Lament of a Scythian King [Bonus Poem from the Archives]

Lament of a Scythian King [Bonus Poem from the Archives]

Why must they find my body and booty?
Why excavate, only to desecrate?
Though we sacrificed a beauty
To ensure my burial gate, looters sate
Their wicked curiosity in my tomb.
They: indifferent to my sacred room.

When I lived we cared about the way we'd die--
Though we never fathomed our own extinction.
Where are my Scythian heirs to deny
Those thieves who rob my royal distinction?
Are sacred moments easily forgotten
By the ungrateful fry that we've begotten?

Is sacredness tied to living worship?
If so, then descendants know: my fate is yours.
You should forget the burial and skip
Straight to the lab and formaldehyde stores.
My venal seed ensconced by technology;
Knowing death only by archeology.

Science mines for meaning it cannot make.
They scratch the earth, the sea, the dead: to scope
Each thing, they break it. This is their mistake:
They kill off gods, but still they look for hope.
We ancestors wait in the firmament
For our sons to ascend toward punishment.

--
Circa 2004 or so.

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Someone Clicked Yesterday, So Have a Bonus Poem Today

Express enough interest in my sponsors & I'll put up an epic poem that Ploughshares & Poetry both rejected.

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Collision With Nothing [Today's News Poem, November 11, 2010]

Collision With Nothing [Today's News Poem, November 11, 2010]

We have gone too far. We've collided,
With nothing. Off of the precipice
Into wind—which has sailed all of us
To ultimate breezes. We ascend
Noisily, joining our engagement
With the sound of our self-love in sky.
We can't take our contingency with:
Therefore we will ride the thermal air
And we will praise our effortless flight.

"An ebook which is supposed to be a guide for paedophiles has gotten Amazon into a censorship row. The booktitled The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure by Phillip R. Greaves is available on Amazon for Kindle for $4.75. It claims to be a guide of insight and conduct for engaging in paedophilia. Some customers, who are not seeing Amazon's bigger picture, are trying to arrange a book banning campaign. They want to start a boycott of Amazon until it does what they say."
—Nick Farrell, fudzilla, Thursday, 11 November 2010 10:39
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/20829-amazon-in-censorship-row

Special thanks to Dirk Johnson for sharing this metrical tradecraft secret w/ me. You should read the guy: http://dirk-johnson.com/wpblog/

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Sink Yo Pants! [#twitterfoundpoem, November 11, 2010]

Sink Yo Pants! [#twitterfoundpoem, November 11, 2010]
Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem

Sinking to an all time low.
the sycophants are thee scariest thing
in thee fukkin world.
How to Keep from Sinking in a Sunk World?
blind yourself and sink even lower.
sink your pants so low u gotta bend over
to get fukkin fucked up in da butt
by all da sycophants that sink
Yo yo yo pants so low...
as low as Yo yo yo standards.

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Stop poisoning the readership [Repost]

Stop poisoning the readership http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/03/stop-poisoning-readership.html

I know it's hard to give up an ambition you didn't really make any sacrifices for--but please consider that every time you write a bad poem and throw a hissy-fit when the reader doesn't like it, you are DISCOURAGING him/her from reading verse. Bad prose writers are constantly mocked to their faces in ways bad poets are rarely mocked. Why? Bad poets freak out. They say 'you don't understand poetry.' Many of my readers e-mail me to say "well, I don't like poetry in general, but I like _your_ poetry," and I respond, "if you like language, then you're poetry's natural constituency."

Bad poets compensate for their terrible attempts at poesis by blaming the reader for the poet's failings. If you put your poetry out there, you expose it to criticism. Offering verse is offering a transaction: 'in exchange for reading this poem, I promise you'll get something from it.' Most poets though have no interest in the reader. They want the reader to come to them, rather than the other way around. It's vile, isn't it? The hypocrisy of that position? So if you found Toylit because I made what you might consider to be an 'unkind' remark regarding your poetry, consider that I am doing so for the sake of serious poets everywhere. Most supposed poets are really lifestyle tourists, who want to expropriate the identity of 'poet' without actually doing anything to earn it.

This is the difference between a lifestyle tourist and an actual poet: the poet's verse is merely the artifact of the performance art that is the poet's life. The lifestyle tourist goes and paints a smiley face on his penis and goes to Burning Man. The real poet mutilates his or her mind to maximize poesis. If you are going to trivialize my vocation then I am certainly going to mock your sad efforts at writing verse.

Why be one of a hundred million wannabe poets, when you could master tie dye, crochet, or really any other craft that has less competition and less at stake? You supposed 'language' poets are the worst too (not you Billy Collins): you study the means of communication, but communicate nothing of value. A poet with nothing to say is like a brand without a product.

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The Tear Streaked Army Is Here!

You might see an odd clustering of negs on Toylit. They couldn't send me their tears, so they're sending me the next best thing. I know! When did I get three new girlfriends? In my new book, How to Alienate People for Fun and No Profit I share all the secrets of antagonizing the dolts of this world.

If you want to join in on the fun, go hit the page of Poemblaze (Matt Quinn) http://poemblaze.wordpress.com and laugh at his terrible poetry. Put your critiques/responses up here too--the guy's got an itchy censorship finger (or maybe masturbation has gotten it strong & impatient). Toylit is already a top Google result for 'Matt Quinn' and 'poemblaze1,' but really, that's not good enough. Let's add 'poemblaze' to the mix. I think his oneshotpoetry pals think they're helping him by hitting this site. Bad form. They're afraid of their own negative critique. Too bad they don't know that I LOVE fighting against an unjust cause. Bad poetry MUST be destroyed. This guy Quinn, is not only a shitty poet, but plays the Uriah Heep as an insincere sycophant. Here's an example from his twitter feed:

"@AnnaLefler I appreciate your thinking about me."
"@Cecilyk Blog about what you feel the urge to blog about, what satisfies you. If it's true to your heart, write it, if not, no need."

And my favorite...

"@KimberlyKinrade You're welcome. What I appreciate most is being able to talk about something without anger." http://twitter.com/poemblaze1/status/2831315015565312

Wants to be a paragon & an aww shucks nice guy. For contrast, let's not forget this thread:

re: http://poemblaze.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/why-i-write
"Self-indulgent. Why the linebreaks? I think this would be unremarkable prose & I think you know it too, which is why you broke the lines--to add 'gravitas' to the comp.

I know you think I'm being mean here, so let me use examples:

1) You use the language of lovers, but utterly ignore exploring the concept. It undercuts the poem's intention, because here you go, saying you have a deep connection to words, but then go on to act superficially. Your speech act is defied by the way you scribe it.
2) How do books with nothing in them a) transmit words, b) get called books at all, instead of sheafs of paper?

You can do way better than this. What would the books say if they saw you holding yourself to such a low standard?"

The guy is so terrified of a negative review, he moderates his comments section. I had to circumvent his efforts at censorship by reposting the critique here: http://oneshotpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/11/one-shot-wednesday-poetry-week-19.html

"The books had words in them and then poured them into the sleeper's ear. That is why they are blank in the morning. You are mentally ill. Get help. You have a lot of knowledge, but paranoid thinking and need to be the authority are keeping you from what you could be. I suspect you are off meds or that you have never sought help though I am sure others have suggested it." Matt Quinn, mattq1966@gmail.com

Remember kids, this is the same guy who says things like: "@KimberlyKinrade You're welcome. What I appreciate most is being able to talk about something without anger."

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