thoughts on Bukowski – letter to a friend

I have read through some of your blog posts and I must say, have enjoyed the read…  you said that you were involved in the “meat poets” …. ok…  the only one of them that I know anything about is Bukowski and he was independent as much as a part of any school…  I guess…  anyway, I discovered Bukowski when I first read “Post Office” which I ran across in a book store, shortly after it was published…  I loved the slice of life feel of the writing, the wry humor and the view from the bottom of the working class which is not overly represented in American Literature…  I read his other novels as they came out and as I ran across them and picked up a few volumes of his poems as well… I don’t know that the poems amounted to much as “poetry” but they had the same lively style as the prose and were vigorously accessible and full of wit and humor… like the prose…

I was working at a factory printing telephone books at the time that I first ran into Bukowski’s writing…  I was going to grad school as an English major, driving the hour plus to River Falls, Wisconsin for classes in the daytime and working full time nights printing telephone phone books… I got a lot of breaks during the job and would write my college papers as my rolls on the press wound down… and later, after I dropped out of grad school in the mid 1970s, I would spend the free time reading, writing and drawing with ballpoint pen on telephone book cover stock…  I had been an undergrad art major at the u of Minnesota and had mostly learned from that experience that the world of contemporary art had no place in it for me or the artwork that I was doing and wanted to do… so, I went to grad school at River Falls as an English major… I was writing and submitting poetry regularly, at least one or two submissions a month, and was getting rejections on all of them…  this pattern continued from 1970 to 1984 when I finally had a poem accepted for publication…

my job involved putting rolls of paper on a printing press the size of a house and I would write prose and poetry in my head while working and then write it down as my rolls ran down… I had no interest in contemporary poetry beyond Dylan Thomas and maybe a bit of Ginsberg…  I had learned about poetry from my mother who’s taste went toward Alfred Noyes and Rudyard Kipling (from her father)…  I had discovered the British romantic and Victorian poets and so was trying to be Blake, or Tennyson…  updated with contemporary images…  needless to say, the editors were not impressed…  I did not save the ms when they came back to me…  I figured that if the poems were not good enough to be accepted by an editor, they were not worth saving…  so, by the time I started publishing, my poetry was one that would often incorporate half remembered or fully remembered images from a poem that had been submitted and tossed, into a new poem…  thus, if anybody ever cared enough to read through my published work, there would be a to me interesting, repetition of words and images…

after the acceptance in 1984, I decided that I had proven to the world and to myself that I could write a poem that was good enough to be accepted by a prestigious literary journal (the “GW Review”)…  and I decided to quit writing poetry…  of course, within a few years, I was back to writing poetry again  and submitting…. so I had my second poem accepted in 1994…  after that, pretty much everything I submitted was accepted…  so, I continued until the twenty teens when I really just stopped writing a lot of poetry…  my poetry had changed and was no longer formal rhymed poetry, and I am not sure any of it has any literary merit, and even if it does, I am not sure that having literary merit has any value to the modern world at large…  is writing a good poem as useful to the world as turning over a shovel full of dirt, or doing any other mundane task???  well, I don’t know…  probably not…

so, anyway, I always have been a voracious and fast reader and when I would finish reading a book I liked, back in my printing press days, I would often send a fan letter to the author just to let them know that I had enjoyed the book enough to take the time to let them know…  so, it came to pass that I wrote a letter to Bukowski, a fan letter, about one of his books that I had enjoyed… I remember that I wrote the letter while sitting on an ink can in my little nook, under a steel stairway, behind the “reel stands” of the old Wood Hoe, web fed telephone directory letterpress…  the air would have been thick with paper dust, chemical smells and vaporized oil and oil based ink… the gigantic press would have been roaring like a freight train… I would mail a letter like that at the post office, on my way home from work at 7 a.m…

much to my amazement, a week or so later, I got a reply from Bukowski…  a personal letter from the, by this time, famous author…  I was excited about this and wrote him two more letters, both of which he responded to…  I then thought that I had imposed upon the famous author enough and so did not write to him again…

I still enjoy reading Bukowski…  I love biographies of artist for one thing, and his novels and to some degree, his poems too, read like autobiography, even though I know they are fiction…  but the stories of being a great artist, mingling with the down and out sons and daughters of the working class gutters and bars have always been fun to read…  I also enjoy Fante’, Celine and Hamsen et al and to some degree Hemingway, all of whom seem to be Bukowski’s progenitors…  Is Bukowski a great artist??  I guess that is for history to decide…  will people in our problematic future even read novels anymore???  I think they have already mostly given up on reading poetry…  Hmmmm….

