"Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Matthew 12:36
Less than a few weeks ago, I discovered I have a new artistic standard. I wouldn't say it's a total replacement of whatever my hopefully-evolving standards are, but rather a renovation, to make the house bigger, happier, and more comfortable.
It occurs to me that, whether I like it or not, if the devil hates it, it's good enough for me.
And if the devil likes it, I may have to walk away, even if I agree with him that the work is valid for one reason or another. Because, probably, the reasons I like it are different from the reasons he likes it. He's not interested in beauty or brains. He's interested in desecration, degeneration, and destruction.
Personally, I've been brought to the end of myself in terms of my own work. It doesn't mean I'm finished. It means I'm done. Or is it the other way around?
Whatever it is, it's a good thing.
I've been a Nick Cave fan for decades, and have noticed that his output has remained stable to the point that he seems to be drawing from a well of endless inspiration. Good for him, but I wonder: What would he do if he ever got to the bottom of that well? To what degree is his continual churning and constant output an act of idolatry, of narcissistic ego-stroking, self-admiration and adulation, or anything else that would prevent him from moving away from himself (and toward God) in his spirit-life? Of course, I have to say I don't know.
The scene in One More Time With Feeling in which he says with transparent faux-humility that "the work will continue if people are still interested" (paraphrased), regardless of the tragedy of losing his son which flattened his muse like a deflated beach ball, made me instantly wonder:
Does he actually believe that he's going to reach the end of his audience? Am I expected to believe that he's ready to throw in the towel and stop looking in the mirror with a pen and paper in his hand, if people stop listening? Am I supposed to believe that he actually believes this is ever going to happen? Because I don't. Is it not clear he takes his position and audience for granted?
I think it is. Of course, I could be wrong.
Whatever the case, it's his problem.
Looking through old Word files of my own in search of something interesting to post recently, I found myself up against the same wall I was up against earlier this week, looking for a Gregory Corso poem to read. I couldn't find anything. Several poems, I was excited to re-read, not having read them for many years. Upon opening them, however, it was like finding rotten meat where you expected to find a diamond ring. Complete and total disappointment.
I've been through this before, but I have been seriously considering taking the book Sideburns in the Sun completely off the market. Nearly everything in the book is trite, idle nonsense. There are a few gems, of which "Cough Syrup Soup" is a surprising one. Of course, like the Christian walk, the journey of the artist is one of moving forward. On an upward trajectory, one would hope. If you're still writing the same claptrap you wrote when you were drunk and 25, you're probably not an artist. And the drinking and drugs don't really have anything to do with it. They were a grand inhibitor in my case, but maybe you're Bukowski, and can write about your conscience in one of the most beautiful poems ever written, regardless of how you choose to live your life.
It takes a true artist to do that. And didn't Bukowski come to writing late? In his mid-to-late 30s, after years of experience not only in the real world, but also between himself and the open, empty page?
Maybe he had to empty the bottle to fill the page. Or empty his heart, who knows.
In my case, I puked my guts out all over the page in the most self-absorbed, myopic, artless fashion possible. It took a long time to learn how to arrange the pieces of rotten meat into something resembling a poignant or beautiful thought. At some point, hopefully, I stopped using rotten meat as a medium altogether. Hopefully, some of the newer pieces, such as "The Fire Will Burn Your Laughter Away," and "Flying Over The Jungle Poem" are examples of me finally unlearning the anti-art of spontaneous idiocy. I would like to believe that the poems-as-song-lyrics in songs like "Wonderland Covered In Tar" and "No One Seems To Hear/The Invisible Church" are proof that I finally graduated from the Walt Whitman/Beatnik school of narcissistic word-vomit-as-a-faux-art, and into something that is at least approaching the realm of true poetry exemplified by Bukowski's "Bluebird."
Fortunately, it is a process. If you're still in the puke phase, take heart. Don't quit. We were misled by puppets of none other than Satan himself. Fake poets writing fake books with no artistic value, such as "Howl" and Leaves of Grass, fake artists whose wannabe muses may very well have been smothered by the adulation that has been heaped on them by so-called institutions of learning, if they were true. As practitioners of poetic alchemy who could never turn their artistic lead into gold, however, they embraced the adulation their fake science/art didn't deserve. Since manufactured admiration was the only adulation they were ever going to receive, they not only embraced it, they proceeded to pour it on the rest of us, like motor oil on pancakes, lowering the standards of the entire culture in the process.
