Pet Names Shouted Between Totalitarian Lovers
by William D. Tucker
Rocket Man
this is the pet name shouted between totalitarian lovers
daring one another
to shoot first
to bust the annihilating nut
to burn up all the little people
the shitizens
as a global sacrifice
to their greater love
...um...
could we maybe get these two on Dr. Phil, work their shit out?
preferably
BE-FUCKING-FORE
the impending obliteration of human civilization by nuclear weapons?
just a suggestion
from a mere shitizen
-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Suitmation XIV: The Rediscovery of Gastropia
Suitmation XIV: The Rediscovery of Gastropia
by William D. Tucker
Coming down from the One World
coming down from the higher thoughtforms
as an exercise
how would we explain this reality
to an oldline individual,
or maybe even a displaced time traveler ... ?
His Mungnificence of obliterative desire
the former God of Genocide
Gastropia
collapsed into neon plushy self
$15+applicable sales tax
the price has been frozen over a couple of aeons now
a retro thing
since the One World is post-capitalism, post-work, post-currency
citizens just buy shit
to recreate the novelty of this long extinct activity
some citizens hire on teams of expert historians to advise them in all the minutiae of currency and small talk and crushing depression and anxiety that drives people to spend impulsively and recklessly.
Individuality is mostly a recreational thing
nothing wrong with that
You can be an individual if you want
if that winds your clock
You can even live inside a phantasia of being a chosen one, a culture hero, a fireball shooting savior of the cosmos, an indestructible lumbering monster with an irrational hatred of oldline human metropolises,
You can be a lotta weird shit if you want
Sorry,
don't mean to be too judgmental.
We've never quite gone in for the individuality trip.
But we recognize the historical importance of the oldline individuals.
We needed them
to get to here,
You know?
Now,
We do have this version of Gastropia
His Mungnificence has been mostly rewritten as a charming mischief-maker.
All the genocidal desires have been excised.
The toxic memories of Original Recipe Gastropia are mostly confined to a few individual historians, and most of these have voluntarily gone into suspended animation.
They fear the very memories of Original Recipe Gastropia might corrupt and transform them into Neo-Totalitarians.
Some say this is the ultimate expression of free will.
Maybe so.
Look,
We mostly give the oldline individualists a lot of shit,
but in many cases they're the ones who've given up conscious existence
to contain a great evil.
And,
Yes,
We have been tempted to deactivate these receptacles of Original Recipe Gastropia.
As far as Plushy New Era Gastropia goes:
We couldn't kill Him,
and so the surrealistic matter of His Mungnificence's foul body has been redeemed.
In olden times,
humans sought to redeem themselves in the eyes of their God or Gods or Ultimate Whatevers,
but we hit upon an essential insight:
It's a malevolent God that needs to be redeemed, not We the Citizens.
So We rewrote God,
the unkillable,
and now we have a more tolerable Supreme Being,
where the worship is optional,
and the entertainment always flowing forth, never a re-run, though the pattern remains constant.
And We carved ourselves off plenty of hunks of that surrealistic flesh
looked deep into that confounding matter
figured out how to give conventional space-time and all those pesky natural laws the slip
immortality,
faster-than-light travel,
hyper-mutability of identity, living forms, communications within self and other-
Gastropia's power to annihilate
got detourned into Godhead-for-All
if You like that sort of thing.
We dig it.
Of course,
this is all a condensed, non-technical explanation,
but them's the basics, comrade!
So welcome to the One World.
Live forever if you want to.
It's all optional, now, unless you really need it to be mandatory.
-August-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
by William D. Tucker
Coming down from the One World
coming down from the higher thoughtforms
as an exercise
how would we explain this reality
to an oldline individual,
or maybe even a displaced time traveler ... ?
His Mungnificence of obliterative desire
the former God of Genocide
Gastropia
collapsed into neon plushy self
$15+applicable sales tax
the price has been frozen over a couple of aeons now
a retro thing
since the One World is post-capitalism, post-work, post-currency
citizens just buy shit
to recreate the novelty of this long extinct activity
some citizens hire on teams of expert historians to advise them in all the minutiae of currency and small talk and crushing depression and anxiety that drives people to spend impulsively and recklessly.
