An American Prophet

[rowens]

I eat six times a day;
I see dental floss as a drug,
and I don't do them;
I believe that hypocrisy is by and large more respectable
than cleverness or, indeed, irony;
I'm only attracted to certain types of black women,
in fact, the same is true of white women;
I may be ugly, but I'd rather be alone forever
than taste the weight of an unattractive woman.

I get drunk as my way of saying you're welcome;
though I never brush my teeth, I never have had a toothache,
and I eat ice cream with my front teeth even though it hurts;
I have read more than a college professor has time to teach
in a semester; I believe, even though obviousness has proved that there is no supernatural
reality, that God and other so-called supernatural phenomena exist naturally;
I would not use a condom with a woman I loved,
and not for conservative reasons but for religious reasons;
using a condom is like not even having sex,
I could just as well jerk off for all the good it would do;

there is hardly a day I spend alone,
I have talked people out of suicide
and talked virgins out of self-deprivation, even though they were too young for me
to do anything with;
I have never broken a law, not because I respect the fictional rules of the state
but because I have better things to do than to notice if something I've done has broken a law;
I have played the lottery, and lost.
I have won at certain other games,
I've physically assaulted men bigger than me and have been respected
for that, and for only that, reason.
I don't believe in the necessity for respect.

I have made love to women that didn't love me;
I have made exceptions for them, because I loved them;
I have never compromised in anything:
if anything, I have failed,
and I have learned from my mistakes.
If there are aliens on other planets, that's good to know.
I don't particularly like innovations in communication technology;
one time I really did see something that has been scientifically proven not to exist;
I eat meat only after the animal is dead;
if I lie, it's always because someone would sin if I didn't.
Sin is something that is negotiable,
I know that God understands more than people give Him credit for.
What? Did you think He is stupid?

There's a difference between stupidity and wisdom.
God needs neither;
but we do . . .

That is the point.

[Erthona]

Usually your ramblings are senseless, and I like that, but here you are only trying to be clever; whether you are or not makes no difference. The end part almost was good, but then it dies while trying to make a point. All I can say to this Prophet is stop it.


dale

[rowens]

It wouldn't be the first one to die while trying to make a point.

[rowens]

I had to got to the store. Now I'm back to reiterate. You're demonstrating what the bozos at the poetry magazines would call "a superficial reading of the text." But luckily for you, I don't write texts, I'm not a teenage girl. The Fuck Da World era is over; I'm talking in the mode of this Completely Serious reputation. My characters don't mix context; that is, they don't pull their punches. There is a complete line, from start to finish. A continuum. A "plane of consistency." A full blown, subtle endeavour. If a serious person would read these lines from the point of view of the protagonist, they would find understanding or feel mixed up. The correct response is to feel some kind of understanding or feel mixed up.
One of the underlining themes of my writing is that Irony is evil. Whether wrong or right, the speakers in my poetry and fiction and my essays, which is the same thing, are talking from their source.
I don't believe public discourse is beneficial. Only the private, personal, subjective interpretation of the reader is of any substance to the writer, or to the world. I don't care about that. The misreading, on the other hand, strikes me as reactionary and, as the speaker of the poem would moan, typical. The point is that there is no typicality. The function is prophetic, singular, and progressive in the illest sense.
In other words, the religious implications are to hold. The speaker never deviates from his approved view. That is the point. Writing is collective and not individual, and I'm only talking about my oeuvre, which is cohesive, and deterrent only in pragmatic design.
The design is nothing.
The truth is paramount. Which is why artists are scum. They live as I live.
That is the prerogative.
How can a character speak under the oppressive scrutiny of authorial legitimacy?
The author is God's henchman. And more . . .

[Leanne]

"I eat meat only after the animal is dead" -- this is religion. It's much easier to swallow if it doesn't correct you.

"I'm only attracted to certain types of black women,
in fact, the same is true of white women;" -- white women are only attracted to certain types of black women?

"I have made love to women that* didn't love me" -- women who*

"one time I really did see something that has been scientifically proven not to exist" -- a poet who wasn't full of shit?

"Sin is something that is negotiable" -- very useful if you've never compromised

Now, stamp your feet three times and cry petulantly, "you don't get me, man, I'm so much deeper than that". If God doesn't need stupidity or wisdom, he sure as hell doesn't need henchmen.

[rowens]

I'm trying to find an arc between my intentions and the intentions of my character. If you can't understand that, then don't bother, Leanne. Sometimes me and my characters have certain understandings about how we, as inseparable entities, are to be represented.
I wouldn't expect someone from the British Isle of Australia to understand.

[Leanne]

Crawl out of your own arse sometime, mate. You can't just write something and then insist people love it.

