/lit/ - Literature

the poem itself is the first lie. poetry as an institution - the illusion that because it is important to me, it ought be important to you - that’s the big collective one. and hell, hats off to the godfathers. i’m sure glad i wasn’t the ape-man who had to try and sell it. think of him, out there, frail and a little loony-headed, making cave drawings or gibberish pairings of rudimentary language, and trying to convince those single minded red blooded still more animal than man creatures not to bash his head in but actually pay him money for the bullshit. it’s insane. it’s a laugh. the audacity! the strength it must have taken to stand up tall and own his weakness before these brutes. how did he ever pull it off? he didn’t. not directly. he did it via union. through all the usual channels. through the other weak among him sure, the other poets where they might have been certainly, but most of all through the women. the ones who took pity on him. the ones whose sensitivities were more in line with him. the ones who stayed at home all day and watched the labors of the pointless work he did. the ones he fucked while the alpha was out on the hunt. the ones who used him the fag-ape with a specialty as a tool against their men, as a producer of jealousy a means of motivation. you know so-and-so’s been doing quite well for himself drawing on cave-walls and that’s nothing alpha ape can do. he hates the painter all the more. but cannot bash his head in for the community at large has already accepted him. of course there were casualties. had to be a few generations of amature artists forced to create only in private, only in the wee small moments in between the hunts, and moreover, who got their heads bashed in. a moment of silence then, for those first among us. pioneers, pussy snatchers, cons.