If there were ever 2 people in relatively-recent history who have made a career of idle words, it's Whitman and Ginsberg.
I will be hard-pressed to believe that God doesn't hate it. He did inspire Bukowski to write about his God-given conscience, after all. It's a beautiful poem, because God is in it, demanding the attention of both the poet and the reader. It's a sad poem, because the poet turns his face away from God, away from hope, away from the "bluebird" in the center of his being. It is nothing like the self-absorbed ranting of Ginsberg and Whitman, notorious frauds whose fake, ubiquitous work is still celebrated today.
My standards have changed. If God hates it, I hate it. If God likes it, or is in it, or is truly sought after in some fashion, I like it.
"Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established." Proverbs 16:3
There's no more time for idle words. The idea that I will have to answer for songs and poems that are entirely comprised of them, humbles me indeed. Sometimes it's better to be quiet. I haven't written much of anything in years. It is a harrowing thought, to consider that the best thing I could write, the most that I could say, is nothing. Absolute and total silence.
The following poem is a good example of a transitional piece, a poem in which rotten meat is still the medium of choice, but which has evolved beyond the fake, postmodern idea that says every "act of expression" has validity. Every act of expression does not have validity. Some expressions are stupid, and should be embarrassing to the people involved. This poem is somewhere in the middle. Closer to the end than the beginning.
Inspired directly by my experiences in the L.A. dope world, "Soap Dick/I'm A Rat" is an early attempt to actually arrange the rotten meat into interesting patterns on the page, to make fingerpaintings with the puke, instead of being satisfied with nothing more than having thrown up. From the article Stumblefish, "A wordplay on the phrase 'dope sick,' 'Soap Dick/I'm a Rat' was written in Los Angeles at the end of 2002. The "I'm a Rat" part refers to the scavenger lifestyle to which I'd become accustomed, but was perceived by certain criminal friends of mine to mean that I was a snitch. This misunderstanding kept me out of a certain amount of trouble, I have no doubt."
I'm not going to take it off the market. I'm already going to have to answer for it, and maybe somebody who's spinning their wheels in the postmodern quicksand of artless self-expression will find encouragement in knowing some of us have been there, and that it's not a permanent condition. You can dig yourself out, if you want to. It's not necessary to resign yourself to a career of idle words in an age of idle idolatry.
Read along with the poem in the video below. It starts at the 23:38 mark.
Thanks for listening.
Soap Dick/I’m a Rat
polydrug user!
polydrug user!
babes of unexpected sexiness!
your screams of terror
are like coldcuts of sound
rotting
quietly
in tiny carpeted refrigerators
in my ears—
it takes weeks,
even years,
for your clothes
to digest you—
I suggest you go
home now,
you androgynous
rats,
to yr sorrowful
lovenests
yr tall puke-a-lyptus
trees,
sad Cheshire
rut-rats
roach-teeth a-gleaming,
scratching
names
upside-down
in the wet
white cement,
planting
flowers of dissent
on Peroxide Road—
(drink yer bone-bleach
while it’s hot)
snot-eating
burlap-dancers,
locked in the boxcar
lounge,
sporked-tongues
spitting
sparks,
toasting
homeless people
roasting
in Coathanger
Park,
papercuts howling
in pain
in the rubbing alcohol
rain—
broken-down
black guys
wearing
prehistoric shoes,
facial expressions
like charred
looted
storefronts,
ugly-bug sunglasses,
eating
flies with their eyes,
tears of bug-gut
an’ bile
drying on their cheeks—
blackout!
blackout!
the sky’s cracked an’ peeling!
