Poetry, writing and art.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The State of Barnes and Noble (or, simply one to piss on K.)
Dedicated to K.F., (if you have something you'd like to say to me, my friend, say it to me, not my brother)
(Based on true events)
"Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
...The young know what you mean. The
Young are people.
...Who never knew
the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize,
it will repeat itself, increase,
and afterwards our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave."
- Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko
(whom I did not find at Barnes and Noble)
The local Barnes and noble
has been meticulously replacing
"Fiction/Literature" signs with
"Teen fiction"; I see History has
been replaced with "US History",
which features mostly Glenn Beck
and Bill O'reilly whining about Abraham Lincoln
and George Washington.
I found the dumbed down books
were as a tidal wave of greed
and stupidity, just because we can;
how dare you deny Tao Lin
The right to scribble childish
banter about how disaffected he is working
at a vegan deli or a smoothie factory
of dreams- exploitation is exploitation
even without the killing.
Tao lin, who made my brain hurt, talking about
how he stole a shirt
from a trendy outlet, while Hamsun's "Hunger",
is not to be found on the shelves-
fifty shades of bullshit gets displays, but Sade
struggles for space. Chuck Palahniuk
writes another book and we are damned
to an eternity of him wishing he was
a woman and not being able to get over how
fat he was when he was young;
his stolen tongue belongs to Amy Hempel,
who isn't even on the shelves.
Where is Henry Miller to school these punks?
Bukowski stayed drunk enough, long
enough to, thank god, become a staple;
John Fante is coming back, far too late
for shame America- J.D. Salinger raped his
Arturo Bandini and made him a whiny
wimp named Holden Caulfield. Ayn Rand is
flourishing as the man she owes her
clever plagiarisms to, George Orwell is put
in the corner. And even His most known
piece was but an argument to Aldous Huxley's
"brave new world" which we would
read in school, if we weren't living it. You are
lucky to find Emile Zola, and then, only
his charming stuff, that makes France look
bad, when there's a world of knowledge
there that we could learn from and maybe cease
this constant "OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!".
But I am dreaming, because there is all the
undeniable horror of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
but none of the outrage, the yearning, the hope,
the camaraderie, before the CIA made
paranoia an international trend- none of that is seen
for the shelves lack Maxim Gorky.
"HE WAS FRIENDS WITH STALIN!" He was also a
complicated man, and ever a critic,
who was murdered by Stalin's very regime.
We could have fables from the old world,
but instead we have Twilight. And Christian science!
Christian science! Christian science!
The book wars entrench me, I cannot remain silent.
This verse is as worthless as the hunger
games, who will there be to write "To kill a
Mockingjay?" Me, that is who. For this
is but meant to piss off K., a bastard brother who takes
noble's blasphemous pay. What I want
now to relate, is a story:
At the poetry section, grown smaller, always moved;
more books facing outward, less spines, less minds.
I see there is still no Kenneth Patchen, though Robert Frost
fills his own shelf. There is no Gregory Corso to accompany
Kerouac (as Corso was Kerouac's one last hope for America,
what with him being surrounded by fag hacks). I decide I
want to read Allen Ginsbergs drool again, to try to find out
why people took him seriously, when I hear a young boy
ask a store employee where he might find a book. I glance at
him, he's got several in his arms already, I look back to the
poetry section and smile as the lady ushers him off in search.
Ah, there are still eager readers, I think, I shall pay for this
book. Just then the boy and the lady employee return and
she exclaims: "I'll search in the computer, to see if someone
put it on hold. Or maybe it's misplaced, or even stolen."
The boy tenses, he gasps: "Do people really steal books!?"
he asks, to which she replies: "Some times I wonder why
they keep printing them!"
They walk away, I shove the Ginsberg bible down the crotch
side of my pants. Shove kipling in my right pocket, shove
Longfellow in my left. I save the ass side of my pants for Robert
Frost. On top of that I grab Saul Williams, Shelley, Virgil, Blake
(my god why is there no Mayakovsky!?)
Down the escalator with my pants about to burst, holding
a stack of hard and paper backs under my arm and I casually
walk out the door. I drive to a back street, a humble house,
a small business, trading in used books. I sell them everything
I took just to buy Henry Miller, and an edition of the Partisan
review circa 1972 featuring writing by Noam Chomsky and
Allen Ginsburg.
As I drove home, I smoked a cigar and felt the freedom of
momentarily embracing the crookedness of this country (or
world). Still, I'll never write a "novella" about this; I stole for
anarchy, Tao Lin just wanted to look good for his reading. And
in the end, this is just a poem to piss on K****.