so, the only response I can really make to a statement like the above, is, of necessity subjective…  I enjoyed and enjoy reading Bukowski…  that is enough to me…  so many in the poetry small press world seem to want to emulate Bukowski’s hard drinking life style…  but little poetry of interest seems to come from this crowd… although, the myth of the intoxicated genius is one that was foisted on me by my own parents… who, in spite of the horrors that alcohol had wrought in our family, firmly believed that I could not be a real artist because I did not drink or use drugs… well, that is a myth that mostly pisses me off…  I would not have liked being around Bukowski, I think, had I met him, as I have no patience for and little sympathy with people who are intoxicated… addicted and fucked up… I have no interest in telling other people how to live their lives, but when their bad decisions impinge on me, I reserve the right to walk away…  as a child, I could not walk away, but I have not been a child for many decades now…  so, I enjoy reading Bukowski but have no desire to live or write like he did…   

The Music Dark Knight Rises

Conversations with Egyptian Music Producer Loay (D.A.R.KK_)

Loay or, as he calls himself, D.A.R.KK

It was summer. I always discovered music through the long summery nights, when I’m wearing as little as possible, ice cream keeps my fingers sticky, and new tunes flow into my stream of consciousness, interrupting my train of thought.

It was summer when I first heard this mashup, this remix. I was aware of the Egyptian rap scene bursting with liveliness, angry music, and young men exploding with expletives, brokenness, and an unexpected fragility talking about everything from drugs to betrayals, sex, getting wasted, and of course, being unbeatable gangsters with stacks of cash and everything at their disposal.

Many names stood out. It started with fellow Alexandrian Marwan Pablo, then -again- fellow Alexandrian Wegz, and the names kept rolling, like mollies on a tongue. There was the mysterious Lege-Cy, Marwan Moussa who was the typical Eminem-like rapper, the more chill drug-hazed Abo El Anwar, and the gritty Moscow with street cred and a bite. Too many Alexandrian rappers, is that a coincidence?

“I am from Madinet Nasr in Cairo, there are a lot of Alexandrian rappers because rap songs revolve in so many ways about the sense of belonging and brotherhood, and that’s something crucial in the lives of people from Alexandria. But it’s important in young men’s lives in general, this invisible bond of belonging and backing each other up, which is in multiple rap and trap tracks.

Then there were talented, young music producers, working their magic with song mixes, remixes, and mashes. That was when I heard “Layali Aloomek” or -literally- “Nights I Blame You” for the first time, a remix that rocked Egyptian summers in 2022. As I dug deeper, I discovered the young prodigy behind it; Loay or, as he calls himself, D.A.R.KK.

Layali Aloomek – Remixed by D.A.R.KK, mixing “Layali” by Marwan Pablo and “Aloomek” by Marwan Moussa

D.A.R.KK is a 19-year-old Egyptian man who loves what’s new in everything, technology, the music scene, travel, etc. He loves to stray from the norm and discover new places, seeks new experiences at the core of his existence, and takes risks. He created his alter ego D.A.R.KK as a reflection of his real self but within the world of music where he found his true passion ever since he was a kid.

There was something about “Nights I Blame You”, the incorrect structure of his wording in which he just stuck both titles of the original songs: “Layali – Nights” by Marwan Pablo and “Aloomek – I Blame You” by Marwan Moussa. Both songs couldn’t be more different as both rappers had a distinctive style. Instead of calling the song “I blame you night and day” or “For Nights I’ve Been Blaming you” to make the remix more coherent, D.A.R.KK simply called “Nights I Blame You” so that listeners wonder; who is he blaming exactly. The nights, the girl, or maybe someone else?

“It all started when I was a kid, I would use anything at my disposal to create a rhythm. This lasted until 2015 when I became interested in knowing how this magical thing “music” works. I wanted to teach myself so I researched on YouTube until I discovered Fl Studio and started making experimental beats in 2018. The turning point came in 2020 when I started uploading my music on YouTube and found unexpected positive feedback. I wanted a change so I made uploading my tracks something that I do regularly.”

Aloomek by Marwan Moussa

It was like Pandora’s box, but what came out wasn’t all the evil and pain in the world, but a mix of feelings, pains, and different forms of expressing infatuation and arousal. These young boys talked about being in love like nobody else, whether it was Db Gad, who wanted to take his girl to Alexandria through the ghettos and show her the inner-city, to Lege-Cy professing his love to his girl as her fiery flames burned his insides. He melts, and betadine cannot disinfect his wounds, infected by her love.

These two songs were different. Moussa’s “Aloomek” was a double-edged blame game between two toxic people, a relationship on equal grounds where two lovers played Russian roulette. But “Layali” was typical Marwan Pablo, an Alexandrian rapper whose poetry always expresses fragile masculinity, Gen Z sense of dissociative identity, and a burden of a man whose surroundings force him to be tough but his artistic self softens him against his will. Moussa talked about a lover who was the drug to his senses and making out on the roof with a bottle of Havana Club and Goose vodka. Pablo talked about offering his love to the fair maiden, his lady, and someone with whom he can be a knight, taking care of her and protecting her from the world. With his remix, the song seemed like an extended inner monologue by a man burdened by darkness and passionate for the woman who haunted his nights.

