National Poetry Month Day 5: Survey - Are You a Narcissist (In the Style of Charles Bukowski)?

You're sweating on highway 10
Someone honks their horn,
do you think they are honking at you?
A bold assumption, there are many people on the road
They like to imagine they're being honked at
You think you should be so special?

You're sweating on highway 10
Someone honks their horn,
Do you assume it is not you?
Like you're the chosen only one incapable of error?
Who would dare honk their horn at perfection?

Strung out in a motel near Sunset Blvd
A car alarm is going off
Are you immediately worried that it is your car?
Really?
Of all the cars on the street?

Poking your wrist in Echo Park
Even the sun dreams of being a star
When a car alarm starts going off,
do you automatically assume it is not yours?
Of course, because stars don't park their own cars
And you're such a fucking star

How many times per day do you look in the mirror?
How long did it take you to answer that?

Do you enjoy giving someone a good orgasm?
It's a good orgasm until someone needs to take credit for it
Then it becomes the chalky fuckpaste of a sweaty narcissistic hog
Such as you might be

When you read books, and you see parts of yourself in the protagonist
When you read books, and you see parts of yourself in any of the characters
You do realize the author wasn't writing the book about you, right?

Do you bore your friends with your problems?
Do you hide your problems from your friends,
Because you don't want to seem imperfect?

Why do you let things bother you, anyway
There are bigger problems in the world
People are dying hungry and riddled with bullets
While world leaders shit cum out their mouths
And we live in a pile of their personal debris

Do you talk about problems in the world?
Why?
Nobody wants you to bring them down with your vain attempt to feel connected to the human condition

Here's what you do:
Find the least attractive person in the room.
Try harder, use that American imagination
Now think about why they're not attractive to you
Probably because of all the shallow magazines you read
They feed your narcissistic sense of superiority
Now, back to this ugly person: Would you have sex with them?
Why not?
Do you think you're better than they are?
We are all equal, after all.
Sex is the only joy in this world
It should be shared with everyone.
Why are you withholding joy from the world?
Why are you withholding joy from this person?
Go have sex with them!
Right now!
Hurry!
If you don't have sex with them, then you are a narcissist.
If they are not interested, show them this quiz.

National Poetry Month Day 4: Necrotic Icon

Who is he?

Mustachioed

Broad faced and fond of baseball

Asks every question

Big smoke, front teeth

Your car upon carved blocks and memory loss

Ropey pantsuits on the shaved chocolate floor boss

I see you're concerned now:

If there aren't vicars

There can be vicar's daughters how?

But he's not me

I am the cinnamon cartoon wolf of nasal cave fame

Razor claws raised, always just out of frame

My nose fights for roses who fight for the sun

My face fights to feel like it's the only one

My nose bulbous and guido, red frying fat

A lower case r as a bridge between that

Which is possible and Xanax and animals

Islands, channels, crackling insides

What did I do?

I stayed home and thought of tides

National Poetry Month Day 3 - If Emily Dickinson Was in the Beach Boys

So I was going to do "Emily Dickinson's Twitter", but it failed the google test spectacularly (there are probably over a dozen active Emily Dickinson twitter accounts).  Instead, let's ponder what it might have been like if Emily Dickinson was a contributing songwriter* for the Beach Boys:

*Lyrics only. If she wrote the music, every song would sound like the Gilligan's Island theme**.

**Yes, you can read every Emily Dickinson poem like the theme to Gilligan's Island. I give you permission. Sometimes, that's all you need.

"Surfin' Safari"

Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learning how
Death doesn't stop for me
(Death doesn't stop)

Early in the morning we'll be startin' out

Some honeys will be comin' along
Success is counted sweetest

By those who don't succeed

So if you're coming get ready to go

Come on baby wait and see

(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Dare you see a soul at the white heat
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Come along girl wait and see
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
We're gonna die before our virginity

You can go surfin' now
Think I'll just sit this one out
Gonna hang out in my room
(Gonna hang out in my)

Huntington and Malibu

Our death is near
On our headstones the moss will grow
We're goin' on safari to the islands this year
We'll safari 'till we cease to know

"Fun Fun Fun"

Well she got her daddy's car
She passed a docile row of birds on a stand now
Seems she forgot all about mortality
Like she told her old man now
Full of a liquor never brewed
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

And she'll have fun, fun, fun
When her soul leaves like a bird from a cage
(Fun, fun, fun when her soul leaves like a bird from a cage)



"Little Deuce Coupe"

Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?
Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?

Well I'm not bragging babe, but the sun touched the day
My quiv'ring flames conditions, a hot ore did sate
So lest your village boast a blacksmith, don't even try
Cause between the two of you, I'd rather listen to the fly
She's my little deuce Coupe
Is there such a thing as day?
(My little deuce Coupe)
(Is there such a thing as day?)

"California Girls"

Well the east coast girls are hip
Like pigmy seraphs gone astray
And the southern girls, with the way they talk
Reminds me that we all decay
The mid-west farmer's daughters tell the truth, but on a slant
And the northern girls, with the way they kiss
The night is wide, and furnished scant

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

Alright, that's enough.