(
"Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
...The young know what you mean. The
Young are people.
...Who never knew
the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize,
it will repeat itself, increase,
and afterwards our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave."
- Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko
(whom I did not find at Barnes and Noble)
The local Barnes and noble
has been meticulously replacing
"Fiction/Literature" signs with
"Teen fiction"; I see History has
been replaced with "US History",
which features mostly Glenn Beck
and Bill O'reilly whining about Abraham Lincoln
and George Washington.
I found the dumbed down books
were as a tidal wave of greed
and stupidity, just because we can;
how dare you deny Tao Lin
The right to scribble childish
banter about how disaffected he is working
at a vegan deli or a smoothie factory
of dreams- exploitation is exploitation
even without the killing.
Tao lin, who made my brain hurt, talking about
how he stole a shirt
from a trendy outlet, while Hamsun's "Hunger",
is not to be found on the shelves-
fifty shades of bullshit gets displays, but Sade
struggles for space. Chuck Palahniuk
writes another book and we are damned
to an eternity of him wishing he was
a woman and not being able to get over how
fat he was when he was young;
his stolen tongue belongs to Amy Hempel,
who isn't even on the shelves.
Where is Henry Miller to school these punks?
Bukowski stayed drunk enough, long
enough to, thank god, become a staple;
John Fante is coming back, far too late
for shame America- J.D. Salinger raped his
Arturo Bandini and made him a whiny
wimp named Holden Caulfield. Ayn Rand is
flourishing as the man she owes her
clever plagiarisms to, George Orwell is put
in the corner. And even His most known
piece was but an argument to Aldous Huxley's
"brave new world" which we would
read in school, if we weren't living it. You are
lucky to find Emile Zola, and then, only
his charming stuff, that makes France look
bad, when there's a world of knowledge
there that we could learn from and maybe cease
this constant "OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!".
But I am dreaming, because there is all the
undeniable horror of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
but none of the outrage, the yearning, the hope,
the camaraderie, before the CIA made
paranoia an international trend- none of that is seen
for the shelves lack Maxim Gorky.
"HE WAS FRIENDS WITH STALIN!" He was also a
complicated man, and ever a critic,
who was murdered by Stalin's very regime.
We could have fables from the old world,
but instead we have Twilight. And Christian science!
Christian science! Christian science!
The book wars entrench me, I cannot remain silent.
This verse is as worthless as the hunger
games, who will there be to write "To kill a
Mockingjay?" Me, that is who. For this
is but meant to piss off K., a bastard brother who takes
noble's blasphemous pay. What I want
now to relate, is a story:
At the poetry section, grown smaller, always moved;
more books facing outward, less spines, less minds.
I see there is still no Kenneth Patchen, though Robert Frost
fills his own shelf. There is no Gregory Corso to accompany
Kerouac (as Corso was Kerouac's one last hope for America,
what with him being surrounded by fag hacks). I decide I
want to read Allen Ginsbergs drool again, to try to find out
why people took him seriously, when I hear a young boy
ask a store employee where he might find a book. I glance at
him, he's got several in his arms already, I look back to the
poetry section and smile as the lady ushers him off in search.
Ah, there are still eager readers, I think, I shall pay for this
book. Just then the boy and the lady employee return and
she exclaims: "I'll search in the computer, to see if someone
put it on hold. Or maybe it's misplaced, or even stolen."
The boy tenses, he gasps: "Do people really steal books!?"
he asks, to which she replies: "Some times I wonder why
they keep printing them!"
They walk away, I shove the Ginsberg bible down the crotch
side of my pants. Shove kipling in my right pocket, shove
Longfellow in my left. I save the ass side of my pants for Robert
Frost. On top of that I grab Saul Williams, Shelley, Virgil, Blake
(my god why is there no Mayakovsky!?)
Down the escalator with my pants about to burst, holding
a stack of hard and paper backs under my arm and I casually
walk out the door. I drive to a back street, a humble house,
a small business, trading in used books. I sell them everything
I took just to buy Henry Miller, and an edition of the Partisan
review circa 1972 featuring writing by Noam Chomsky and
Allen Ginsburg.
As I drove home, I smoked a cigar and felt the freedom of
momentarily embracing the crookedness of this country (or
world). Still, I'll never write a "novella" about this; I stole for
anarchy, Tao Lin just wanted to look good for his reading. And
in the end, this is just a poem to piss on K****.
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