Layali by Marwan Pablo

They are two distinct worlds that couldn’t be more alienating to each other. But his boldness and musical talent led D.A.R.KK to create a song that somehow seemed genuine and truthful.

“Since I was little, I listened to a myriad of genres, but as the music progressed in the 2010s, I found myself leaning toward genres such as trap, R&B, and hip hop, I was constantly inspired by various artists whether Egyptian or from other parts of the world. I am the kind of person who gets stuck listening to one track on a loop, so the idea wasn’t new to me. I could make a remix for a track I originally loved and try to reach the same vibe through an enhanced technique. My aim was always that the cover track would surpass the original and find its way into the original fans’ playlist.

With [Layali Aloomek] I was already hooked up on the Marwan Moussa Aloomek track and it was on repeat constantly in my playlist so I wanted to create a remix that included Pablo’s track with it using a Lo-fi beat. And I released it and found that audiences loved my track.”

People didn’t just love D.A.R.KK’s track, they devoured it. The track has reached 200k views on YouTube and D.A.R.KK has 30k monthly listeners on Spotify. The young man has since made multiple other remixes but somehow, Layali Aloomek overshadows everything else he has done.

“This was unexpected and it only proved that if you made something unique that you are truly passionate about you would reach your dreams.”

I had to ask the young man about the creative process and how long it takes to make one track,

“I have a musical ear, and for every track, I have to understand the tempo and the key before I start working on it. As soon as I find two tracks with the same key and tempo, I separate the vocals, then put them in a project, finally I build up the melody on the vocals, then drums, and so forth, until I have my track ready.”

Pablo has been the most used artist in D.A.R.KK’s music world, with his tracks being the ones most used in remixes and such, I had to ask him what he found unique about the 27-year-old Alexandrian rapper,

“When I use a certain artist’s songs for remixes a couple of times, his tracks put me through a Sufi trance of sorts. I’m just like a lot of other guys, I listen to Pablo and I try to measure every track on its own, some tracks cannot be remade, remixed, or covered. Some tracks can be standalone in the remix. Pablo’s tracks can have chemistry with many other artists.”

Intrigued by his description of music as Sufi tracks, I asked D.A.R.KK about other artists to whom he reacts similarly,

“Most young men my age listen to rappers because we are from the same age group. We have gone through similar experiences and hardships. They write exactly how they feel, and correlate with things happening in our lives. They are unlike other musicians from years before. That’s why I don’t listen to older music because even if I like something old, I prefer to remix it and create something new out of it.

Haunting has been a word that came to mind ever since watching Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis in 2022. Austin Butler’s voice and eyes haunted me as he stared down at the audience or played tunes on his piano in a dark room. “Layali Aloomek” haunted me with its ethereal qualities and reverberating sounds. I asked D.A.R.KK if he believed some songs were haunting and others were not,

“I believe in that. Whenever I listen to a track, I tie it to the time and place I am in at this stage in my life. It becomes connected with this particular moment. So that if I listen to it later, it immediately transforms me to this stage in my life.”

D.A.R.KK dreams of collaborating with one of his favorite artists. He wants to create a different wave as a music producer, synergistically meshing his talent as a music producer with the artists to create a sound unheard of before. His interest in songs surpassed a musical fascination and hit deep into the themes and elements that shape the current musical scene in general, truth was something that he highly valued,

“Guys my age love rap and trap because the artist writes their songs, it’s unlike other mainstream [Arabic] songs with all due respect where you don’t feel the truth of the singer. I am not convinced when an artist writes about pain or injustice when he’s living a completely different life of luxury. I can’t listen to something that I don’t believe in. Not to mention that other Arab singers only showcase the bright side of their lives, and they also sing it, unlike rappers who are so open and bring you into the heart of their experiences, good or bad, so that means with other singers, I’ll only listen to you if I’m in a good mood, but they can’t sell me their music otherwise.

The real world is not as beautiful as Amr Diab or Tamer Hosny -two veteran Egyptian pop singers- paint it out to be. Rappers do that for us. They sing our feelings, express our anger and frustration, our pain. We’ve all been through the same but they just know how to express it poetically.”

Poetry takes so many shapes and forms, if Bob Dylan is one of the contemporary poets, then I don’t see how Tupac and Eminem cannot be considered the same. And if this applies to the West, then why not consider Pablo, Wegz, Moussa, and other contemporary poets but their street language and gritty expressions of modern-day life can be their gospels.

  

My son in his thirties

I dreamed that I gave birth to a son in his thirties

A tall blond man

He went through all the plays in the nearby theater with me

He believed, like me, that poetry can save us a little more

He was telling me how happy he is

I held his hand and said I believe

How he cares about totally irrelevant stuff,

like most of the human race.

Hearts of girls he will take each day

The jacket he saw in passing, books to buy,

but he doesn’t have enough money yet.

