CALIGULA
warred against a force
which roared like power,
gently lapped the feet of lords but
wave-crashed bombs on us:
the sea. That democratic beast
who consumes indiscriminate,
drowning innocents while
daring horizon-glint pig-eyes
the same as our blind, just gaze.
Warships, Agrippina’s refuge,
can refuse heroes wet tombs
cut through grief-salted air, nobly
bearing a weathering brine. So only
a villain fights the fair waters back
to ribbon the holy-oceans of past reigns,
gladly slashing, killing, blood-spilling the beach.
*****
NOTHING NEW UNDER HEAVEN
Peasant food and pleasant tunes are primitive technology. Chilling’s in the public domain now: it’s old. Reinventing a generous life is an angry squeaky guy, with a dormant generosity like a dormant curiosity, much unlike a doormat or a poorly treated doorman – and what a throwback that is! – relearning to share in a newly examined way, in a fantastic way, and in a sentimental mood. Dead birds make sick cows to be exchanged in new ways, but recall those ways are old too, the ways are also not the ways you once knew. You don’t wade in the same Tao Lin twice because it’s not the same people and not the same way as it was when you, uhhh, named it? It’s a stretch. But the fuzz gotta be fuzz forever and ever which seems like no fun, so I’ve got some sympathy despite everything. Which means I guess I gotta do nothing again tomorrow and forever and ever, only question is: which nothing? – and to pick out the hat. Rabbits and doves fuck and fight but mostly hang out, collect handed oats, eating hand to mouth if able… the freeloaders. I write poems. I make small fires from natural gas fumes sent through big pipes by some real old-school guys, and you can put that in your wife and stroke it. Four alto notes make for vibrant pokes at a wallowing edifice that can only jiggle like jello but never snap or stand up. Comedy should be sat down a bit. Which isn’t to say philosophy shouldn’t be sat down a bit. Poetry should be sat down a bit. There’s a bit of a swastika stuck in the sky we never quite ditched and it makes weird shadows on our jello salads. Ruins the appetite. This here cave is musty, high in syrup, low in fat, and people used to put weird shit in it in the fifties. My rules have never done me wrong. My rules? Don’t put savory shit in a jello mold. Don’t call your abominations ‘salads’. And don’t call me late for dinner! Matter of fact, just leave any gelatinous questions to the professionals: stock brokers – what a throwback! – like showing up to a bazaar with wares. Stock is an ancient technology made of trust and debts and boiled bones. Everyone loves a concoction, even cops have chili cook-offs, so simmer down partners, it’s just a bushcraft soup. It’s just the Tuscan route straight to the heart of your next new friend. Never been, but everyone loves an Italian-type contract. I heard the shit’s easy – just time, energy, somehow invent language? – and start talkin’ pal. After which they tortured some folks, and don’t we love it folks? They say it’s fun to watch, fun to do, or fun to have done to you. It certainly arouses the senses. These celebrity senseis must be bad news, since all their students do is listen to some guy. I only take a master who smells weird. Who doesn’t even like me. I only take lessons from folks who really truly wanted to commit suicide at one point. But then didn’t, then dyed their hair, and did again: the eternal return of the shame. Now read it all back in a British accent. All of it. You go for a posh one? Typical. I think ‘same’ and ‘again’ rhyme if you really Queen it up, ‘cept they got a King now – what a throwback! – like a flea flicker, or when a market of old shit didn’t have a flea infestation yet, full of ‘old shit’ that used to just be ‘shit’, but this shit was never ‘knewn’ anywhere under the sun. It is known: I shit on the throne. Sunday is the day for so many, but for future me, every day ends in ‘why,’ baby. Why God, why? Every day: ess-you-en, etcetera, etcetera, and que-sera. The humanity, oh yeah. Light hurts my i’s but so does shadow, and so does the moon. The moon’s situation is really not my business, and business is crooning baby, it’s lounging, singing, it’s a bar: 16 of ‘em to be sure, and don’t drop that soap! Wash up! You aren’t my guru. There’s eclipses for me in any city big enough for big tall thick