National Poetry Month, Day 2 - The Audience Plant

Walking the shoe-lace pattern of social evolution
Step on another tongue on the ground
Is it still mine?
Close my eyes
Plug my ears
Globe of hair
Living the ciliated social life
A panopticon of greedy, snarling faces
Like small minds contemplating wealth
The self-sorting parochial
Social justice karaoke hall
Clasping factory-made photo opportunities
Driving a fact that still drills your nose
With stinging chalky revelation
Take self-righteousness to go
The hottest club drug going
Is to never be caught not knowing
What I myself learned five minutes ago

National Poetry Month Day 1 - Morning Dew, Morning Dew

We woke up racist in a room of naked Shawns
Declaring Chaucer on a thousand vacant lawns
We make our fortune on the porch where madness dawns
Bite bite each other contrite
God scattered fossils from a box of unknown height
Breakfast of Champions for the vigilant uptight
We figure out their useful life by sight
Starlight is new blue light vibrations tender
Desire, crouching, makes the moon a public defender
We grew agnostic when succumbing to the flirts
Jesus is overweight and out of medium shirts
We hurt inside, we have a mind of severed squirts
Puddles forming bubbles
Bubbles racing language
Certain our meaning will leave us dead or stranded
We pump our own clouds, then all emerge empty handed

Existential Insult Comic

Sex and the nature of mortality can be a source of pleasure, but for you they're a source of relentless anxiety and occasional bitter laughter.

Everything you will ever accomplish is really just because of a parasite that lives in you and is hungry for achievement and validation. Achievement and validation only exist because other people with parasites make them exist.

Your need to impose your identity on everyone you meet has isolated you almost incurably. You know how when you're having sex with someone, you wish you were having sex with someone? And you think, "I'm just decadent! Like when I light one cigarette, then I light another one before the first one is even done"? Well, the person you wish you were having sex with is yourself; you've just forgotten how to recognize them.

During high school you were awkward and unpopular, but you knew you would have a bright future. Now you feel like you peaked in high school. That 90's nostalgia is in vogue does not help.

The tyranny of all your opinions and preferences imprisons you and feeds you just enough to keep you alive but not very coherent. They are decals on the train you ride that is full of unremarkable people all judging each other as inferior using slightly different versions of the same criteria.

All of your love affairs are a ruse. Any happiness you felt was because you were gas lighting yourself.

There was a correct path your life could have taken that would have lead to happiness, but you diverted from it long ago, and your attempts to compensate have been disastrous.

Time is escaping you like water escaping through cracks of aging, and with the water pours out personal secrets you wanted to keep. Everyone knows them now, but you think they are still secrets, and eventually you will drown in not enough understanding.

At your funeral, people will be having inaccurate thoughts about you. The rest of their thoughts will be about food and sexual conquest.

You will die regretting all the love you never got to express, and had you expressed it, it would only have caused discomfort shrouded in decorous graciousness.

The cliches found on posters and internet memes you abhor most are the ones that would have made you free to be happy.

Your limited language of pop culture references will ensure that all of your experiences are sterilized. No matter what you do or where you go, you will be insulated from transcendence. Fortunately, if you even begin to realize this and get depressed, you can always watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer reruns until it goes away.

There is at least one truth about yourself that you are engineered to never find out. You will dance around it, and maybe even approach it, but you will always be deflected and tossed back into unknowing and delusion. Like planets whirling around the sun, it will explode and engulf you before you can reach it. And this is your closest connection to the divine.

The comment section to every "50 Shades of Grey"-related article

a narcissistic sociopath. So I can't imagine anybody, having read my exhaustive deconstruction of all the abuse masquerading as acceptable intimacy in this poorly written series (complete with page numbers and screenshots), would be able to offer any rational excuse for overlooking it.

Comments (2,452)

WTF is Irony says:
Wow, you sure put a lot of effort into something you don't like. It's just a book! If you don't like it, fuckin don't read it then! It's none of your business what gets other people off. Stop telling people what their opinions should be, how to express themselves, and how to live their life. I think people should keep their opinions to themselves. #idon'tneedfeminism,  #IfThisListWasAccurateItWouldBeHundredsAndHundredsofThisPerson

CaptainFairness says:
Clearly your personal experience as an abuse survivor has influenced your opinion. I think your personal bias should exclude you from the conversation. Sorry you had to deal with that though. Stay strong! #goodperson

TheDude7 says:
I mean, he may be abusive and manipulative and all, but at least he owns it! Y'know what I mean?
      NedBlanders says:
      No actually I don't, could you please elaborate?
            TheDude7 says: 
            You know! Like, when someone is an awful person and they know it, but they like, keep being awful anyway, that makes it OK, right? Because they own it! ... Huh, now that I wrote it out, I realize how little sense that makes. Why do people say that? I know I said it because I didn't want to actually examine my opinion but... Wait... Fuck! All of my friends are racist! I'm gonna go kick their asses then move to another city.