Individuality is mostly a recreational thing
nothing wrong with that
You can be an individual if you want
if that winds your clock
You can even live inside a phantasia of being a chosen one, a culture hero, a fireball shooting savior of the cosmos, an indestructible lumbering monster with an irrational hatred of oldline human metropolises,
You can be a lotta weird shit if you want
Sorry,
don't mean to be too judgmental.
We've never quite gone in for the individuality trip.
But we recognize the historical importance of the oldline individuals.
We needed them
to get to here,
You know?
Now,
We do have this version of Gastropia
His Mungnificence has been mostly rewritten as a charming mischief-maker.
All the genocidal desires have been excised.
The toxic memories of Original Recipe Gastropia are mostly confined to a few individual historians, and most of these have voluntarily gone into suspended animation.
They fear the very memories of Original Recipe Gastropia might corrupt and transform them into Neo-Totalitarians.
Some say this is the ultimate expression of free will.
Maybe so.
Look,
We mostly give the oldline individualists a lot of shit,
but in many cases they're the ones who've given up conscious existence
to contain a great evil.
And,
Yes,
We have been tempted to deactivate these receptacles of Original Recipe Gastropia.
As far as Plushy New Era Gastropia goes:
We couldn't kill Him,
and so the surrealistic matter of His Mungnificence's foul body has been redeemed.
In olden times,
humans sought to redeem themselves in the eyes of their God or Gods or Ultimate Whatevers,
but we hit upon an essential insight:
It's a malevolent God that needs to be redeemed, not We the Citizens.
So We rewrote God,
the unkillable,
and now we have a more tolerable Supreme Being,
where the worship is optional,
and the entertainment always flowing forth, never a re-run, though the pattern remains constant.
And We carved ourselves off plenty of hunks of that surrealistic flesh
looked deep into that confounding matter
figured out how to give conventional space-time and all those pesky natural laws the slip
immortality,
faster-than-light travel,
hyper-mutability of identity, living forms, communications within self and other-
Gastropia's power to annihilate
got detourned into Godhead-for-All
if You like that sort of thing.
We dig it.
Of course,
this is all a condensed, non-technical explanation,
but them's the basics, comrade!
So welcome to the One World.
Live forever if you want to.
It's all optional, now, unless you really need it to be mandatory.
-August-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Friday, September 15, 2017
STATE AND COUNTERSTATE
STATE AND COUNTERSTATE
by William D. Tucker
Tough jobs for tough, sinewy people . . . respond to this ad with extreme care . . .
Hired on as raw material of muscle and idealism
Loyalty reified into church-state, war, new era manifest destiny
Nonsense multiplies
Self-assembles into ICBM birthing mountains, peaks, spires,
Soon to be eaten through with bug tunnels
and secret civilizations
and elaborate underground citizenship induction rituals
of the aborning counterstate
Welcome to the New Nation
Not quite the same as the Old Nation
Nation with variations, ya’ll,
I mean we’re definitely hanging on to the ICBMs,
don’t won’t to mess with that shit.
If the nation changes into something weird-as-fuck
shouldn’t the people morph along with it?
Property shape mass work energy dominion
As these things shift, expand, contract
The people should also change shape.
Makes sense to me
As long as we win at all times
cost no object
All Options Available
Resistance Engaged
Disillusionment Factor 9
Shed citizenships like wicked skins post expiration dates of delusion
shed on command,
shed at a whim,
shed as desire dictates,
But be careful of hungry trackers
gobbling up the skins you’ve left behind,
or, if you’re a celebrity,
selling your old skins on the collector’s gray market
Gainin’ on ya’, comrade!
-July 2015
Copyright 2015 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Suitmation XIII: "Permanent Benson"
Suitmation XIII: "Permanent Benson"
by William D. Tucker
Excerpted from Post-Gastropia: The Perilous Road to the One World by H.H. Brill
The False Universalist and the Ascent of Rick Benson
The naked monstrosity of Gastropia-one of the more improbable totalitarians of Earth being a hideously ugly, nakedly manipulative beast of no obvious appeal half stolen from the near unreadable output of a forgotten American pulp novelist-built up armies of true believers that His Mungnificence never really had a handle on, and yet He continued to issue increasingly shrill genocidal edicts necessitating the obliteration of all life upon the planet.
