Crazy Words
Prose poem admonishing the worship of idols of plastic sh** and the language derived there from.
Crazy Words
For most people language is flat and linear. They think names identify things. They think the Great Wall is in China or that the Great Pyramid is in Egypt when they are in fact in Las Vegas or Plato’s Heaven. People believe in labels. I am guilty of this myself. I like **** Cola instead of **** Cola. Red is like Santa Claus or the Soviet flag, and although I am skeptical of Communism and Christmas, I respond to strong brand images. Poetry was eaten by brand imaging a century ago and what got shit out—that scentless turd—is what’s left of magical language. A few people still have pre verbal purity in their hearts and refuse to worship idols made of plastic crap and lies. This instinct without words is what religious charlatans prey upon and those good people end up worshipping a brand image too. Everybody else is too cheap to worship a golden calf, so they worship a plastic one. I write crazy words because they shake up the snow globe of commonly accepted expressions that flatten imagination. I spent a couple years living in the mountains, and many more years in cities across the world. Everywhere I’ve found little pits of half burned or scratched or faded, or otherwise discarded, plastic. I believe in the wrath of God because I remember when great hoards of seagulls picked through the mounds of trash at Fresh Kills Landfill in New York-- the horror I felt and smelled. Something is wrong with our consumption. We have eaten something far worse than an apple. We have eaten words and defecated their bones and eaten them again until they are without nutrition. We are sick and without the magic of vital speech to heal ourselves. There are no more fish and loaves, and if we answer the call to prayer, we prostrate across a corporate logo. If indeed our species has made a hell on earth, most of us deserve to burn in it.