I listened to him attentively

As men with a deep voice are listened to

While reciting poetry by the fire

I woke up

The announcer was announcing on the radio

Several new world disasters

I touched my stomach

And he reciprocated.

Revolutionist

He was a revolutionary man

He waved from the top of the frenzied village

I invented a woman who flies

I see her every night

I make her womb out of wet clay

And a couple of kisses.

I breathe into her the joyful rain

Then, when it flies away, I shout with all my might

That I love her

Nothing ever came out of it

Except my rust.

What are you missing today?

Power cube

Legs that will carry you

Although the bones remain inside

You will leave all other phenomena

Trapped on the shelves

What are you missing today, when you don’t have time to think

About the soul, happiness, aspirations, not even about suffering

Like recycled material, you smell of use value

A factory woman with an apron over her swollen, congenital stomach

Adds colorful blocks to the leather boots of the A series

Bare-handed and barefoot rows across the sea.

Welcome to a fresh month of Synchronized Chaos!

First of all, Synchronized Chaos stands with all those affected by the recent earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria. We encourage all who are able to contribute to the relief efforts, which you may do through the Red Crescent or other worthy organizations.

There is a virtual literary benefit reading hosted through Words Without Borders on Thursday March 9th at 1pm EST.

This online fundraiser with contemporary international authors and translators aims to raise funds to aid relief efforts and demonstrate solidarity with the Syrian, Turkish, and Kurdish people affected by the disaster.

Organized by Words Without Borders and hosted by author Merve Emre (writer and scholar, Turkey/USA), the fundraiser will feature Laila Lalami (novelist and essayist, Morocco/USA), Orhan Pamuk (novelist and essayist, Turkey), Maureen Freely (translator from Turkish, USA), Sema Kaygusuz (novelist and playwright, Turkey), Nick Glastonbury (translator from Turkish and Kurdish, USA), Elif Shafak (novelist and essayist, Turkey/UK), Bachtyar Ali (novelist, Iraq), Kareem Abdulrahman (translator from Kurdish, UK), and others to be confirmed.

Please join us online (Zoom) on Thursday, March 9th, at 1 pm/New York, 6 pm/London, 8 pm/Gaziantep & Aleppo.

Also, please come out to Synchronized Chaos Magazine’s in-person event, held during the Association of Writing Programs’ conference, Thursday March 9th at 6pm at Ada’s Technical Books in Seattle.

During the pandemic many of us came to miss browsing in bookstores and libraries. The experience of scanning and flipping through books that we wouldn’t ordinarily order for ourselves, but which catch our eye and we find ourselves fingering, flipping, reading, and then checking out and buying.

This reading creates an ‘audible browsing’ experience by presenting readers who are published authors in a variety of genres. This includes mystery, romance, poetry, memoir, drama, literary and international fiction.

Also, our friend and collaborator Rui Carvalho reminds us about our Nature Writing Contest for 2022.

This is an invitation to submit poems and short stories related to trees, water, and nature conservation between now and the April 1st, 2023 deadline. More information and submission instructions here.

In this issue we see pieces where people grapple with their self-concepts. Some people search their souls for deeper understanding, others focus entirely outside themselves, and still others process their thoughts and emotions through interacting with the outside world.

Chimezie Ihekuna kicks us off with song lyrics about claiming one’s selfhood and confidence.

In Brian Michael Barbeito’s lush, detailed poems, narrators lose themselves within elemental wildness. He also contributes immersive photographs that aim to capture the spirit and feel of locales, focusing on the observed and hiding the observer.

Bill Tope’s prose poem also takes readers up and out of themselves and out into a richly imagined nostalgic fishing trip with his grandmother.

Channie Greenberg’s artistic renderings of flowers capture their exuberance, in work that takes a turn towards abstract expression. Claudio Parentela highlights the details of slightly comedic scenes through color and black and white renditions.

Mesfakus Salahin evokes a love that pulls the speaker out of his own life into union with nature and his beloved.

Sandro Piedrahita’s story explores how one might atone for a heinous crime, through shifting one’s focus away from selfishness towards humble service to others for its own sake.

Sayani Mukherjee’s poem describes an intense spiritual quest and how her faith survives her search and questioning.

Z.I. Mahmud’s essay highlights the role of philosophers who were both spiritual mystics and humanists in shaping Indian culture. They were able to both address and transcend the human condition.

Gail Thomas highlights how various iconic songs have helped her to process her grief, explaining how music can be at once personal and universal. J.J. Campbell, a writer and caregiver, speaks to many universal human griefs and emotions: loneliness, lost love, aging, and tradition.

Doug Hawley handles common human experiences – surviving the natural elements, braving the dating world, aging and illness – through humor. Noah Berlatsky spoofs self-help culture through an elaborately constructed re-envisioning of Jordan Peterson’s advice to men.

L. Wayne Russell speaks of pursuing and finding art and inspiration above all else, whatever his human circumstances.

Daniel De Culla sends up a fanciful poem about shapeshifting: a poet with a hat that changes into a whimsical pumpkin.

