The bourgeoisie?
I loath them,
and I hope they buy my poems!
The critics?
They know nothing,
and I hope they hail my poems!
The intellectuals?
Dumber than pigeons,
and I hope they canonize my poems!
Unabashedly,
I'm not afraid to admit it:
I write for fame and riches,
and nothing really more.

Yes, yes, make no secret of it,
I wish only to shock you,
arouse and repulse you,
****** you,
with mindless,
gore-splattering violence,
and heart-throbbing ***,
along on every page.

****** and *****, gore, and blood,
how else are my sales to flood?
It's art for arts' sake,
or something to the effect of that,
whatever makes me edgy,
socially relevant,
to scholars postmodern,
housewives bored,
and teenagers yearning,
to read ***** words.

So keep it then in mind,
my lovely readers you,
I very much like infamy,
and piles of money too;
be sure to buy my books,
praise me,
“Fresh and new!”
So that I may hire cooks,
to save time writing verse,
the very verses you adore,
lambasting the very rich and poor.

Rampant materialism,
spiritual decay,
what else do you
*******
want me to say?
A saint of the lowly,
the offbeat too,
voicing the obscure,
and the unheard and the
blah, blah, blah,
whatever it is,
I really don't care
quite honestly,
bluntly,
I'm being true,
I write for the fame
and the riches,
not you!

I am a poet, yes, but I sing only of
what I know, and all of that is
bicycles, the cries of the giraffe,
loneliness, and walks on
radioactive beaches.

So what is this, when you
ask me to write a love poem?
For three days, I have sat and
tried to write; and from my hand
has only come three arduous lines:

"I shall **** your ******* so hard
that your external **** sphincter shall
forever cease to function."

What the hell was that, I beseech you?
Our poets down the ages, have
written love poems on their paramours' blue
eyes, their raven-black hair, their fair
faces, yet mine is of my lover's rear?

Alas, this love song is no better than
a ******'s, as it lacks compassion,
eroticism, sentimental
tear-filled eyes and superficial flirting words.
It is nothing fit for a Valentine's Day card.

But know, my darling, my aim was true;
I wished only to express my love for you.
At your disdain, your unhappiness, with my
threat toward an orifice, I've written five
lines of some things that I do happen to know:

"The weeping giraffe,
rode his blue bike
in silence,
down the contaminated beach,
lamenting his loneliness."

In the tears of that giraffe can be found
my great love for you.

I tell you, you gloomy ones,
that life is beautiful.
Life is beautiful
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.

I tell you, you nihilists,
one draws breath only once,
passes into and fades out of life only once.
Yet you are to tell us it is worthless,
this gift given to us all by chance?

I tell you, you Christians,
and all your compatriots
who hate the flesh and the earth,
who promise more life through
sons of virgins and husbands of children,
that nothing awaits after death.

"Memento mori!”  
Why must you always
chime this in our ears?
Why must you fill
men with such anxious fears?
Many a man rules his life to this,
dreads and gasps and despairs to this,
prays that he may never come to this,
but you delude him on,
promising life after life.

I tell you, that
when we die, we cease ourselves to be.
Our senses stop their feeling,
our hearts stop their beating,
our brains stop their thinking,
and without those functions,
there ends a man.

So there are no souls
to greet gods in heavens,
nor any demons
to meet in hells,
only the ground we stand on,
and the caskets underneath.

Is this frightening?
Maddening, to think we must one day
cease to be and become nothing?
But death is not nothing;
Death is only a new dance of atoms.

When one thing tumbles,
it returns to the earth,
through one step or another,
to waltz and dissemble and collide
to make new things and again asunder.
With death, one only  
plays one's part
on the grand stage of things.

Do not be afraid then,
of death;
do not let it frighten you,
that you will be
pointless, forgotten, or condemned.
Do not let it terrify you
into leaving your life unlived.

And so I tell you,
you gloomy ones,
you Christians, you nihilists, you sufferers,
remember that you must live.
Embrace life,
this shortness of time,
love every moment of your being,
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain,
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.

Daylight,
and I am passing through all the muck,
with a lamp,
looking for an honest man.
Upon ****** and poets,
nobles and clergy,
merchants and paupers,
I shine;
and I walk on.

This poem,
I pen,
for a dazzling *****,
a putrid beauty,
a gilded deceiver,
who plays me around
and tosses me out
as whenever she feels.

No heart beats inside her,
she is harsh and uncaring,
she's cold and unfeeling,
passion-inflaming,
setting fire to thoughts
of her and none else.

Leaves me restless,
powerless,
doting upon
that big nose,
those sweet lips,
her stumpy legs,
her luscious hair,
her gentle face,
that lovely smile-
her,
her,
her,
in a word-
her,
that hideous girl!

I am lost,
dazed,
unsure-  
Is this love?
Is it hate?
Or is this something,
in between?

The nights I'd spend in some cheap ***** room,
drinking bad wine and hearing talk of your wife-
never I'd seen a man wrapped in such gloom,
so bitter and tired and weary of life;
You'd say you'd leave her and throw her away,
to hell with your job and kid and the cat,
we'll pack up our bags and be happy someday,
so happy forever and more than that;
Yet now here you go and walk out the door,
breaking your promise and saying goodbye,
leaving me covered in tears on the floor,
and all I can do is shout out this cry:
"Henry, you *******, you'll tear me apart-
Henry, my darling, don't break you my heart!"

Inevitably,
there will come a day,
when I shall meet you again,
as a lover,
as a soldier,
as a flower,
as a poet,
as a robber,
as a girl,
as a bird,
as a mother,
as a fish,
as all things must bleed,
as all things must pass,
as all things must seep,
and do it all over again.

Dressed in all black clothes,
he used to love to stroll,
across the middle of roads,
basking in the night.

Walking among a group of friends
in the park,
and I am still
the loneliest man
in the world.

This dance is for the truly lonely,
the desolate and unwanted ones,
who haven't even got shadows behind them.

It's a difficult one to do,
sometimes very painful,
most cannot bear with it long.

The beat is slow and lifeless,
passive and somnolent,
done in the manner of a hermit.

It's played on like this,
from the earliest hours of morning,
into the darkest hours of the night.

Not a pleasant waltz by any means,
and yet I find myself doing it,
night after unceasing night
until I get tired,
and drop asleep.

The man seeks salvation
in books, in knowledge,
searching for things unknowable,
meanings he'll never find.

I have sunk to the deepest of depths,
walking among the lowest of the low,
along with the filthiest of the filthy,
wading through mud, trash, dirt, and ****.
I am going under,
plunging into depths no man could think desirable,
to places I never thought I would go.
But through all this falling,
I am also rising,
descending to ascend
to mountain tops,
to climb into heights no man could think imaginable,
to places I never thought I would go.
Such as with a broken bridge,
through the swift current below,
I must go under to go over,
or else never get across.