Lynn Behrendt
I am a never-ending asshole.
A casual outsider lacking strength.
I'm pale, as opposed to bronze;
and I require great amounts of oxygen to survive
though I live in a narrow little room.
I am the asshole in the corner of your eye.
In the market, the woman tearing back
the husks on every ear of corn—
that's not me—but it might as well be,
because I am as much of an asshole as that.
Words escape like steam through the valve of my mouth
and I glide through dreams quite conveniently ignoring
what they could possibly mean
because I am such an immediate creature
and prefer fixed measures to moral fables.
A copper-rust asshole with a fake English accent.
I am propelled by divine assholedom
and hope for world peace
just like any other stupid asshole.
Fricative and plosive I emit
ideas, wishes, and try to snag you
here and in other places, possibly
because I am an asexual feather
falling from a tree, a platonic
cow in a pasture full of rocks and stones.
It's almost time for me to retire to the asshole barn
wherein I chew my cud and type missives
to those who won't ever hear or care to hear
because they're all assholes too.
I love you. I'm an asshole.
I believe you. I'm an asshole.
I want to listen to you and put my head on your chest
and hear you breathe and talk. I
am an asshole. It is frightening just how much
of an asshole I can be.
It frightens me, anyway.
I didn't exactly choose this walk-on
nonspeaking part I mean I didn't vie
for a minor role in a one act off-Broadway
pile of theatrical slop. But here I am.
An asshole offstage and on. A
glass-bead wearing, sometimes confessional
so overly psychological that I might as well
be standing at a chalkboard giving a lecture
through my nose I am such an asshole.
Assholes stub their toes on others.
They get hurt. They tend even to whine.
I am a whiny asshole my mind
is like a hangnail and I never ever shut up.
I yammer and you cringe and I
am like a tongue on a loose tooth when it comes to you
when it comes to thinking about you
I probe and I pry and I go over and over
because that's what tongue-like assholes do.
Stop picking, leave it alone, let it heal, they say.
Assholes have a hard time with that.
They don't listen. They are so so
so much themselves that as assholes
they can't get out of their own assholish way
and I am like that, even the writing, even
this acrid spineless trompe l'oeil
(a word assholes love) terra cotta (ditto)
vat of verbage is shining
with the assholiness of me.
I am such an asshole, that I don't even know
if you deserve to know me, much less
listen to me go on and on like a three-toed
sloth on steroids stuck in a banana tree
without a machete.
When it comes to matters of the heart
I am a bigger asshole than even Kent Johnson
or Bill Knott. Those assholes have nothing on me.
I'm like a giant penis crossing a street
a giant erect penis crossing a busy street
and every door I go in is someone's asshole
whether it's the New York Public Library
or the Metropolitan Museum of Art
I am the asshole giant penis walking through the door
thinking about art, about books
but who am I kidding, assholes
can't have art, not really, can't
get books, not hardly, because
having lived for a year in a cat piss-smelling
trailer in Vermont when I was 18
I know the difference between
having and wanting. Between
an asshole and a wannabe. I
am the real thing. A real asshole.
It's just that I have a fear of sharp objects and
I'm made to wear this gender badge
though I can move like a cat in a dream
the way they disappear into their shimmering
surroundings. In general assholes
don't stand out in a crowd, though
you might think that they would.
At least my brand of asshole doesn't
because I am a white mayonnaise
suburban petrified semi-educated (the
worst kind) cash-poor, overly-giving
you guessed it: asshole.
I am a mixed-up asshole
and I want to put my hands in your pants.
I want to reach in and drag out your dick
and I want to make it hard and then
like the asshole I am for wanting this
and especially for saying it
I want to steer it toward me
and I want you, who run the risk
of becoming an asshole just by association,
I want you to shove your dick in me.
Fuck me. I'm an asshole.
Or have I said that before.
Well, assholes tend to repeat themselves.
I have an obsession with flowers and
luminous things and bees and fossilized skeletons
and you I'm an asshole I
don't believe in anything anymore
don't even know if cannibalism is a bad thing
under the right circumstances
I ascribe human traits to inanimate objects
and I talk to the weather, to the kind of day
it is or isn't because I am an asshole
and am obsessed with the far future
and love and finding limits and breaking them,
it's true, I want to break things
because I am an asshole
I want to break apart the idea you have
of who you could or couldn't love
because I think you could love me
even though I am such an asshole
I think you could I love you
fuck me I love you I'm an asshole
fuck me I love you. Sure, & Aloha: I don't deny
being jingled. I am an asshole after all.
I am a tailless little third-base biscuit
of an asshole, a Byzantine aberrational
overly wrought and unformed
kind of asshole, not a Christian,
though, but I'm as bad as those assholes
because I want to believe, I try to believe,
I wish I could believe, as much as those assholes.
I just can't concede to authority, that's all.
Because I'm an asshole.
I'm an itty bitty epigram
of an asshole, a compressed convalescent
adjunct juxtaposition of an asshole
I'm a suffix, a spit-wad, a military jism schism
of an asshole to the nth degree.
That's what I am. I suppose
I've always had this assholeishness
in me but since I've known you
the assholeity of my being has become
much more pronounced. A perfect
example is how I can't shut up and
how I repeat myself and how I
try, here, even here, to figure things
when anyone who is not an asshole knows
there is no way to really understand anything
and anyone who thinks he or she can unpuzzle
or untangle or even open the window a little
to let some light in is clearly cracked
and obviously a huge and complete asshole.
I hear Sharon Mesmer. I hear Juliana Spahr.
I hear both of those assholes in here and
some others as well because I am an unoriginal
asshole and I freely admit it.