[rowens]

You can say what you want about me as a person or as a writer. But now you're talking about one of my characters, like one of my children.


"I eat meat only after the animal is dead" -- this is religion. It's much easier to swallow if it doesn't correct you.

Yeah. There's no murder involved.


"I'm only attracted to certain types of black women,
in fact, the same is true of white women;" -- white women are only attracted to certain types of black women?


Maybe you could read it that way, completely disregarding the primacy of the male-first-person-I.



"I have made love to women that* didn't love me" -- women who*


If you want to go overboard insisting that a woman is a 'who' and not a 'that'.



"one time I really did see something that has been scientifically proven not to exist" -- a poet who wasn't full of shit?


A poet is not speaking. A prophet is. Once again, this is my American child we're discussing.

"Sin is something that is negotiable" -- very useful if you've never compromised


Also a useful position if you've adamantly proclaimed that irony is off limits in regard to your religious integrity.

Now, stamp your feet three times and cry petulantly, "you don't get me, man, I'm so much deeper than that". If God doesn't need stupidity or wisdom, he sure as hell doesn't need henchmen.

The henchman part came from my comment. It wasn't in the poem.

Crawl out of your own arse sometime, mate. You can't just write something and then insist people love it.

I don't care if anyone loves the poem. Loving something written isn't important. What I insist is that, nothing really. The main thing I agree on with the character is that there is no irony involved in the poem. It's all of one piece. If anyone thinks, and you, Leanne, from your consistent comments, don't seem to think, that the speaker turns his back on his points at the end, then they are wrong in the realm of the poem. At least that's my point. As for the character, he may be ambiguous, but that's not my intention. My intention is that he is straight forward, ambiguous or confused or bigoted or disagreeable or not. He's my character, and I'm responsible for him.

[Leanne]

Actually, fuck it, I've lost interest.

[rowens]

That's just like a woman. To back down from an argument when a man starts getting vacuous.

[Erthona]

Bentadick You always end with a jade trick.

If you truly understood the writing, you would understand that prophet or not, once it is on the page it is no longer yours to defend and you have to swallow our comments cooked or raw regardless of your religion, which as everyone knows is just an excuse to abuse other people's genitalia, especially those who are underage, or under the stairs and have drank to much sacrificial wine and find themselves holy. God did not die, modernist did! So fuck all those sterile uptight puckered cuntheads and their dead God, so who do they swear to now, eh, who do they swear to now?

[rowens]

I can defend whatever I need to. That's part of the chore. This is a poem, but the writing doesn't stop with the poem. Not for me. The poem goes on. It's like a blob that absorbs everything. As a poem, it's something I wrote while drinking and on drugs. I wrote the poem, but the prophet is speaking. I don't defend the poem, but the character. Not even the character of the character, just the character. Like a man whose son drinks and drives. Drinks and drives and ends up killing a mother and child on the highway. He's mine and I'm defending him. That's the way this poem works: If you don't like the character, then don't like him. The character is bigger than the poem. The poem is hardly important. If I got my wife pregnant while blind drunk, should I not love my son?

[Erthona]

Of course you should not love your son, that's called pedophilia and it is against the law. Just because you had to get blind drunk to fuck your wife because she is so ugly, doesn't give you the right to go around sexually abusing other people no matter how small and insignificant you genitalia are/is. The poem does not go on, only Celine Dion's heart goes on forever, a poem is a flash in the pan, and a prophet is an even smaller flash in the pan, and it doesn't matter if you cook your cock in the pan with spices and butter in the hopes your saggy butt ugly wife will suck for one time since you have been married to her, it's just the facts, hard as they may be, but interspecies marriages are like that, and it doesn't matter if her father was a prophet, howling at the moon isn't going to get you many converts, and you can defend it until you're blue in the balls, it still isn't gonna get you blueberry pancakes for dinner.

[rowens]

I don't have a wife. Women require money. You either get a wife to support you, and then you're seen as a bum; or you support your wife, and she's seen as a kind of legalized prostitute; or you both work and each one takes care of his and her self or shares the burden. I don't work myself. And I have a hard time relating to anyone that does work. It seems to me that working for money is humiliating. No one should have to do it. Rather the society come crumbling down and civilization play by ear.

[Erthona]

Well I'll have to go with you on that, there's never been a thing not truer said...at least not to my recollection. People on this site just don't appreciate good poetry, not that one should or should not expect them to, or write with the expectation that they will approve (and considering the rabble here who would want it), but I'm just stating facts that they seem strangely educated in all the wrong things, but what can you expect from people who have been to school, and all?

[ellajam]

blueberry pancakes...

[rowens]

Good poetry doesn't have anything to do with anything. When I was younger, I was always told that if I sneezed with my eyes open my eyeballs would pop out. But the worse thing that could happen was that snot come out of my tear ducts.

