The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason.
—Shakespeare1
i.
Don’t want to believe in what makes
us outrun reason—is it violent
love? not enough? or some different ill
altogether? is there a pill
for that? or is the only thing we can
still take from each other? when it’s so much
like writing my own prescriptions,
why should I even bother? is this just
another poem to fuck to? I’m not
the doctor. ¶ Seven questions and
my violent love’s restless/relentless
expedition already, in its quest,
stirred to disperse from every
dark wood’s deep brooks every last spirit,
every unicorn my porn’s talent
barely sporting this supposèd
camouflage has run off—waking up to
boys who don’t know my name: “this is the end
of art”—says he in six little
syllables, strumming this out on six strings
with three chords and a likelihood this will
go unheard, but it will not be
ignored, not with its filth of four-letter
ii.
words filling-up the ass-end of its verse
just to annoy critics with its
envoi of self-indulgent polemic,
against everything and no-ones “just
because…” if some kid should happen
to read this, then I want it to be
their pleasure without guilt or shame, same
goes for all of my other work,
the cryptic shit, the metaphysical,
the scatological, and the scatter-
brained, whether on the 6 uptown
or the M Train to Brooklyn, I want those
who read what I do to not give a fuck
& view reading itself as Roman
audiences of Catullus—and those
ravenous gladiators—did then: as
something we perverts do who can’t
afford to make love or any other
whore, but an author, an offer, and books
are the cunts that never tire of
opening, closing only when you find
them boring, oysters vomiting stories,
pretty shells echoing oceans:
[A Fibonacci Wet-Dream Sequence of Sirens Moaning “fuck yous”]
fuck you—fuck you—fuck, fuck you—fuck, fuck, fuck
you—fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you—fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you—fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck you—fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you—yeah, and you, too—
every critic whose vitriol stoned
my philosophy’s alchemists
into two: those who see(k), and those who can
not do without, what I do—this magic
which, when spoken, brings about an
apocalypse (or is it just a pox
of lips?) when you put my words in your mouth.
__________
1William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3, Lines 108–109, Macbeth to Macduff, in Macbeth, edited by Stephen Orgel and published at New York by Penguin in 2016; page 35.
Jono Borden 