Gastropia pushed a vision of universal annihilation, yet His most fervent followers came from the ranks of hardcore white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and aspiring totalitarian nationalists. Gastropia's own heavily documented racist, antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-poor statements undercut His claims of being a truly universal murderer of life, in addition to His reputation as a well-known bootlicker of a number of Hollywood movie stars and pop music recording artists who formed a strangely devoted inner circle, most of whom ended their lives when His Mungnificence was incarcerated rather than face justice.
Gastropia Himself became embroiled in countless lawsuits against legions of cosplayers who took on His image, and were even regarded as superior versions of the Rubbery Death Deity Supreme. But because Gastropia had declared war on all legitimately elected governments-including some openly resistant authoritarian regimes-only courts and legal systems Gastropia Himself had established were willing to rule in His favor. Such false victories only contributed to His Mungnificence's deepening depression and withdrawal from the Third and Fourth World Wars which he had helped to ignite.
Gastropia's failure to live up to His own promises and outsized image in the hearts and minds of His hardcore true believers, and the proliferation of poisonously charismatic Gastropia Cosplayers led to new images of Gastropia which incorporated more conventionally attractive aesthetics based upon the carefully cultivated personas of Hollywood stars and pop music performers. Among these celebrity cosplayers was Rick Benson the Self-Assembled, a pernicious neo-Nazi who was designed by a cosplay gang who called themselves the Friendship Folly.
Benson, who became known as a butcher of human language and critical thought, was designed to disrupt all forms of generative human intelligence and endeavor and to inspire a maximum amount of racial hatred, and to minimize dissent within the ranks. It is not known how many took on the mental program that implemented Rick Benson as a primary identity, but it is now believed that the Benson infection took hold within nearly one thousand agents of the Friendship Folly. Their slogan, "PERMANENT BENSON," spoke to this aspiring would-be Hitler's desire to infect humans and replace their identities with something immanently programmable and self-sacrificial to the schemes of the Friendship Folly, who thought they would unite the various factions of genocidal hatred into one force by decreasing critical thinking, dissent, compassion, love, and empathy, but this led to an inability for these Children of Gastropia to cooperate effectively, and a mercifully early conclusion to World War IV. The Allies took heavy casualties in the later phases of World War III, pre-Benson infection. But post-infection, the Allies were able to manipulate the Gastropians and Bensons into killing each other by inducing paranoia, delusions, and false imperatives into their communications networks.
Rick Benson, it must be noted, is still with us, though contained, and continues to embody the very worst aspects of the Gastropian ideology, which is no mean feat. Gastropia Himself has professed an undying hatred for Benson, and has begged the planetary authorities to exterminate the Folly's identity virus absolutely from the Earth. Both Gastropia and the Benson identity virus have proven impossible to eliminate entirely. Gastropia is composed of surrealistic matter that has been contained, but seemingly cannot be killed or destroyed by currently known means. Benson has proven impossible to sanitize from the body politic.
Periodic flare-ups of the Gastropian and Bensonian ideologies have punctuated the history of the One World, but out-and-out aggression has been avoided. It would seem that these toxic belief systems will be with us for some time to come, though they are presently contained within virtual phantasia environments that allow for the working out of personal mythologies and pathologies, as per the Neo-Otaku theories of Pertler, Takahashi, and Regis. The atrocities of human history and the hateful beliefs that fueled them are the subject of dramatization, gamification, and academic analysis in the One World, though some see them as pathogens which ought to be wiped from human and other sapient memories. The debate has raged for some time over whether it is more dangerous to forget or to remember the very worst possibilities within our history, our hearts, our minds.
I do not aim to settle the debate, but I find it instructive that Gastropia, Benson, and the Friendship Folly all sought to distort history, memory, cognition, and individual identity itself to achieve their genocidal visions. This tells me that forgetting would be no solution, but rather a form of self-inflicted brain damage.
-August-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
by William D. Tucker
Excerpted from Post-Gastropia: The Perilous Road to the One World by H.H. Brill
The False Universalist and the Ascent of Rick Benson
The naked monstrosity of Gastropia-one of the more improbable totalitarians of Earth being a hideously ugly, nakedly manipulative beast of no obvious appeal half stolen from the near unreadable output of a forgotten American pulp novelist-built up armies of true believers that His Mungnificence never really had a handle on, and yet He continued to issue increasingly shrill genocidal edicts necessitating the obliteration of all life upon the planet.