Mark Young cleverly amuses us with “mail deliveries” that involve linguistic wordplay while Grant Guy breaks poetry down into its essential elements to explore what those elements are.

Vernon Frazer connects a lot of words and ideas together to experiment with meaning and thought. J.D. Nelson invites us to experience words and punctuation in fragments and ponder their possible meanings.

J.K. Durick evokes how life’s experiences can play with our senses of time and space.

John Grey creates humorous character sketches of people and relationships with generosity of spirit.

John Culp conveys the joy of reaching full intellectual and emotional understanding with another person, being fully and mutually seen and heard without either person having to lose themselves in the relationship.

Itzel Perez-Alarcon points out how the childish games that people play with each other can recall memories that undermine our sense of self.

Bilatu Abdullahi renders the loneliness, rage and grief of a spurned lover, who could be a person, a country, or the earth itself. Maurizio Brancaleoni speculates on whether humanity will be able to do enough to ameliorate the destruction of endangered species and disempowered humans.

Mahbub laments the natural and human tragedies of our current world, but then points to our heritage of honoring love between people to suggest that we may yet make it forward.

Christopher Bernard remembers his partner of many years through an elegant meditation on an empty table setting. Emina Delilovic-Kevric speaks to family love that perseveres after wartime, even in the face of losses.

In his thoughtful poem, Faroq Faisal quickly reminds us that we are mortal.

Some contributors take the focus off of themselves by writing about a highly researched topic.

Terry Trowbridge stares intently at a single jalapeno, discovering the mysteries of the universe in a pepper. Corey Cook highlights one intense image, of a tiny bird or a candle flame, and calls us to leave our own psyches and meditate on that.

Russell Streur explores the intimate relationship between poetry and pottery in Japan a few centuries in the past.

Masharipova Bakhor Ixtiyor provides an overview of the bakery products of Uzbekistan, while Kojamuratova Aygul urges Uzbekistan’s criminal justice system to distinguish between one-time and repeat offenders for public safety.

Taylor Dibbert’s poetic speaker steps beyond his own psyche in a simpler way: love and gratitude for his faithful dog.

We hope you enjoy this issue’s depth, joy, grief, thought, and nuance.

Games I Hated Playing

Walking over childish jealousy cracking the ground.

Recess is incessant.

Trying to talk to strangers 

You see but try not to envy 

every dejected day:

The sun grills your skin.

Your shoes making more noise

than the conversations, you’re not having.

Each stomp gets heavier with resentment

drops of grudging sweat form.

You accelerate against your antagonists. You didn’t

have to play the game.

Run, run, run, 

Dream of shoving a milk carton down his throat

The ones from the cafeteria

It won’t hurt as much as the words he says to you

Watch the milk trickle out his mouth and picture 

it being you knowing what freedom finally is

Check his pulse

wake up

As your nemesis says

“Tag.”

PANTS ON FIRE

I'm not really this upset 
but despair reads better on the page.
And no one dips into poetry 
so they'll know how good I have it.

They're searching
for the anguished cry of someone
worse off than them.

So lying on a beach,
I give them dark and dismal.
High up on a mountain, 
I spread the verse with depths.

In love and loved becomes, 
with a click or two of the keyboard, 
unwanted and alone.

Poetry is the great lie. 
There, you heard it from me. 
So it must be untrue.



ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Now I prize 
the reformed alcoholics-
	all throats are dry,
	all keep this to themselves.

Instead 
of ripping at their own skin,
they sit in chairs
too tight for trembling
	and let the process work.

A month, says one.
Almost a year, says another.
Over two years, says a third.

Together in one room,
	they are a calendar
	of willpower and abstinence.

I drink to them
by crushing the glass.
in my hand.




HE PART ONE

He drinks.
He embraces me like an old friend. 
He finds his life works best
when people have  never seen the like before.
He has developed a number
outside the realm of 0 through 9.
He has the inside track
He hasn’t seen his ex in years.
He can make things out of stone and wood.
He leaves it to others to light his cigarettes.
He nibbles on whatever’s within reach.
He tosses trash at the feet 
of the guy sweeping the sidewalk.
He returns nothing he borrows..
He says he wants her exclusively for himself
He survives off a settlement for a car accident.
He transmits pleas skyward.




CARL SMOKES

Ten chimneys worth of vapor 
had climbed his nose, his cheeks,
drawn by the amber of his eyes.
His is the satisfaction of expression.
And the relief that it works so well.
For he is an illustration  
from out of poetry’s flaming words of poetry
Though just the scaffolding 
for he has yet to write anything down.
He’s staving off the pressure with a cigarette,
while he craves the presence of a sperm whale
that writes, with its fluke dipped in ink,
in some elemental alphabet with giant letters.
Yet he’s really clipped wings on a bird.
The Ring Cycle minus the ring.
A dropout from modesty and self-advisement.
A prisoner behind a tall wire fence.
The last breath of a trout in a net.
No one is hypnotized by the yellow of his sun.
No one reads anything into an empty page.