rig-ladies
reeling,
hair sweeped back
by hissing
aerosol breeze,
plastic skin
melting,
pinned to the hot gravel floor
by a ruthless
toothless
sun—
a thin stick
bum
with electric
chair
hair
an’ grillmarks on his face,
orange leather arms,
an’ army surplus
lips,
teeth worn to nubs
from years of eating
concrete
carrots,
hamburgers
of stone,
his whole being
like a prehistoric
punching bag
marinated
in zen
filth,
trudges
past the La Brea BBQ
pits
an’ the unfortunate creatures
encased
in the ancient
bubbly black barbeque
sauce,
roasted
in slow motion
for eons an’ eons,
to seal in the flavor
of prehistoric bacteria
specific
to that specimen
of ten-thousand-year-old
mammoth-meat,
known in this newly-fangled
millennium
as the one an’ only
Arco dog—
whaddaya think yer doing!?
don’t eat that shit!
take it outside,
an’ wipe it on the sidewalk,
to get out them
germs,
ya gotta use
FORCE—
of
course,
I’ve been
listening me
to sleep every nite
to the juke & drunks
at Raji’s,
so
what the dick
do I know?
who IS that happy asshole?
with the well-adjusted laugh
of a tidy whitebread
madman?
who’s the chiquita mosquita
with the tiny
2-tone
tits?
yea yea yea,
whatevs buddy,
whatever
ya think ya seen y’ain’t seen
shit—
wait’ll ya see my girlfriend Bananas
do a lickety-split
handstand
on a razor-wire fence
wearin’ nothin’ but a tampon—
tiny toy coffins
bursting into
clowns
you maggots have eaten
my hands out
from
under me!
drops of water, little
spiders
crawling down my
legs
I’m the clown-prince of darkness!
I usta live on your ceiling!
pale wrists precipitating
snowflakes
of blood
just take my teeth
and
EAT ME
a’fore ya gets too
scumfterbull—
spit out yr feet
an’ meet me
up
high on hilly
vista,
fulla bees
an’ trees
an’ thorns,
where the 4am traffic
winds
blindly below us,
coursing like blood
thru brittle broken
veins,
abscessed
subway tunnels
collapsing
on trains,
track-marked
gutters,
an’ infectious-germ
commuters.
cracked concrete
capillaries,
red bloodcell
brakelights
at stoplights coagulating
in carpools
of blood—
dusty
hillsides encrusted
with million-dollar
houses,
standing
on wilted steel
stilts,
giant concrete-glass
parrots,
perilously lurching,
perching
over parties
fulla girls you can EAT!
it’s time for me to meet
the Bikini Meat
elite—
a floating inflatable fleet
of tubes
lubes
an’ boobs,
booze-bunnygoats
bleating
eating
tits-on-a-stick,
swizzle-dicks competing
over fiberglassy
blondes
drinking
wood-varnish martinis
garnished
with nipples,
cartoon girls triple-
stacked
on top-a ornamental
pornstars,
with zippers for eyelids
an’ fire-retardant
pubes—
welcome,
ya greasy green
underlings,
ya floppy-eared
rubes,
to the Upper-Middle Mannequin Class—
where ego-engorgeous
Godzooka-like
zillionaires
meet a fashionably
bored,
top-optional
demise
(severed members only),
floating face-down
all alone-ly,
in bottomless swimming pools,
or leaping off
cliffs
in Olympic-sized
ravines—
(when death to YOUR house
comes ta visit,
which
will YOU find
most exquisite?)
death by TV dinner?
death by family?
death by job?
death by joy?
death by happiness?
death by handpicked admiring-squad?
death by money!
death by fashion!
death by children!
death by mansion!
in the hills,
driving
cars
with constellation headlights—
the skies are unkempt—
the birds fly like stupid bricks!
my heart is descending—
I need a newer kinda fix!