Gastropia pushed a vision of universal annihilation, yet His most fervent followers came from the ranks of hardcore white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and aspiring totalitarian nationalists. Gastropia's own heavily documented racist, antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-poor statements undercut His claims of being a truly universal murderer of life, in addition to His reputation as a well-known bootlicker of a number of Hollywood movie stars and pop music recording artists who formed a strangely devoted inner circle, most of whom ended their lives when His Mungnificence was incarcerated rather than face justice.
Gastropia Himself became embroiled in countless lawsuits against legions of cosplayers who took on His image, and were even regarded as superior versions of the Rubbery Death Deity Supreme. But because Gastropia had declared war on all legitimately elected governments-including some openly resistant authoritarian regimes-only courts and legal systems Gastropia Himself had established were willing to rule in His favor. Such false victories only contributed to His Mungnificence's deepening depression and withdrawal from the Third and Fourth World Wars which he had helped to ignite.
Gastropia's failure to live up to His own promises and outsized image in the hearts and minds of His hardcore true believers, and the proliferation of poisonously charismatic Gastropia Cosplayers led to new images of Gastropia which incorporated more conventionally attractive aesthetics based upon the carefully cultivated personas of Hollywood stars and pop music performers. Among these celebrity cosplayers was Rick Benson the Self-Assembled, a pernicious neo-Nazi who was designed by a cosplay gang who called themselves the Friendship Folly.
Benson, who became known as a butcher of human language and critical thought, was designed to disrupt all forms of generative human intelligence and endeavor and to inspire a maximum amount of racial hatred, and to minimize dissent within the ranks. It is not known how many took on the mental program that implemented Rick Benson as a primary identity, but it is now believed that the Benson infection took hold within nearly one thousand agents of the Friendship Folly. Their slogan, "PERMANENT BENSON," spoke to this aspiring would-be Hitler's desire to infect humans and replace their identities with something immanently programmable and self-sacrificial to the schemes of the Friendship Folly, who thought they would unite the various factions of genocidal hatred into one force by decreasing critical thinking, dissent, compassion, love, and empathy, but this led to an inability for these Children of Gastropia to cooperate effectively, and a mercifully early conclusion to World War IV. The Allies took heavy casualties in the later phases of World War III, pre-Benson infection. But post-infection, the Allies were able to manipulate the Gastropians and Bensons into killing each other by inducing paranoia, delusions, and false imperatives into their communications networks.
Rick Benson, it must be noted, is still with us, though contained, and continues to embody the very worst aspects of the Gastropian ideology, which is no mean feat. Gastropia Himself has professed an undying hatred for Benson, and has begged the planetary authorities to exterminate the Folly's identity virus absolutely from the Earth. Both Gastropia and the Benson identity virus have proven impossible to eliminate entirely. Gastropia is composed of surrealistic matter that has been contained, but seemingly cannot be killed or destroyed by currently known means. Benson has proven impossible to sanitize from the body politic.
Periodic flare-ups of the Gastropian and Bensonian ideologies have punctuated the history of the One World, but out-and-out aggression has been avoided. It would seem that these toxic belief systems will be with us for some time to come, though they are presently contained within virtual phantasia environments that allow for the working out of personal mythologies and pathologies, as per the Neo-Otaku theories of Pertler, Takahashi, and Regis. The atrocities of human history and the hateful beliefs that fueled them are the subject of dramatization, gamification, and academic analysis in the One World, though some see them as pathogens which ought to be wiped from human and other sapient memories. The debate has raged for some time over whether it is more dangerous to forget or to remember the very worst possibilities within our history, our hearts, our minds.
I do not aim to settle the debate, but I find it instructive that Gastropia, Benson, and the Friendship Folly all sought to distort history, memory, cognition, and individual identity itself to achieve their genocidal visions. This tells me that forgetting would be no solution, but rather a form of self-inflicted brain damage.
