It's May and still I haven’t found an alternative way to funnel my counterintuitive fantasies. But consider this: there’s no more honest way to describe an artist at the moment of inspiration than as “a vessel that is full.” Inspiration shares fluid qualities with what we call God, gods, godforms, Great Ideas, vibes, energy, the universe conspiring for your well-being… no, scratch that last part. It’s unbearable. I can’t take seriously the notion of a personalized, servile universe that pretends you matter. In our heart of hearts, we wander, feed, and multiply, hoping that invisible, gargantuan hands arrange our actions five moves ahead of this week’s tragedy. But in our mind of minds, we suspect that what we call the universe is an empty throne. No, scratch that too, a “throne” demands royal buttocks; otherwise, it’s just a stool.
What a sweet afternoon. What a friendly night. The weather is shit but also friendly enough to permit some space for self-flaggelation. Bah! Enough with the defeatist mentality of the hermit. A city hermit. A cement hermit. A semen hermit, oh boy can you imagine?
-Well, what did you expect? I’ve been standing on a twenty-foot pillar for twenty-three years! What would you do?”
-Isn’t the whole point of hermitism to resist earthly passions?”
-It's also good for the prostate, and I'm not getting younger you know!
-How can a man of faith succumb to self-pleasure? It's illogical.
-You know what? Fuck it. Starting now, not only will I masturbate, I’ll also spray you from up here.”
-But isn’t wasting your seed a grave—”
-Here it comes, oh Lord, here it comes!”
-All right, all right, I’m leaving. Jesus!”
Still, I stand by it: the artist is a vessel that is full.
I’m a vessel, and so are you. If, by reading this text, you cultivate the thought-forms of your mind like flowers, or better yet, like cods… flowers and cods! What a line. Absolutely lame, absolutely perfect. Many a poem has been built on a ludicrous starting position like this. Or perhaps no poem at all, which is a shame, and dare I say, an insult that needs to be addressed.
So here it goes: I manifest this automatic poem in accordance with the laws and customs of the northern regions of Al-Takum. I leave you, dear reader, to join our dance of ephemeral curiosities, constructs of the foggy mind, exciting new failures that keep the blood pumping. Till next time.
“The Flower and the Cod”
Round Round Round along the jeweled fields,
the lily wanders and the poppy springs.
Aroused by the honey nectar they excrete,
the flowers dance in fertile need, yet—
Down Down Down into the deepest depths,
the cods rejoice in violent death.
The bigger fish devours them all;
for them, the sun is useless scrawl.