blocks of business to which comparisons to penises are TOTALLY OUT OF LINE! It’s gay, to be sure, but people say this is gay and that’s gay, moons and eclipses and the Brits sound gay, moving to a beat is sometimes gay depending on the day and who you are and who you’re with and the clothes you wear and the particular beat and the groove and the vibe. Even a straight-up man-and-woman wedding can be gay to dance to. Free jazz and a big girthsome business cock – now that’s heterogeneity! Too much of the same is homogeneous when it comes to solvents and problems like: is tolerance straight or gay? Don’t worry: our top podcasters are working on a solution. Prostitution perhaps? Unclear if straight. Whores don’t get your skyscrapers erected, but they do have an agreeable ‘je nai se quoi’ that gets people to pay them for sex. One theory is that one can tell by who does or doesn’t take Amex, or who takes their pay in cash versus checks, and who assiduously uses latex. That exchange is real old school, baby. Fluids, solutions, growth-oriented initiatives: ancestor shit we just kept doing, even after… I don’t know man, the printing press? World War II? Netflix raising the price to whatever-99 a month? Every damn month?… you bastards. And weren’t they gonna revive Kenny vs. Spenny? Now we’re annexing Canada for more episodes, I guess. And whatever happened to pranks? Some real, old school, throwback, boys-being-boys type shit. Now it’s socially mandated you slur as a social experiment. There’s at least one field without a replication crisis. I saw one vid one time, where a guy pretended to be ISIS, but he was in a street, not a field of study, and took advantage of most people not following the news. This experiment was dated to 2016-ish-AD but “Isis[1] was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman region,” and was first mentioned in c. 2686 – c. 2181 Before Common ERA… wait, did they use FIP back then? Just for us to reinvent the Earned Run Average? What brutes we are! What hubris! Major Gods and Goddesses are dead! Baseball is dead! The minor leagues are fucked! Basically shit’s fucked everywhere you look, whether or not the YanKKKee$$ suck, but at least the Player’s Union works for some… ok, for like 8 guys. And I guess the Dodgers. And the neighborhoods in Brooklyn the Dodgers came back to raze. 16 waking hours per day and some folks spend their per diems and all 4^2 in circa 2025 AD Williamsburg condos. Some of those same people spend 4 or more of their sleeping hours in Ridgewood trying to return to pre-2016: eternal gentrification of the same, but I doubt the Trouts coming back, man. Time passes ya skiffs. To the Dodgers credit, Animal Collective was good but only a collection of animals can do to these landlords what we ought & should. Real old fashioned, beastly shit. 2666 Before Common Emancipation, circa 0033, communism was reinvented for like the hundredth time. And time, baby, time is a fat Merkel. She worked hard, she earned it, and we can just can it with the German shit for a generation or two at least. Free Palestine till they eternally return, but maybe it’s ok if Germans and their ilk don’t get to play too, least ‘til every AfD voters either very sorry or dead. We can give ‘em blue eyes back then, ONLY THEN, but we’re gonna have to vote on the blonde. Not sure. There’s a deep drive to left. I consider myself a man of fate: an inevitable future of gay commie crypto sex keeps me sounded in the there & then, whereas this neo-meditation for settlers shit was invented in what, 1967? Anno-Diarrhea. Analog Devices. The CIA made it at Stanford, man. It’s an app. Not very “eternal return of the same” of you, eh? But namaste, bud, namaste. But finally: Finally: Ladies and the rest: Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: The Main Event: Nietzsche and Camus… finally met… IN HELL! And hell is not hot, baby, it’s icy, purgatory’s for dogs, and heaven’s strictly for revolutionaries. Heaven is sweaty, a nightclub in air, which, according to top theology, means it’s full, so they’ll turn you and me away too. We’re too late and not cool. Yup: pray for us, St. Peter the Berghain-angel. I’m not even ready to order the Uber yet: I’m too young and still trying to figure out what drugs to do. It’s a social experiment. Revolution is real old school. The mandate of heaven falls on you.