Old Folks: The Spent Effluent Collection (cont'd)

A baby will desensitize you
to the smell and feel of shit.
Winos sometimes lose control
of their bowels, or either
mental patients. People with
Alzheimer's Disease. Never sick
a day in my life...then, pow--
senile psychosis. Swift goes on about fecal matter, and defecation.
All satirists are conservative. Not to say anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive.

There used to be a joke
about a guy working a crossword puzzle,
and he asks his friend, "Four-letter word,
ending in i. t,. found in the bottom of a birdcage."
His friend says, "Grit." "Oh, yea," he says. "Loan me
your eraser, will you?" Shit, grit, and Mother Wit.
I refer you to the little magazine Grit No. 1,
put out by Raindog, Lummox Journal,
in honor of a poem I sent him.

I knew a man one time
who stuck his index finger in his ear,
as he was talking to me, then stuck his finger
in his mouth, to see how it tasted. I could not believe
such unsocialized behavior. He was on permanent with
the National Park Service. I was O. P. S. Other Personal
Services. Cities Service used to say that, "Service is
our middle name." Actually, it was their surname.
They didn't care much about service, either.
They talked a good fuck. Like some writers
I could name.

You can't make a living
writing poetry or serious fiction.
Thus if you don't have
an independent income you must
work. What kind of day job
is honorable? There's teaching,
writing advertising copy, writing journalism,
and technical writing. In reverse order
of straightforwardness.

One time Maxwell Perkins
wrote some words he meant
to talk to Ernest Hemingway about
on his desk calendar, stepped out of his office,
his secretary came in, looked down, and saw,

Things To Do Today
shit piss fuck

I'm writing poems in a yellow legal pad,
and eating lunch. The waitress approaches,
and asks me what I'm doing. I close the pad,
and say, "Writing poems." She looks at the
top sheet. It says,

ear wax
toe jam
smegma

Nice Christian talk, the day before payday.

A reader is curious about
the heading redacted
in the online version of
my book. He wonders what
he's missing. That's the idea.
To shame New York into publishing me.
By popular demand. Myself, I'd be
more inconvenienced by having to read
the goddamned thing on a computer screen.
I'll send him a pamphlet. The Art Brew
Spent Effluent Collection, written in
an afternoon.

A guy I work with
has to keep his shot record
up to date. He travels to
Third World countries to demonstrate
a battery-powered frogman-delivery-vehicle
we make, and swims in coastal waters full of
untreated human waste. "What happens to
the local frogmen?" I asked. "The Bumfuck, Egypt
Special Forces and Malay Navy Commandos?"
"They have immunities," he said. "They're used to it."
I told him he ought to write his memoirs.
He asked me what to call them. He suggested
Divers Do It Deeper. I said, "Swimming in Sewers."

It's the poet's job
to plumb the depths,
not dance around the surface
like a fairy, light in the ass,
in The Human Stain, Anthony Hopkins
gets in trouble for calling a pair of students
spooks, for their recurring absence, not knowing
they were African-Americans, and would be offended.
I hope I didn't offend any homosexuals.
All I meant was elfin spirit.
Water sprite. Don't get dirty.
Their shit don't stink.

I don't even know
what you'd call snot,
except maybe boogers.
Mucous. Isn't that
a euphemism? Zipf's Law
says the shorter a word,
the more frequent its use.
By implication, the more ancient.
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt.
Defecate, micturate, fornicate, vagina.
I rest my case. Orwell said he tried to write
honestly and openly, about subjects that matter,
in plain speech. If the vulgate puts people off,
don't use it. If it doesn't, do. And sometimes
mix them up. To keep the reader on her p's and q's.