-August-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Free Agent Gaiden SD Starring WDT2099
Free Agent Gaiden SD Starring WDT2099
by William D. Tucker
I'm happy that artificial intelligence is coming up in the world. Personally, I'm relieved to offload my command and control thought processes onto better qualified minds. Frankly, I should've been fired years ago. From existence. From any position, really, where my presence, actions, body odor could impact my fellow human beings in any way possible good, bad, ugly-just cut out my brain, toss it in the bio-scrap pile, and install a positronic remote controller unit slaved to the centralized master system and that would work out perfectly.
I don't think anyone would much notice.
They would notice little things, perhaps.
But, overall, no one would actually discern a major difference between old, shit-for-brains me, and new-robo-meat-pawn me.
They would see me,
think,
There's William. Going about his daily routine of ingesting food and water, and then excreting shit and piss. Taking up space that other more worthy people could take up even better. Not as much vomiting as in the good old days of all night games of Uno and Mille Bournes-remember how William ran that floating Mille Bournes game for eight years? How'd that guy stay the Christ out of prison? Not to mention, he must've wrestled the monkey off his back, given up all the crank and paint thinner and mango beverage powder infused blow mountains. You remember those hella coke-boogers William used to harvest to make his own custom Pokemon with? Remember Cokeachu? That little snotty, bloody bugger was hyper as fuck-curb stomped the official Pokemon humps match after match. Lotta fun 'til Nintendo took him to court, squeezed him for every last penny, and when all the money was gone, wrung 'em out for soul particles. The joke was on Nintendo, though, 'cause William had already sold his soul to Kleenex to get those custom, scientific tissues in bulk to help him harvest the coke boogers intact. William's really improved his diet, too, I'll bet. Must've traded licking frogs and swallowing handfuls of drywall nails for broccoli and apples and bananas and shit like that. Ah, the wild days of youth. He's still kinda hairy, though. Maybe a little more than before. I try not to associate with hairy fuckers. But, he's also kinda robotic, now, which is dull, but efficient. Notice his increased economy of motions, words, and, I assume, thoughts. I like that. Too much quirkiness, individuality, and human warmth in this world. Creates hurricanes and in-depth non-fiction filmmaking that pushes the boundaries of the art form. Can't have that. We would all be better off with our emotions dialed down-shit, we'd all be better off if we were just robots. Get shit done. Zero out all the chaotic emotions and random impulses. Everything on track, on schedule, all variations too brief to even perceive by normal means. That could really work out for my ass. Goddamn, I think I'm starting to admire this guy!
See.
That's how it begins.
Leading by example.
Powerful shit.
-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
by William D. Tucker
I'm happy that artificial intelligence is coming up in the world. Personally, I'm relieved to offload my command and control thought processes onto better qualified minds. Frankly, I should've been fired years ago. From existence. From any position, really, where my presence, actions, body odor could impact my fellow human beings in any way possible good, bad, ugly-just cut out my brain, toss it in the bio-scrap pile, and install a positronic remote controller unit slaved to the centralized master system and that would work out perfectly.
I don't think anyone would much notice.
They would notice little things, perhaps.
But, overall, no one would actually discern a major difference between old, shit-for-brains me, and new-robo-meat-pawn me.
They would see me,
think,
There's William. Going about his daily routine of ingesting food and water, and then excreting shit and piss. Taking up space that other more worthy people could take up even better. Not as much vomiting as in the good old days of all night games of Uno and Mille Bournes-remember how William ran that floating Mille Bournes game for eight years? How'd that guy stay the Christ out of prison? Not to mention, he must've wrestled the monkey off his back, given up all the crank and paint thinner and mango beverage powder infused blow mountains. You remember those hella coke-boogers William used to harvest to make his own custom Pokemon with? Remember Cokeachu? That little snotty, bloody bugger was hyper as fuck-curb stomped the official Pokemon humps match after match. Lotta fun 'til Nintendo took him to court, squeezed him for every last penny, and when all the money was gone, wrung 'em out for soul particles. The joke was on Nintendo, though, 'cause William had already sold his soul to Kleenex to get those custom, scientific tissues in bulk to help him harvest the coke boogers intact. William's really improved his diet, too, I'll bet. Must've traded licking frogs and swallowing handfuls of drywall nails for broccoli and apples and bananas and shit like that. Ah, the wild days of youth. He's still kinda hairy, though. Maybe a little more than before. I try not to associate with hairy fuckers. But, he's also kinda robotic, now, which is dull, but efficient. Notice his increased economy of motions, words, and, I assume, thoughts. I like that. Too much quirkiness, individuality, and human warmth in this world. Creates hurricanes and in-depth non-fiction filmmaking that pushes the boundaries of the art form. Can't have that. We would all be better off with our emotions dialed down-shit, we'd all be better off if we were just robots. Get shit done. Zero out all the chaotic emotions and random impulses. Everything on track, on schedule, all variations too brief to even perceive by normal means. That could really work out for my ass. Goddamn, I think I'm starting to admire this guy!