the parkbenches
are all booked
up
full of broke
starving
henchmen
wearing exoskeleton
trenchcoats,
shit-crust
in their workpants,
shoes from another
era,
peeling prophylactic
socks
off cracked
plastic
feet—
bleary-eyed
bug-fuckers,
junk-sick hicks,
crackerjack truckers
suckin’
on liquor sticks,
pleasantly
foaming,
stray roaches roaming,
climbing
statutory rapevines
growing
in the day-glo grey
cracky
pavement,
fingers trapped
in spiderwebs of chewing
gum—
carrion
chopper-blades,
locust-cops
buzzin’
over
groups of trees
handcuffed
in a grove of streetlights,
bare roots
buried in
boots,
refusing
to cooperate—
mud-angel
nudists
wiping
blood off the fish-tile,
crack-king their teeth
in mouths
fulla tar,
eyes
risin’ constantly,
2 blue bleeding
suns—
2 dozen donut-mites,
itchy
an’ bitchy
in pigeon-skin
slums,
bums are a-scheming,
drinking
drip-drool
an’ dreaming
of anywhere but here!
spilling
junk-blood
an’ beer
on a flea-eaten
mattress,
wearing
beef-jerky jackets,
‘cuz leather
is fer
winners—
ain’t no way to tell him
a flying wig
of paralyzed,
comb-proof
hair
has landed on his head!
no way to conceal
lips of dope
lathering
with soapsuds of madness!
no way to escape
sour
lush-hour winds
blowing
foul
brown breath of death,
orange
smoke-quilts of smog
hanging
over anthills of jewels,
fuel fumes
wincing,
rinsing
soft
plush-white
hands,
upholstered with fat—
Pakistani
sandwich-peddlers,
selling lonely
bologna,
lunatic
tuna
an’
tamales of folly
to
imaginary gangsters
engaged in
invisible dealings
under sickly orange streetlights,
vomiting
gravel
in the nausea-mud
an’ pouring
rain
on their pancakes—
operator,
I need a pill!
will you kill me if I cry?
will your oval
envelope me
softly when I die?
crickets
play contralto
to a cavalcade of sirens,
ambulance-grooves
grindin’
under a glowing brown cloud
of carcinogenic,
omniscient
filth—
tar-paper junkies
lifting
methadone barbells,
eyelids of wool,
taking
powder-showers
with perforated,
reprobated,
underweight-trash
man-hookers,
or alone or maybe
stoned
or with a 40 of Ol’
English,
always on a
nod,
in the unappealing
nude—
hooker-hair
slimy,
like
gluey-glook strands
of blue-black spaghetti,
clogging the drain,
my girl’s been
pavin’
her veins
with tarry black
gloop-paste,
fixing
her shots
with meticulous
haste,
don’t waste yer time,
buddy,
she’s a bitch
in real
life—
the sky is propped
open
by the last rays
of sunlight;
fuzzy gray
cat
w/ overcast
lining
sits
at the head
of a waterfall of blankets
gushing
from the foot
of a beheaded
bed,
my crazy once-girlfriend
lay slovenly sleeping
under a
shelf
of tulips
an’ china dolls,
chipped plastic
beads,
balloons fulla heroin,
little packets
of speed—
what delicacy of mind
arranged miniature
teapots
in such careful-ish
fashion?
gnashing
her teeth
over tiny porcelain
place-settings,
letting
ashtrays
an’ beercans
pile up on the floor—
sweet dreams little venom-fiend!
happy trails little whore!
why-zit
Yucatan
lose at a war
ya ain’t even fighting,
that no matter
whutcha du,
ya never can’t
win?
our OC disorders will never meet again!
I am happy
to sleep
alone
in a corner
on the old wooden
floor
amongst piles
of pliers
an’ parboiled
chicken bones,
clear 80’s telephones,
bent wire
clothes hangers,
abortion-hook soup,
hypodermic pine needles,
slaveyard bikini-strings,
bloody black flowers,
fangs fulla
honey,
damp
rolls of toilet
paper,
toy razorblades from heaven!
patent-leather purses,
pocketknives,
phonebooks,
matchbooks,
magazines,
stereo components,
tubesocks,
toy trains,
tambourines,
porcelain alarm clocks,
Ku-Klux
Kleenex boxes,
boxes
of catshit,
boxes
of valentines,
computer parts,
wine bottles,
fake wood TV
trays,
moldy blue tomatoes,
bags of liquefying
onions—
the day
smooth an’ peaceful—
blankets of smog/
grey
feather pillows
on a hot heatlamp
sun,
keep us from going
crazy,
keep us
lazy,
an’ happy,
hazy,
an’ slappy,
all those tattooey-junk losers,
boozers,
cruisers,
dildos of soap—
they all usta
be friends of mine;
now we’re just sleeping—
weeping creeping keeping
our mouth shut—
what
Angel of Stalin,
descending on my bedsheets
in the middle of the silent/holy/
cracky-trap
night,
is demanding fucky-wucky,
an’ expecting to be
fed?
