I like poetry.<\/p>\n
I prefer poetry that rhymes. I’m old fashioned like that, but i’m prepared to bed some kinky, funky non rhyming poetry too, cause while i’m a slut with preferences, i’m still a slut.<\/p>\n
So as i prepare to leave late tonight by airplane for London, i thought i’d share this wonderful piece by Catherine M. Valente, Mouse Koan. It doesn’t rhyme or anything, but kinky funky poetry has some tricks that can rockle your cockles too. (thanks Tor.com)<\/p>\n
Mouse Koan<\/strong><\/p>\n I.<\/p>\n In the beginning of everything Some of them were social creatures a lot like high school. The popular kids figured out the game a late bloomer, draft dodger Gods The trickster god of silent films A priesthood called it down II.<\/p>\n If you play\u00a0Fantasia<\/em>\u00a0backwards \u00a0\u00a0 Hiya, kids! \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But look, You don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like The present and the future are a dog \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In that impossible futurological post-trickster space I am the tiny threaded needle I thought we were just having fun. Put me in the movies, mistah! I used to be Hey there. Hi there. Ho there.<\/em><\/p>\n What I am the god of I tricked them good. I made them \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey. It doesn\u2019t matter \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Look at my opposite number. It\u2019s 1940. What you don\u2019t know \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Listen to it. -Catherine M Valente<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I like poetry. I prefer poetry that rhymes. I’m old fashioned like that, but i’m prepared to bed some kinky, funky non rhyming poetry too, cause while i’m a slut with preferences, i’m still a slut. So as i prepare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,301],"class_list":["post-2832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-poetry","clearfix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulshapera.com\/temp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI mean the real beginning
\nthe only show in town
\nwas a super-condensed blue-luminous ball
\nof everything
\nthat would ever be
\nincluding your mother
\nand the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles
\nand the heat-death of prime time television
\na pink-white spangle-froth
\nof deconstructed stars
\nburst
\ninto the eight million gods of this world.<\/p>\n
\nsome misanthropes, hiding out in the asteroid belt
\nturning up their ion-trails at those sell-outs trying to teach
\nthe dinosaurs about ritual practice
\nand the importance of regular hecatombs. It was<\/p>\n
\nright away. Sun gods like football players firing glory-cannons
\ndownfield
\nbookish virgin moon-nerds
\nangry punkbrat storm gods shoving sacrificial
\ngentle bodied compassion-niks
\ninto folkloric lockers. But one<\/p>\n
\nin Ragnarok, that mess with the Titans,
\nboth Armageddons,
\nstarted showing up around 1928. Your basic
\ntrickster template
\ngenderless
\nprimary colors
\nmaking music out of goat bellies
\ncow udders
\nram horns
\nsqueezing cock ribs like bellows.
\nIt drew over its face
\nthe caul of a vermin animal,
\nall black circles and disruption. Flickering
\nsilver and dark
\nit did not yet talk
\nit did not yet know its nature.<\/p>\n
\nhave problems with identity, too. No better
\nthan us
\nthey have midlife crises
\nrun out
\ndrive a brand new hot red myth cycle
\nget a few mortals pregnant with
\nhalf-human monster-devas who
\ngrow up to be game show hosts
\nask themselves in the long terrible confusion
\nof their personal centuries
\nwho am I, really?
\nwhat does any of it mean?
\nI\u2019m so afraid
\nsomeday everyone will see
\nthat I\u2019m just an imposter
\na fake among all the real
\nand gorgeous godheads.<\/p>\n
\nknew of itself only:
\nI am a mouse.
\nI love nothing.
\nI wish to break
\neverything.<\/em>
\nIt did not even know
\nwhat it was god of
\nwhat piece of that endlessly exploding
\nheating and cooling and shuddering and scattering cosmos
\nit could move.
\nBut that is no obstacle
\nto hagiography.
\nAlways in motion
\nplane\/steamboat\/galloping horse
\neven magic cannot stop its need
\nto stomp and snap
\nto unzip order:
\nif you work a dayjob
\nwizard
\nboat captain
\norchestra man
\nbeware.<\/p>\n
\nlike a moon
\nmen with beards
\nmen with money.
\nIt wanted not love
\nnor the dreamsizzle of their ambition
\nbut to know itself.
\n\u00a0Tell me who I am<\/em>, it said.
\nAnd they made icons of it in black and white
\nthen oxblood and mustard and gloves
\nlike the paws of some bigger beast.
\nThey gave it a voice
\nfalsetto and terrible
\nthough the old school gods know the value
\nof silence.
\nThey gave it a consort
\nlike it but not
\nit.
\nA mirror-creature in a red dress forever
\nout of reach
\nas impenetrable and unpenetrating
\nas itself.
\nAnd for awhile
\nthe mouse-god ran loose
\neating
\nbox office
\ncelluloid
\ncopyright law
\nhuman hearts
\nand called it good.<\/p>\n
\nyou can hear the mantra of the mouse-god sounding.<\/p>\n
\nLet me tell you something true:
\nthe future
\nis plastics
\nthe future
\nis me.
\nI am the all-dancing thousand-eared unembodied god of Tomorrowland.