RUSSET CONES

I ask morning, as someone who is never really here,
just how secure is this room, these floorboards,
the walls, my body…and my life.
The light says something like,
“That’s my little secret.
In the meantime, why don’t I just shine in your face.”

I wonder in whose novel I have awoken.
And why the fierce dog below is staring up at me.
His concentration and my lack of gusto are appalling me.
But I agree with the beast that maybe we could rassle later.

I spend twenty minutes talking to the mirror
with my diffident face on.
But glass doesn’t recognize humility.
It only speaks in emojis anyhow.
My downward mouth cannot be held back.

The woman at the kitchen table looks up at me 
from her incorrigible remoteness.
How many years has it been since we first thought
we could anchor each other.
Now, she takes me for the back cover of a book –
one that she puts back down,
says, no I won’t be reading you today.
She could, at least, skim through the damn thing!

I try to not to say things that are merely anger.
That’s what pen and paper are for.
The lady of my life has perfected the silence, the obdurance, of the hill.
I look out the window.
Day is out there having followed me from upstairs.
It’s quite colorful, to be honest.
And not so distant that I can’t step out into it.
“Good question,” it says, when I haven’t even asked it anything.
“If you’re looking for the russet cones of red spruce,
focus on the top of the tree.”
I had not intended to. And yet, maybe I just will.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

12 Rules for Manly Knowledge


Seek out some false fair woman and plague her.
—Swinburne

Rule 1
Stand up straight like the archetypal death of Christ hyped on Communism.
The thought may gall you, Reverend Jung, but you cannot deny the wisdom 
of furtive street-vending marijuana providers. The female 
graciously widened her hips. Animals can’t manage that. You know this is the kind of lobster 
spiced with the latest edition of The Economist. The excruciating glowglobes are drooping 
with semi-divine emotional reactions, a warm snuggling of intolerable Being 
narcissistically tripling mutual awareness. 
There are so many women without lobsters, so many nervous systems blossoming with chaos,
so many shoulders writhing sinuously in the deep desert—can the hyper-dominant
ever be truly emergent? Let the penetrating question suborn your terrifyingly witty SEALs,
opening time like a non-refundable flower of malevolence. Maybe it’s time to grow up
and get effortlessly bloated with camaraderie. Maybe you are the gratifying myth.


Rule 2
Treat yourself to the wise degenerate-sustainability threshold of myth
and astronomical sexual climax. Yes, drunk people get in trouble with Communism.
Yes, a superintelligence should have a box of dreams on its CV. But hyper-dominant
whole brain emulation will grow up
like non-anthropocentric avatars of ourselves, augmenting my damn ideology with lobster 
infrastructure profusion, an affliction of early-stage hierarchy maneuvers. Anti-awareness!
That’s the perverse hatred of masculine activity, the frenzy of reverse vampire snorting evolutionary wisdom. 
One difference between humans and horses is that one is obsessed with honor, the other with chaos.
Can it subtly control world events like a perverse Darwinian? Like a female?
Enhancing the cognition of excessively agreeable biology? Your husband, your child, sealed
in a bouillon cube of discrete human-like intellect, melting into the algorithm of Being.
The true AI is plentifully flowing serotonin. Do not let your neural pathways droop.
 

Rule 3
Make friends with people who are waiting for a personal trainer. Like Godot, who droops
but is not scared of the parasitic mind mask.  What’s up, Godot? That’s the myth
of the living waters marching in Skokie, because they believe that Being.
is not Marxist enough. And it is Critical Theory when you see the lobster
by the pen of light, and say, “It’s time for very strong sleep narcotics, it’s time for awareness.”
I know your internal critic is fixed, but Communism
is what makes airplanes work. “No way,” you think. But it’s, “Yes way.” That’s wisdom
to see that these are the good law-abiding ones, and those are the sociopathic bad females,
and to unleash the neurologically expensive B-movie aliens, the dogmatic SEALs
who fight for the small business owners with the reasonableness of hyper-dominance.
Otherwise, you’re nothing but infected evolution without the charm or cellular tissue. Grow up,
laboratory-enhanced, like Plato without fuck pants, and you’ll jujitsu the ethics of chaos.


Rule 4
Compare yourself to a face waiting to be splattered with blood. There’s a thin trickle of axiomatic chaos, 
lips parted, as inside you an intrinsically intolerable volcano blazes droopingly.
Take a deep drag on your easy rationalizations and consign the Vice Squad to awareness
of what it means to be sheathed in a tight-fitting blue-silk dominance hierarchy. Being
is completely uncivil to the ancient reflexive responses of the lobster.
And so our bodies ready themselves for all kinds of nymphomania, like myths
that threaten to break a guy’s arm to make him into Sweden. Don’t be a sissified Navy SEAL,
with twin bosoms of brain-cancer and equity-mindedness, draped in the negligee of entrepreneurial wisdom,
squirming like an overgrown thigh. Say, “I’m only human, you provocative invertebrate female,
and the chip on my Charles Atlas will never grow up
into an Oedipal Mother. To hell with Osiris. How could I be so damn Communist?
Sweetheart, it was easy. And hyper-dominant.”
 