See.
That's how it begins.
Leading by example.
Powerful shit.
-September 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Suitmation XII: The Devil's Superstructure 3: Housing Crisis 2: Benson's On It, Friendship!
Suitmation XII: The Devil's Superstructure 3: Housing Crisis 2: Benson's On It, Friendship!
by William D. Tucker
...frowny face Gastropia...
THIS EPISODE UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR REALITY REGIME.
...frowny face Gastropia obscured by a permanent benson...
IF YOU BY CHANCE HAVE VIEWED THE UNAUTHORIZED EPISODE, PLEASE REPORT TO YOUR LOCAL PASTOR-SUPERVISOR OR SHERIFF FOR SANITATION PROTOCOL.
...permanent...
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR LAWFUL COOPERATION!
...Benson...
FRIENDSHIP!
-August 20XX
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
by William D. Tucker
...frowny face Gastropia...
THIS EPISODE UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR REALITY REGIME.
...frowny face Gastropia obscured by a permanent benson...
IF YOU BY CHANCE HAVE VIEWED THE UNAUTHORIZED EPISODE, PLEASE REPORT TO YOUR LOCAL PASTOR-SUPERVISOR OR SHERIFF FOR SANITATION PROTOCOL.
...permanent...
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR LAWFUL COOPERATION!
...Benson...
FRIENDSHIP!
-August 20XX
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Friday, September 1, 2017
Zero Relaxation Era
Zero Relaxation Era
by William D. Tucker
This is the convoluted chapter
That grows in the thinking
‘Til it consumes the whole book
Permeates the entire 4200 volume history of folly
‘Til it goes full-on Nuclear Borges
Viral syllables laterally drift off the page
Fucking up the primal matter of our Big Bang Universe
We are all become subjects and objects
Of just one meager paragraph
Not the transcendence we were hustling for
Even if it’s the one we probably secretly yearned for
placeholder chunk of text
better than knowing your place
you know no other place
free of all desire, all ambition, all dignity
And hey.
It’s a hell of a vantage.
Perilous illusion of Free Will demolished
Now we see the cruel hierarchy of Criminal Fate
Alias: Cause and Effect.
One letter after another
Building up to an orderly plot of chapters
Climaxing in a thoroughly traditional fashion
A wedding;
A slow motion shootout shot from multiple camera angles;
The first person narrator sits down to write the book of her life;
Metamorphic steel titans trash each other and downtown Los Angeles;
Godzilla flattens Tokyo, twists off MechaGodzilla’s head, swims off to Monster Island;
Edward Norton realizes that he’s also Brad Pitt;
The alien gets blasted out of the airlock;
Dracula catches a fatal dose of sun;
James Joyce loops back on himself chasing his own Irish Wake;
Odysseus proves he’s smarter and craftier than everyone else
and we feign suprise with each turn of the tale
even though we already knew he was a huge goldbricker during the Trojan War;
Nurse Ratchet pulls off her face to reveal her inner Dr. Mengele;
Shakespeare destroys all order and sense and then,
taking a cue from that piece of hack work Book of Job,
magically restores Status Quo
marches on a new cast of authoritarians and a new bogus order-
It goes on like that.
Rigorous. Efficient. Yet neverending.
The ultimate decadence
That somehow cuts you no slack
No time for new ideas and alternate endings
Forms must be fitted, traditions respected.
Even the shit that once was provocative
A generation or two ago
Has been thoroughly absorbed, ritualized, streamlined,
And what are we all complaining about?
Do you invent new colors for each new painting?
Complain if you want,
I’m just glad I finally made it into print.
-July 2015
Copyright 2015 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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