\nAnd only in that distant
\nSpace Mountain Age of glittering electro-synthetic perfection
\nwill I become fully myself, fully
\napotheosed, for only then
\nwill you be so tired of my laughing iconographic infinitely fertile and reproducing
\nperpetual smile-rictus
\nmy red trousers that battle Communism
\nmy PG-rated hidden and therefore monstrous genitalia
\nmy bawdy lucre-yellow shoes
\nso deaf to my jokes
\nyour souls hardened like arteries
\nthat I can rest.
\nContrary to what you may have heard
\nit is possible
\nto sate a trickster.
\nIt only takes the whole world.<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndon\u2019t worry about it. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m about
\nanymore. Everybody
\ngrows up.
\nEverybody
\ngrows clarity,
\nwhich is another name
\nfor the tumor that kills you.
\nI finally
\nfigured it out.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nto be a god without a name tag.
\nHELLO MY NAME IS
\nnothing. What? God of corporate ninja daemonic fuckery?
\nThat\u2019s not me. That\u2019s not
\nthe theme song
\nI came out of the void beyond Jupiter
\nto dance to.
\nThe truth is
\nI\u2019m here to rescue you.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nracing a duck. Right now
\nyou think happiness
\nis an industrial revolution that lasts forever.
\nBrings to its own altar
\nthe Chicken of Tomorrow
\nbreasts heavy with saline
\nmargarine
\ndehydrated ice cream
\nfreeze-dried coffee crystals
\nRight now, monoculture
\nfeels soft and good and right
\nas Minnie in the dark.
\nIt\u2019s 1940.
\nYou\u2019re not ready yet.
\nYou can\u2019t know.
\nSomeday
\neverything runs down.
\nSomeday
\nentropy unravels the very best of us.
\nSomeday
\nall copyright runs out.<\/p>\n
\nI will survive
\nI will become my utter self
\nand this is it:
\nI am the god
\nof the secret world-on-fire
\nthat the corporate all-seeing eye
\ncannot see.
\nI am the song of perfect kitsch
\nendless human mousefire
\nburning toward mystery
\nI am ridiculous
\nand unlovely
\nI am plastic
\nand mass-produced<\/em><\/p>\n
\nof unaltered primordial unlawful beauty-after-horror
\nof everything that is left of you
\nglittering glorified
\nwhen the Company Man
\nhas used you up
\nto build the Company Town.
\nHey.
\nthey used me, too.<\/p>\n
\nThe flickies! The CINEMA.
\nThe 20s were one long champagne binge.<\/em><\/p>\n
\na goggling plague mouse shrieking deadstar spaceheart
\nnow I\u2019m a shitty
\nfire retardant polyurethane
\nkeychain.<\/p>\n
\nis the fleck of infinite timeless
\nhilarious
\nnuclear inferno soul
\nthat can\u2019t be trademarked
\npatented bound up in international courts
\nthe untraded future.
\nThat\u2019s why
\nmy priests
\ncan never let me go
\nscreaming black-eared chaotic red-assed jetmouse
\ninto the collective unconscious Jungian unlost Eden
\ncalled by the mystic name of public domain
\nThe shit I would kick up there
\nif I were free!<\/em><\/p>\n
\nput my face on the moon.
\nI made them take me everywhere
\ntheir mouse on the inside
\nI made them so fertile
\nthey gave birth to a billion of me.
\nAnything that common
\nwill become invisible.
\nAnd in that great plasticene Epcotfutureworld
\nyou will have no trouble finding me.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYou\u2019re gonna get hurt. Nothing
\nI can do.
\nLead paint grey flannel suits toxic runoff
\nmonoculture like a millstone
\nfairy tales turned into calorie-free candy
\nyou don\u2019t even know
\nwhat corporate downsizing is yet.
\nAnd what I got
\nisn\u2019t really much
\nWhat I got
\nis a keychain
\nWhat I got
\nis the pure lotuslove
\nof seeing the first lightspray of detonated creation
\neven in the busted-up world they sell you.
\nSeeing in me
\nas tired and overworked
\nas old gum
\nthe unbearable passionmouse of infinite stupid trashcamp joy
\nand hewing to that.
\nIt\u2019s the riddle of me, baby. I am
\neverywhere\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 exploited\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 exhibited\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 exhausted
\nand I am still holy.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhat they do to you.
\nMake you a permanent joke
\nsell your heart off piece by piece
\nrobber princes
\nruin everything
\nit\u2019s what they do
\nlike a baby cries.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIt was never coyote versus roadrunner.
\nIt was both
\nagainst Acme
\nmail order daemon of death.
\nStick with me. Someday
\nwe\u2019ll bundle it all up again
\nthe big blue-luminous ball of everything
\nyour father
\nthe Tunguska event
\nthe ultimate star-spangled obliteration of all empires.
\nI will hold everything tawdry
\nin my gloved four fingered hand
\nand hold it high
\nhigh
\nhigh.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nis going to break you. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Listen to the Greek chorus
\nof my Kids
\nlining up toward the long downward slide of the century
\nlike sacrifices.
\nTheir song comes backward and upside down
\nfrom the unguessable extropy
\nof that strangesad orgiastic corporate electrical parade
\nof a future<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThe sound of my name
\nthe letters forty feet high.
\nSee ya
\nsee ya
\nsee ya real soon.<\/em><\/p>\n