Rule 5
Do not let your children kill their interior warriors. The hyper-dominant
Zeus-energy dramatically crystallizes when you’re not of much interest to womanly chaos.
That is the magnetic field of the deep masculine where John Wayne gets a life. And Being?
This isn’t a debate. The data crouch down in the soul houses, like seals
playing softball on the ocean floor with the Wild Man of Communism.
Something in the adolescent male wants bureaucratic functionaries with heavy eyebrows and great wisdom
to smoke the yin/yang right from the Golden Hair of clinical psychology, until awareness
penetrates like a sword plunged into the tender, fearful, damp grooviness of the lobster.
The wound in our psyche is left-wing social-justice, bleeding like females
from their hairy intuition. Economically speaking, you can eat dust like myth
salted with internet porn.  The fossilized confusion of memes droop,
as midwestern prairie types herd naked apes across basic brain areas. Only thus can we grow up.


Rule 6
Set your house in perfect order like a real woman who is not your mother. Only thus can we grow up
with muscles popping out of our Nietzsche. Mind-blowing sex, that was Ursula’s nefarious hyper-dominance.
But men have got to feel like they’re the king of shriveled and warped semi-beings.
All he really wanted was to hear her say was, “Baby, you’re my Navy SEAL.”
All he really wanted was pineapple juice on his pulsing lobster!
But instead she twirled around so he could get a better look at her juicy wisdom
and he immediately started calculating with an unspeakably primordial calculator. Awareness
is a high-quality suitor, but you pursue the salty fries and the foul grease of Communism.
As for me, I became the mayonnaise and vodka of myth
because that is what she needed. “If a man doesn’t have chaos
in his scuba tank, am I going to put a ring on his Tao?” Dirty laundry droops.
Hold onto your cookie like Sigmund Freud holds a high-performing and high-earning female.
   

Rule 7
Pursue the golden calf that once grazed on elegant parties of females
rather than longing for Benjamin Franklin’s meticulously rigid gout. When you grow up,
breakfast will be coffee, the denatured motor cortex of the French forces, and an awareness
of the lustful violent natural cowboys encamped in the chaos 
of our American lasses. A perfectly functioning hegemony deploys its musketry and myth 
like cannon shot rooting in the highest levels of meaningfulness. Such intestinal Communism
travels flat on its supine bliss into the square-shaped fortifications of wisdom.
Consider that ancestral soft buckwheat cakes were carved to look like Navy SEALs.
Consider that the modern practice of bathing in Fruit Loops came from Orwell, whose drooping
liberty clanged in the copper mustaches of the tyrant.  There is no Being
without the thrust of the bayonet, no Hessians without hyper-dominance.
The Founders surge in the abyss. Follow George Washington, therefore, and embrace the body odor of the lobster.


Rule 8
Tell the truth, or at least do not delight in the torture of lobsters.
I had a client who by sheer willpower stilled the fidgeting of good-looking females
inside his kimono. What do you say to a severely intoxicated hyper-dominant
silk napkin? Someone living a life-lie in a tight-fitting sheath of black satin? Being
a wounded caterpillar crawling up the prideful rational mind is no excuse for drooping.
Slowly, lovingly, lift the gun and shoot the honest human spirit into a paradise of Navy SEALs.
A big racial stereotype fell from the sex-organs of the Japanese globe-fish while Communists
ravished British sailors with white girls for comparison. Of course, you are already aware
of the genetic predisposition of mad doctors, Mr. Myth.
At least you’re on the side of the Logos, which is to say, of the policemen, the Queen, and the grown ups
who hunt down all the insincere trousers. But if you’re raised by a wonderful Nanny, half-Chinese, half-chaos—
you will quiver with blood and meta-goals. And that is wisdom.

 
Rule 9
Assume that the larvae whose perfect divorce law you are tramping is a bully business. His wisdom 
will make your beaver behave, but only if you first wet the thick tips of the susceptible lobster.
Choose a dry, level Stalinist, put the point of your self-conscious vulnerability on the drooping
knife-blade of habitable order, and feel your way to a Communist
merit badge. Even to a symphony of merit badges. Then the Chief Female,
studded with metal like a pit bull’s collar, optimizes her smile across the street of chaos
and into the Roman legions or the Wigan Pier coal miners. You can tell the difference by the length of their awareness,
and by whether they are chivalrous when they gut Navy SEALs
with a psychological scalpel. Training makes a small boy the equal or superior of a hyper-dominant
nihilism.  The mystery grew upon him as he became boring like the grown up
whose dream collapsed beneath the Honest Mao of myth.
It is not alone in the mighty hunter-gatherers, but in the meek Noble Savage too, that we truly upbuild Being.


