Fuck the Bukowskyites
The poets who say who say that’s right I said fuck
Deal with it
Battle simulators displaying their scars
Reliving the traumas of their childhood
Their neverending infancy
And demanding in inarticulate grunts
That everybody sniff their greasy turds
Ay very like a bear like a wolf
Very like a hairy ape
Enacting the dainty performance
Of their wildness
Pretending possession by Dionysus
Like they know who that is
Who gives permission to spew
When in fact the creation of significance
Requires much more than the guts
They wouldn’t know a sincere barbaric yawp
A phrase from Walt Whitman
Look him up
If it grabbed them by the balls
They wouldn’t know will to power
A phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche
Don’t believe what you’ve heard
If it bit them on their fat or scrawny ass
Masquerading as homo erectus
Like they know who that is
Posturing as the martinet
Braided and epauletted
Look it up ignoramuses
In an authoritative source
Or maybe just a t-shirt
Emblazoned with the visage of this season’s Führer
But if they would see beyond themselves
Beyond their pathetic little circle
Jerk their head around and see the world
The beautiful world of art and nature
The sad world of starving children and wounded civilians
Of ruined cities where stone stands no more atop stone
Of the forest swept away by napalm and the commerce in palm oil
So cherishing their own little wounds
So riven by nostalgia for the myth of the hunter
The quests of arrow string and bended bow
When in fact
When in historical fact
The plow begat the sword
The harvest begat the storehouse
The storehouse begat the guardhouse
And the guard begat the king
The wielder of rod and steel
Of the merely symbolic orb and scepter
But the storehouse also begat the city
Whence civilization its discontents and its glories
Chiefly the glory of the hand that wields the pen
For the written word comes about
By neither crown nor nature
But by patience
By repetition and slow rehearsal
Unto the achievement of style
Repetition and slow rehearsal alien
To jittery subscribers to suddenness
To acolytes of instant gratification
To devotees of snap judgments borrowed not made
To Monday morning leisure revisionists
To jealous holders of the birthright
Acquired by force or fraud
Silly boys proud of their entitlements
Of their abusive fathers whose crimes they reenact
Of their precancerous lesions
Of their enlarged prostates
Of their opinions hardly theirs
But originating in sewers and septic tanks
And especially of their guns long and short
Of their banners bumper stickers badges and emblems
Of their handshakes and shibboleths
Of their oaths and contracts
Of their pervy rituals and magical formulations
Of their fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
They don’t appreciate
They believe in nothing
Not in truth not in beauty not in goodness
Not even in the fragrant cunt the stubborn penis
Phrases from John Ashbery
Look him up
They don’t appreciate
They revel in passion without a thought in their heads
Delegating by extortion the tasks they shirk
The dirty diaper that must be changed
The exit wound that must be dressed
The tender ministrations of everyday life
The loveliness of life
They and not the humble scholar
Live on high in ivory tower
Mass produced of polystyrene
With access to be sure
To the conduits of dark effluent
Where they spin from their entrails
Their dollar store narratives
Fictions of foul cabals defeated by heroes
Equipped with sidearms and colorful hats
They call themselves artists who create to violate
They wouldn’t know transgression
If it yanked them by their withered pancreas
All is permitted if you call it gonzo
Talking to you Ted Nugent
You foolish human
You ignorant homo sapiens
Whose rascally feedback I enjoyed as a child
But then I grew up
And shouldered the responsibilities of adulthood
Learned the craft by slow patience of adulthood
Learned the lore of caring for self and other
Learned the lore mostly feminine
Of coping nourishment and functionality
Learned to beware my own ignorance
All are ignorant but you do it with pride Ted Nugent
I admit that you have authored poetry
Anchored in prejudice and pandery
Lovingly cultivating ignorance
A zealous missionary for ignorance
For ignorance acquired developed and defended
Heil große Lüge
Spreading the ignorant good news
Sharing the ignorant wealth
A sordid boon from selfish men
Phrases from William Wordsworth
Look him up
Who praised the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling
But counseled too the tempering
Of emotion recollected in tranquility
Therefore you Ted Nugent you loudmouth boor
With your land and your houses and your animal trophies
Your servants and your sycophants
Your fortress compound
Whence you emerge to murder beasts and fowls
Sport of Tudors and their retainers
You could learn something about courtesy
From those bullies and their toadies
Like them you choose willy-nilly whom to respect
But you don’t appreciate
Your Grand Poohbahness ak acka dak
Now hear my command
Which issues from the legitimate authority of letters
And meditation upon the realms of silence
And dreamy refuge in fair trains of imagery
And not from the spurious claims
Of blood or soil or fame or feculent riches
Try for a minute to be quiet
To see before you the image of the sorrowing mother
To hear the guitar gently weeping
To hear the child squealing delightedly on Christmas morning
To hear the children laughing and singing all over the world
As they caper over the rubble
And I say to your foolish face Ted Nugent
To your eyes glowing dully
Within your conceited smug impassioned leer
To your dull foolish insipid face
That you are a foolish person
The Party of Fools is in the ascendancy now
And you will no doubt continue to prosper for a time
And while you wish to silence me and those who think like me
You have failed and you will always fail
You would love to see me cower
And maybe I will who knows
But that would not make you a success
That would only make me human
You pathetic foolish failure
It’s not too late to practice being a person
But in the meantime
To your face I say you are a fool
So what are you going to do about it?
Shoot me?