GoodMan2 says:
Yes! This! I am in the middle of trying to save a woman who is with a real life "Christian Grey". She left me for a wealthy professional who is very handsome and regularly takes her on "vacation" to Europe (clearly to get her away from her family and friends). According to mutual friends, they have really amazing sex, too. Poor thing has no idea that she's a victim of abuse. And he gets really upset whenever she is seen with me. I just happen to run into her sometimes at the coffeeshop she goes to every morning before work (he helped get her a job at his friend's successful startup... controlling much?!?!), and he went with her one day and was very rude to me. Very territorial! I'm even beginning to suspect that he has brainwashed her to dislike me, because (read more)

FlowerLuvins says:
Ugh, I agree! I couldn't get through the first book, it was just all of the unhealthy. People! Sex shouldn't hurt! And then, like, he tells her not to cum at some point. That's not cool! Not what sex is about! Doesn't he care about her pleasure? Sounds like just another selfish pig. She needs to get away from that negative energy or it's gonna bring her down.

AlarmedUndergrad says:
I am a psychology major, and I read this and thought "Hmmm interesting". I definitely agree that everything Ana goes through will be psychologically scarring. Most of the people reading don't realize that she has low self-esteem, and he takes advantage of that. It's scary how many of my friends just don't get it, and they are ALL ABOUT this series. I have explained, in legitimate clinical terms, how it is warping their development as young adults, but for some reason that doesn't change their minds. I am putting together some sociological data to show them, let me know if you come across anything.

RedPillLinux says:
Aww, what's the matter? Nobody pay attention to you because you got dumped by an alpha and put on all that weight? Looks like someone's been on the carousel too long and has nothing to show for it. Don't worry, I'm sure some beta will take on your loose meat.
   (1589 replies)

RighteousWhiteous says:
Ok, i get that he's manipulative and stalks her entire life, and it sucks for her, but I don't think it's sexist. Feminists need to stop making it about them because #notallmen are Christian Grey. It's just one story, and the genders could easily be switched. Why isn't anybody analyzing it from that perspective? #reversesexismmuch?

AsianSexTouristGalt says:
I'm gonna pop some bubbles, be the unpopular voice of reason here and point out the obvious: she clearly gets what she wants out of this. He buys her the expensive stuff all women crave, takes care of her... oh, and then there's the earth-shattering orgasms he delivers with his huge "penis endowment" (so to speak), she seems OK with that. Obviously you male haters have never seen a woman tremble beneath you because you gave her permission to. For up to half an hour. It takes a while to get to that point, and most men are just grateful they can last 5 minutes then go to sleep. I'm just being honest here, so if you don't like the truth, go back to your comfortable lies, I don't have time for you. I guess I'm a feminist in some ways, because I believe women should have AT LEAST as many orgasms as her partner, probably more. In my experience, definitely more. Maybe you're just dissatisfied with the sex you've had, or if your a guy your probably insecure. Hey, sometimes the truth is hard to take, but there's no avoiding it. Sometimes, a woman needs to feel a little owned. Deep down, she wants her man to challenge her decisions. It shows that he cares about her, and that he'd fuck up anyone who messes with her, no matter where she goes. And it makes the relationship more rewarding for him, too. It's just biology, we can't avoid it.

365Conscious says:
Of course, WESTERN medicine only recently "decided" that BDSM isn't a diagnosable disorder. I mean (read more)

PleaseHelpMe says:
Please don't be angry at me, but I really liked the book. You just have to read between the lines, ok? I think Ana totally knows what she's doing. I mean, yeah she suffers a bit, OK a lot, but in the end he definitely changes. Or at least, he is clearly on the road to being approachable, and she'll be able to get over her emotional trauma because she's strong, and she'll finally (gently, gradually) confront him, you just have to read between the lines. I mean, I'm pretty sure the sex is good, why else would she keep coming back?

MissyBee says:
Thank you for writing this! Every sentence was like "Yes!" I went through something like this once... never again!
  DevilsAdvocado says:
  Just to play "devil's advocate", if you will, I mean, doesn't she have free will?
    MissyBee says: 
    But he manipulates her! He knows exactly what he's doing. For example, when he totally shuts down emotionally and makes her (read more)
      MmmmYeah,LikeThat says:
      Well yeah, he's abusive and manipulative, but she perseveres and eventually he changes. Sounds fine to me!
        MissyBee says:
        Except he doesn't "change"! She just learns how to work around his sociopathy, which is different because (read more)
           OoooooohFuckYeahKeepDoingThat says:
           I don't know though, maybe she was asking for it a little bit? I mean, she never said the safe word, but she could have...
              MissyBee says:
              ARRRRGH! But you're taking it out of context! You have to build enough trust so the sub isn't (read more)
                OhFuckOhFuckOhFuck says:
                 I mean, doesn't her arousal negate any possibility of rape?
                      MissyBee says:
                      Umm... NO! Physical arousal doesn't mean (read more)
                          OOOOOOOHHhhhhhhhMMMMmmmmmmhhmmmmMMMM says:
                          It's not like he has a gun to her head. She can leave at any time. And she does, after the first book.
                             MissyBee says:
                            (BASHING HEAD AGAINST DOOR) NO! Like I said before, in my articulate and citation-laden multi-paragraph reply above, (read more)
                                 Thanks! says:
                                 Eh, maybe. I guess we're all entitled to our opinions. Good night!