Showing posts with label Ain't It Grand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ain't It Grand. Show all posts

19 December, 2011

Ain't It Grand, These Culture Wars?


There's no subtlety to any of it.
Grand circle jerk symmetry
internet artists (not) extraordinaire.

It's all too easy.

Buy into the myth wholesale.
Pretend, for moment, maybe two,
maybe thirty, that you're running
a pirate radio, pushing out
incendiary prose the way they used to
“back in the day” when
all our giants were still alive.

There are no more 3 AM saints,
standing over mimeograph machines,
living in the basement with
an abandoned AB Dick printing press
typesetting and publishing words
sacred enough to offend your grandmother.

But please. buy into the myth.
It helps pass the days. Days spent
whiling away in some institution
or another... proprietary pretense
awkward hipster princesses
read a few lines of Kerouac
and learn to drink like
(you think) Bukowski did
and a few young girls
will think you're a true original
because they've never seen
anything like you on Jersey Shore.

It's all too easy. / Scratch that.

It's all too hard. And you make it harder.
And not in that good way
you think Bukowski meant
when he wrote about whores.

It's too damn hard.
And you make it harder.
Because you think
drinking the right cheap beer
and wearing the right retro clothes
have anything to do
with anything. Schtick will
get you laid. But it won't
make you into the giant
you tell yourself you are
in your day job
where the boss
never seems to call you
by your real name.