue. First Amendment rights will get you nowhere, Mr. Already Nowhere! And the Sherman Act won't apply in the poet's ward, Lady Nowhere's Baby Maybe.
Nothing of this world's smudged matter, mental splatter—all understanding abandoned to the cycle of commerce—can save you from the pit of dark power and pestilence. (Tremble, please!)
Une deux, une deux trois
Only light,
bright and beautiful, suffusing poetry in pursuit of the Third Way, can keep you from that place of waste and living lies!
Had enough of this? Cower an hour in the Dark Tower, then let us make amends. But please, no more rants, no more monotonous mono-matter!
—By Louis Martin