You may think I'm being cheeky
but I really am an asshole. And
I really do think I am. And
I don't know what to do about it
because I'm like a fevered red-faced 3 year old
sometimes when it comes to how I feel
about you and I don't know what
to do about it I don't know what
to do about it I don't
know what to do about it
which makes me an asshole.
Assholes get scared often
and you may think they talk a lot
but words stick to the roofs of their mouths
like peanut butter, to which they are frequently allergic
so swell up with hives and can't breathe
and that's the kind of asshole I am
sometimes when it comes to you
and how I love you. Don't you know
what an asshole it makes me
to say that at all, and then especially
to say it so often? I'm telling you,
it makes me a real asshole. Because
you don't say it back and I
don't even care because
that's how much of an asshole I am.
I can't shut up and I won't
and maybe that makes me
even more of an asshole but
like most assholes I don't care.
I love you fuck me I'm an asshole.
Hail Juliana. Not even a very loud
asshole am I sort of a
petit larceny kind of standing outside
the drugstore asking for change
kind of asshole, though actually
anyone doing that is much much less
of an asshole than I am I
lacerate and regurgitate and attempt to say
things and only an asshole
would do that.
I don't need to hit myself.
I'm not that kind of an asshole.
Do you think I'm hitting myself?
I'm not hitting myself.
I'm talking. I'm a talking asshole
and I won't stop. Maybe you won't
want to listen to me at some point
but I won't ever stop talking, so there,
because that's the kind of asshole I am
and p.s. fuck you I love you I'm an asshole
I love you fuck me I'm an asshole
I love you.
.
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14 comments:
This is one of the strongest poems I've read in years.
And I read a heap of poems.
I hope this made it into Best American Poetry.
If she's American, that is?
Because we exclude. It's what we do.
Spiritually impecabble in its just peculation of lies.
Poetically unimpeachable.
Props to the maker.
This poem "has legs" as the horrible types say.
I expect to see it moving about quite a bit!
Excellent!!!
Thanks William & Angela. That's nice to hear.
--Lynn
Lynn!
I love this poem!
I want it tattooed somewhere!
wawaweewa!
I have hereby replaced the Vice President of the United States with this poem. (In my mind.)
*
When poets start to break under the torrent of hatred society pours upon them; when they begin to internalize that hatred and to self-generate it in the neurotic hope of propitiating its cruelties, when they snatch the whip from Master and lash themselves;
when they understand how loathed and despised poetry is by all the powers of this world; when they realize how loathed and despised they are by all the authorities of this world; and when, under the endless onslaught of contempt and scorn and persecution which they as poets are condemned to suffer, at last they too loathe and despise themselves,
that is the point they turn on each other and kill each other.
*
All societies exist for one purpose: to murder poets.
Everything in the world exists in order to end up on the point of a knife entering the poet's throat.
**
No, Bill, you are wrong, you old asshole.
I do not despise you; and certainly don't have murderous feelings toward any poet that I've ever known or read. (Not saying that you were saying that you thought I did despise you---how could I, not knowing you at all). But to be very clear --- I don't even dislike you, Bill. I like you, you stupid asshole; and I feel bad that you seem to be in so much pain so much of the time.
Things may be as desperate as you say in parts of the world, but not here. We have it so easy in so many ways. At the same time, I do agree with some of what you said. I just don't think it's as desperate as you seem to feel that it is. And honestly, I'm sorry that you feel things are as desperately horrible as you seem to.
Take care, Bill.
I think there is some truth in what Bill Knott says. Society does murder poets, more often figuratively, with mandatory, soul-crushing labor other than writing that circumscribes writing poetry, not providing poets with a means of support so that they can write, and literally, by imprisoning poets (not as often in the US, but certainly elsewhere where they are imprisoned and even put to death). And things here are as desperate as they are in other parts of the world: US citizens just haven't woken up and smelled the coffee.
Who, but the hardiest of us can come home after a day of soul- and poetry-crushing labor to sit down and write, considering the time and intense concentration it takes to write poetry? That is "murder" to me.
This is the real deal! Bravo, Lynn Behrendt!
And Linh for posting it, letting it all hang out, as it were. Good Show!
Bill Knott wrote:
"All societies exist for one purpose: to murder poets.
Everything in the world exists in order to end up on the point of a knife entering the poet's throat."
Gives certain poets a bit of a Jesus-complex, this kind of notion. Personally, I think that so laughable and arrogant and deluded and narcissistic, Bill.
Also, WHO is "the poet?" Who decides who "the poet" is? You? Go ahead! If you need that kind of grandiosity.
Personally, I'd prefer to be a human first, a poet, additionally.
Actually, I'd prefer to be "an Animal" first, a living organism. My species', our species', elevation of humans' groovinest is killing all the rest of life on the planet. Don't ya think? Following from that logic, elevating "the poet" to divine or martyr status, as if "the poet" IS the carrier of the life force, well, it just seems so frigging dorky, don't ya think?
Especially, if it's an attempt to list/make yourself one of these wonderfully courageous deities by speaking up for "the poet." Get over yourself, Friend. The gig's up. Poetry IS indeed wonderful and you, me, and all of us ARE indeed brave and passionate and intelligent and honorable, but all this deification of "the Poet" that
runs throughout every freaking forum since the EPC began in the mid-90's, it's tragically and pathetically egotistical in the harshest and least attractive sense of the word.
This is the best piece I've read in quite a while. I thank Rusty Barnes for steering me here. I will have to delve more deeply into your work
Yes --- I agree -- and thank you, Rusty. It's a great poem and an even better ride, but... y'know... maybe just a leeeeeeeetle teeeeeeeny editing before we include it in the Best Poems Ever?
Brava Lynn!!
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