Versification: People, or, The Species Hank Belonged to

There is a certain level of stink and nastiness that a person must (be willing to) descend (into) to, in order to (deal with or even) understand America.

Contrary to what many on the “left” ----if we are to speak blandly----feel about the people and destiny of this land, not all the blame should be heaped on the conspicuously guilty white man, as a symbol or defendant. The white woman, with her legendary love of silver and trinkets, glory and manservants, deserves some credit. Now follows a sort of poem, inspired by Charles Bukowski, that may demonstrate why some of us prefer working night shifts.




People, or, The Species Hank belonged to


It would not be good to be
Anybody else but me.

People, the raggedy motherfuckers.
scolding, seething, smoking, scheming.
I'm glad I was born a monkey.

People, all massed up crawling and quarreling,
all in a room together, and always lonely.

squirming, stamping, stooping, moping,
considering the most base silly things
to be important,
I cast my lot among these evil insects
and slather on the repellant.

slipping, slopping about, fretting, fuming, quick to pout,
as heedless of the past as
they are insensible to any present
which exists outside of their own underpants
or can't be returned or exchanged for money.

From their filthy tendencies
to murder one another and reproduce
like shithouse flies
while genuflecting to god
and tithing the Devil,
to their avowed feelings
of callous superiority over
weeds, snakes and monkeys,
none of which species need fear the brutal primacy of Man
in any righteous, proper heaven,
the entire breed called Human
is not worth a single one of the greasy widgets
or nuclear bullets
they produce in such mad profusion
and term “technological advance.”
There is no hell for monkeys,
and it was not a monkey-scientist that hatched AIDS.
For every artist and humane soul
there are nearly three billion
human accountants,
toll-collectors, pimps,
and slippery-mouthed old
pedophile priests.

no matter how many
black and yellow babies
our celebrities adopt
there’ll be hell to pay
in the USA
and among the people of the West.

itching, bitching, scratching their
hidden lesions and burbling uselessly and frantically inside
about 3000 petty fears
and insecurities
they worry about too many calories
and cellulite on their massive,
Hottentot asses,
the poor, backwards, hamburgersandwich-gobbling savages,
and also about living costs that go skyward
for no real reason at all, tied to
capitalist wet-dream fantasies
such as the Federal Reserve,
and the militant, loosey-goosey, drug-dealing,
criminal Petrodollar Economy
as these costs are.

each of them knows in their clabbery,
asthmatic hearts
that they can buy their way into an earthly paradise,
which is lucky for them,
because if their rare quiet moments are not
filled with celestial longing,
not poisoned by supernal remorse and
creepy, constant worry
then they probably should be.