Rule 10
Be precise in the dammed-up pressure of your mammal carcass, thou red Being,
and let the choice cut of wisdom
from Christ’s horrid black hole be visited upon the social worker in all her hyper-dominance.
“The dickered tongue of the unemployable has a bitter smell,” says the female
in her Ted Talk. Like some computational intelligence at the tail of a bovine, chaos
enters the chat with the antics of a creepy puppet, while naked men sit on Communism’s
fern-scented He-Goat.  The target is a more communicative America, flourishing with the dark grape of awareness
at the life-blissful soda-fountain. You are Captain Hook, your orgasms drooping
with wrinkled secrets and compact drops of posture, which you must seal
in the honey-triumph of lost human upvotes. Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himself, the lobster
conducts market research on the fecundating herd, aka the British Parliament. Grow up
washed in the data of gender. I am the man. I am the sanitary Frankfurt School of myth. 
 
Rule 11
Do not bother Warren Beaty while he prodigiously frigs the myth
of his forefathers. Such sins, limited by the proliferation of your Bishop, are being
idealized every fortnight. Whisper dreadful blasphemies to the fundament of chaos
and the 1960s shall dramatically liberalize divorce laws. What is the end of this journey into darkness? A lobster?
A turd? An ideological shibboleth? It matters not what emerges from the female
technical insufficiency, as long as you rejoice at the effect of your laxative. Obsolete laptops droop
upon the libertine of time—that is a bizarre ceremony, and even if your buttocks malfunction, hyper-dominance
will still awaken my lubricious cabbage, even as voluptuous Navy SEALs
fart upon symbolic associations with Western cynicism. My prick positively jumps when I do wisdom,
and yet women on dating sites reject 85% of Communism.
This enrages Magneto, who unbuttons his breeches and grows up 
to manifest his destiny. No wonder she donned a hardhat and entered a convent for the rest of her awareness.


Rule 12
Pet your out-of-control political correctness with love and high-caliber awareness.
The Old Testament God should set off your Spidey-Sense. Likewise the myth
of consensus Type-A bottoms. My suggestion is to screw up your Being
with the minimum effective dose of female
until you utterly hyper-dominate 
competitive podcasting. Marine force recon guys with one foot in obscure psychedelics and the other in toilet humor are growing up
into a Heraclitean tenured position. Husbands, don’t let your healthy seat in the musical chair competition droop
like old luggage where your mind is grooved in defensive and rent-seeking types of chaos.
Commit to one push-up before infidelity. Yes, just one. Only massively transformational purpose can make a Holocaust survivor into a lobster
with really good encryption. You are the unstoppable Terminator of your own wisdom.
You are the brain tumor in the heart of your essential amino acids. And you are the Navy SEAL
with one set of speakers in the bathroom, building the Boulder Dam (now known as the Hoover Dam) out of the raw material of testosterone. Glazed, of course, with Communism.

 

Coda
You would have predicted a good future in cruising down main street into marijuana and myth. But in truth it’s a downward path sealing
you into the Messiah who is yourself.  Chaos is Swiss, but economics is a non-refundable hyper-dominance
that smuggles Vedic texts into your quotidian awareness. In every left-leaning Eden there is a lobster
with 350 million years of experience in tempting females with the innate blood-sugar spike of Being.
The body, with its various YouTube channels, maps wisdom onto big ideas such as men who are not part of the patriarchy. Meanwhile Communism
springs forth like a tampon from powerful biological sex. Grow up, young man, and unclutter your Twin Towers until they are no longer drooping.

___

The epigraph is from Swinburne’s double sestina, “Complaint of Lisa.”

The entire poem uses words and phrases from:
Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, forward by Norman Doidge, Toronto: Random House Canada, 2018. 

Additional material used as follows

Rule One: Frank Herbert, Dune, New York: Ace, 1965.
Rule Two: Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford UP, 2014.
Rule Three: Joe Rogan Experience transcripts at “The Joe Rogan Experience”, The Happy Scribe, accessed January 2023, https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-joe-rogan-experience
Rule Four: Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1947.
Rule Five: Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men, Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1990. 
Rule Six: Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment, New York: Amistad Press, 2009. 
Rule Seven: Bill O’Reilly and Margin Dugard, Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2017.
Rule Eight: Ian Fleming, Dr. No, London: Pan Books, 1964.
Rule Nine: Boy Scouts Handbook (1st ed.)., 1911.
Rule Ten: D.H. Lawrence, Birds, Beast, and Flowers, London: Martin Secker (Ltd.), 1923.
Rule Eleven: Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom, trans. Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, New York: Random House, 1989.
Rule Twelve: Tim Ferriss, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of World-Class Performers, New York: Harper Business, 2016.