December 02, 2004
Spam Wacks Poetics
Today, I received what I can only describe as a BRILLIANT POEM. Brilliant in the same way e.e. cummings was brilliant in that poem about the balloon man who had goat feet, or Edgar Allan Poe was brilliant when he told us what that bird was saying, or Johnny Depp in that movie where he acted like that guy from the Rolling Stones (also he was brilliant when he had scissors instead of hands).
I don't know the poem's genesis. I can't even say I really know what the poem means. But as I read it, it makes me cry inside, then laugh, then scratch my head in wonder, then cry a little more, laugh again, look out at the horizon in awe, snap my head back to the left like someone might have just snuck up on me, chuckle to myself, furrow my brow in mock anger, wish I was eating meat, cry on the outside, hum a recognizable tune, actually eat meat, cry again, then go out and check the mail.
The poem was sent to me in an e-mail from someone named Lori Ellis, yet the e-mail address was listed as deven.melville2000@virtual-mail.com. I don't know anyone named Lori Ellis or Deven Melville. So why would they be sending a BRILLIANT POEM to me?
Then I saw who the e-mail was addressed to:
Marigold Clayton [antny@mindspring.com]
Marigold Clayton? I had to leave my computer, eat most of an ice cream cone, and think really hard about this. Who is Marigold Clayton? Had I, Anthony King, ever been given the nickname of Marigold Clayton?
No.
Kwamee Wetpants? Yes. Hank McFaggyFag? Of course. Shirley Smellsofpee? For sure. Ace? No, although I really wanted people to call me that. But I had never been called Marigold Clayton.
So I sat in my bathtub with no water in it for a few hours and I figured it out. This is poetry! The author is trying to say that names are superficial. They're meaningless labels thrust upon us by people who don't really know us. Our parents name us before we're even born! How can our given names ever reflect our true personalities? I'm no more Marigold Clayton than I am Anthony King.
See, I told you. BRILLIANT.
I continued on! The title of the e-mail (and presumably the poem itself) was "last notice." Very provocative. Could this poem be about death? About looking back at our superficial and meaningless lives at the very moment of our passing?
The beginning of the poem was almost as perplexing as the names and title. It was a listing of prices for various drugs:
VIAGRA - $0.95
CIALIS - $1.95
AMBIEN - $1.29
SOMA - $1.18
But as I read the list and pondered whether or not Ambien for $1.29 was just too good a deal to pass up, it hit me. What a journey this list describes! The journey of life? I think so. From erectile dysfunction medication to more erectile dysfunction medication, to sleeping pills, and finally to muscle relaxers.
Life is short. We fuck and fuck, then sleep and die.
What a BRILLIANT first stanza to this BRILLIANT POEM. Having cast aside the superficialities of this world through the use of multiple authorial pseudonyms, the title informs us that the words we are about to read serve as a "last notice," a final warning about this life. Then the author encapsulates the baseness of life's journey succinctly and provocatively in, of all things, a list of cheap drugs meant to prevent our mortal coil from making a true connection with the whimsy and fortitude of nature.
And now, on the edge of death, incredibly cheap dosages of Soma coursing through his/her veins, our author uses the final stanza of the poem to share his/her actual final thoughts, the titular "last notice."
tougher remuneration lightnings
immovable forked ajar
pare petri shinbone factorizations enclosing
lisped suffixed multibyte vagina
edible klaxon enquires hovered
appropriateness magnolia Coventry sickroom disastrous
behaved Noah spelled dipper autobiographies
Tananarive bending Lutheranize examines
reversal predictably bastes teared
That last line makes me absolutely shudder. There can be no reversal of death. Yet its predictability does not protect us from the overwhelming sadness death brings as we are metaphorically "basted with tears." So true.
Thank you Lori Ellis or Deven Melville or whomever you are who sent me this poem. You've made me think. You've made me reconsider. You've made me decide that maybe its time to actually use a toilet for the first time in my life.
And because I dissected the poem so much in the preceding paragraphs, I want to list the poem in its uninterrupted BRILLIANT entirety:
--------------------------------
last notice
by Lori Ellis or Deven Melville
for Marigold Clayton or YOU
VIAGRA - $0.95
CIALIS - $1.95
AMBIEN - $1.29
SOMA - $1.18
tougher remuneration lightnings
immovable forked ajar
pare petri shinbone factorizations enclosing
lisped suffixed multibyte vagina
edible klaxon enquires hovered
appropriateness magnolia Coventry sickroom disastrous
behaved Noah spelled dipper autobiographies
Tananarive bending Lutheranize examines
reversal predictably bastes teared