weaker than a tweeker,
chewin’
on ‘iz fingers,
poking steam-holes
in ‘iz head,
ugly
lugnut lips a-lisping,
cranium crakd
an’ crisping,
an’ a microwavy
haircut
on top an uninhabitablable
head?
eating
slices of chewy
blue-grey
bread
that look like
lint filters
in industrial
clothes-dryers,
applying
finger-lickin’
wedgies
to herds
of sexy
nerd-girls
wearing
robot-eating
sneakers,
footprints
on their parachute-panties,
tangled up in blissful
briars,
an’ starting trendy
fires—
beating
quaran-teenage
devil dolls
wi’ pockets fulla
foo’l-balls,
Cyanide Chiclets,
malevolent
lentils,
latent
opioid
appetites—
skunkards
an’
ja-runkards
with coal-burning
throats,
cookin’ up
their breakfastes
in spoons
of ruin
an’ recklessness,
singin’
Negro Britney Spirituals
under a pancake makeup
moon—
my wakeup call is wasted!
the cat is spun on crank!
watch out
for the tornadoes of teeth
an’ clouds
of claws,
an’ be very very
wary
of the supernatural
catbox,
now that it has taken
to levitating
mysteriously behind the toilet—
rickety
iron alligators,
impatiently descending,
comin’ down from the ceiling
on lysergic
tornado slides,
South-Side
Chicago blocks,
chillin’
in tha darkness/
bloody darkness/
chungk of pavement/
brainwashed
drone—
the payphones all need pruning!
glood
gates are frozen
shut!
what news?
what urgent business?
could be so possibly important
as to find yourself requiring
ta beat me to tha
meat-punch?
(vodka-licious
meat-stew,
served in crystal-nut
champagne
flutes)
tryna come off
like all yer shit’s together,
like yer carrot
ain’t cooked e-nuf
already—
steady,
Betty,
don’t pass that semi
on the shoulder!
his expletives are explosive!
his wheel-wells are weird!
whom
will groom
the grey-haired vegetables
growing
in my gardenoid
beard?
what expense my common sense?
an’ what price my lucky dice?
what intention all this tension?
not to mention
the pinched, enlightened
faces
of my anabolic
peers
(baby we wuz smokin’
all the way to Ho-Hoboken!)
don’t bother me!
I’m boring!
leave me
alone please I’m imploring
ya
ta keep yer
self
all to yer
self
a’fore
ah gets my
self
in jail
all a-cuz’n
yer gunbelt
panties,
an’
my vanity
case of herpes—
Elvis can you hear me?
are you up there washing
dishes?
do you know Santa Claus
and Jesus?
do you communicate with Memphis?
telepathically
through an old
busted
black & white
TV?
hey buddy!
Elvis wants for you to give me 50 bucks!
sure I’ll take a check,
an’ if’n
yer not a chicken
yu’ll take a kickin’ in the nuts!
whoo-hoo-hoo!
hee-hee-hee!
I’m ludicrous!
I’m free!
ain’t no one here to tell me
they’re gonna
care for me
forever,
condemning
me to an eternity
of eating
emotional popcorn
in a 30-year-long movie
bereft
of boobs
an’ cool explosions,
a narcoleptic epic
monologue
of preposterous proportions,
of which WE, of all people, are forced to be the
stars!
strapped for the duration
into cold electric
loveseats—
I can blow my head off!
anytime I want!
no one to pretend they wanna stop me,
no one to slow me
down,
or hang me
up,
no one to even push me forward!
I don’t wanna go to school today!
I wanna watch TV!
I’m quaking in my sideburns!
boss, ya see?
I’m shakin’ the tree!
see here boss,
I’m shakin’
the tree
©2003 Nathan Payne