Maybe poets don't muddy their waters in order to appear deeper but because they want to be muddy.

[Erthona]

or fresh strawberrys with homemade whipped cream ella enchanted!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muddying the water only means you can't see those big fat tadpoles that make such good bait, so all muddying the water means is you won;t catch any blue gills fer supper, and instead you'll have to have pot-licker delight. Of course my friend John Lee Hooker preferred that so much that even though he had enough money to eat anywhere he wanted and a couple whores to boot. He preferred Pot-licker so much he carried a little electric burner and a pot so's he could have him some whenever he wanted, and that was most nights. He wrote that famous blues song "Pot-licker Blues" when his little burner quit working on him one time, and he had to eat a hamburger instead. The point is that taste is taste, and everybody has some, but depth you measure with a stick, and when it's deep enough to float a boat you yell, "Mark Twain" cause that is the kind of depth you are looking for.

[leesharks]

I eat six times a day;
I see dental floss as a drug,
and I don't do them;
I believe that hypocrisy is by and large more respectable
than cleverness or, indeed, irony;
I'm only attracted to certain types of black women,
in fact, the same is true of white women;
I may be ugly, but I'd rather be alone forever
than taste the weight of an unattractive woman.

I get drunk as my way of saying you're welcome;
though I never brush my teeth, I never have had a toothache,
and I eat ice cream with my front teeth even though it hurts;
I have read more than a college professor has time to teach
in a semester; I believe, even though obviousness has proved that there is no supernatural
reality, that God and other so-called supernatural phenomena exist naturally;
I would not use a condom with a woman I loved,
and not for conservative reasons but for religious reasons;
using a condom is like not even having sex,
I could just as well jerk off for all the good it would do;

there is hardly a day I spend alone,
I have talked people out of suicide
and talked virgins out of self-deprivation, even though they were too young for me
to do anything with;
I have never broken a law, not because I respect the fictional rules of the state
but because I have better things to do than to notice if something I've done has broken a law;
I have played the lottery, and lost.
I have won at certain other games,
I've physically assaulted men bigger than me and have been respected
for that, and for only that, reason.
I don't believe in the necessity for respect.

I have made love to women that didn't love me;
I have made exceptions for them, because I loved them;
I have never compromised in anything:
if anything, I have failed,
and I have learned from my mistakes.
If there are aliens on other planets, that's good to know.
I don't particularly like innovations in communication technology;
one time I really did see something that has been scientifically proven not to exist;
I eat meat only after the animal is dead;
if I lie, it's always because someone would sin if I didn't.
Sin is something that is negotiable,
I know that God understands more than people give Him credit for.
What? Did you think He is stupid?

There's a difference between stupidity and wisdom.
God needs neither;
but we do . . .

That is the point.

A couple of nitpicks.

I felt the simple use of the period was more effective than the semi-colon. I think ditching the semi-colon and relying exclusively on the period would add to our sense of the poem as a series of profound/absurd proclamations given from on high/low.

I disliked the final five lines, everything after "give Him credit for" (and I'm not too sure about that line, either). They switch modes in a way that seems to strive for closure without really adding to the poem. I think just stopping would be fine. Or relocating those lines somewhere else in the poem.

In general, I like this piece. What was strongest for me was the juxtaposition of disparate subject matter, from line to line, the way something completely unrelated emerges from the litany as if it were completely topical (e.g., the move to "If there are aliens on other planets..."). I feel it would be possible to strengthen these juxtapositions even further by playing around with the line order.

I felt the piece sometimes relied on too many devices of what felt like academic or argumentative prose in a way that clashed with some of the powerfully unacademic proclamations, e.g. "in fact," "indeed," and more of that type.

Mostly, I like this piece, but feel it could benefit from some reorganization of lines to best highlight its strengths of voice and from either a new ending or no ending.

-Lee

[rowens]

I posted this poem at the same time as another poem. Both of them weren't really poems, though they are. They are poems in the sense that I presented them as if they were poems; but they're not poems, they're simply fancy displays of spite and bitterness. My aim was self-indulgent inaccessibility. After the fact, I tried to read more into them, after I'd initially distanced myself from them by carelessly throwing them together. I made a few minor changes to make them less accessible and fixed some typos. That was it. Then I got more interested in the character speaking. And that's what I care about. But what other people say about the poem as a poem makes perfect sense in the context in which it's presented. But I have no intention for this poem to make sense. It all spins on the point of saying, "That is the point." What is the point? There is no point. It's a very inspired nihilistic thing. You can say whatever you want about it or take it any way you want. I don't like the poem. It was just another point for me to spin on and from.