R.I.P. Status

“You and I, ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.
I Shall come to the Subject of Religion, by and by.”

— John Adams (John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, in a letter written at and sent from Quincy, Massachusetts on Thursday, July 15^th, 1813, in “[Chapter] 10. ‘Belief…the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition’: June–December 1813” of The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams: Edited by Lester J. Cappon, published at Chapel Hill by University of North Carolina Press in 1988; page 358.)

“The art of our art is not to have it noticed by the public[.] That which is called the work, in our art, should only be the search for the truth. […]The exterior form of the art is often the entire art; at least, it is that which strikes the audience the most effectively. […]The diction, the way of standing, the look, the gesture are predominant in the development of the career of an artist.”

— Sarah Bernhardt (Sarah Bernhardt, «[Chapitre 4.] La prononciation» / “[Chapter 4.] Pronunciation,” «[Chapitre 5.] Le geste» / “[Chapter 5.] The Gesture,” in «Première partie[:] Les qualités physiques nécessaires au comédien» / “Part One[:] The Physical Qualities Necessary for an Actor” and «[Chapitre 3.] Le choix du rôle» / “[Chapter 3.] The Choice of Role,” in «Deuxième partie[:] Les qualités morales nécessaires au comédien» / “Second Part[:] The Moral Qualities Necessary for the Actor” of L’Art du Théâtre: La voix—le geste[—]la prononciation: Avec une introduction par M. Marcel Berger [The Art of Theatre: The Voice—The Gesture[—]Pronunciation: With an Introduction by Mr. Marcel Berger], published at Paris by Éditions Nilsson in 1923; pages 75, 76, and 90. In its original French: «L’art de notre art est de ne pas se faire reconnaître du public[.] Ce qu’on surnomme le travail dans notre art, ne doit être que la recherche de la verité[,]» and «Le côté extérieur de l’Art est parfois l’Art tout entier; à tout le moins il est celui qui frappe le mieux. […]La diction, la stature, le regard, le geste ont dans le succès d’un comédien, dans le développement de sa carrière, une action prépondérante.»)

“This Mary hadn’t quite made it to holy virgin. As Gabriel alit, descending to tell her there was going to be a bun in the oven and God was the baker, she didn’t look biblically awed. There was a distinct smirk to her expression, an arrogance, like she knew it was coming, had arranged it all herself.”

— Jennifer Thorne (Jennifer Thorne, “[Chapter 11.] What the Hell, Anna,” in Diavola, published at New York by Nightfire in 2025; page 78.)

                         i.

You follow me the way
catastrophe always follows prophecy, carried
by the muscularity of water,
endearing toward erasure, relentless grimness
lingering like a theme in

music scores the thoroughfare as
tires transgress the meridian’s concrete
barrier, undermining the radar of
the overpass’ unenforceable grammar, grimoiring
James Deanean defeatism down to

the circling tires drawing to
a squeal, ziggurating down by
tiers, hanging Babylonian as I
garden out of control, daring
to get liminal, inviting the

revulsion of every stranger’s middle
finger now made visible, I
trade my tirade for a
ride around immortality’s edge until
is found an exit ramp

in the shape of a
hexagram, peripheral, evading, now, the
nearing reality of sounding too
no-brow, bald-faced bastard about to
be blackballed revealing to all

                         ii.

the great secret of my
getaway cause, such is the
gateway drug of getting costumed
by the house, dressed up
by the lodge I stress

out so much that allowing
me as a member has
led to those secret chiefs
having had enough, turns out
the formula was in my

pocket all along, to meet
revelation with acceptance, surrounded by
statues of saints and religious
figures at night, cancel the
ritual, call up the very

Self crawling behind the mask
of your skull, be very
ribald, be very Cecil Beaton
when he said, The Second
Age of Beauty Is Glamour,

be anything but beautiful at
all, be bestial, instead, be
willing to be clawed, to
get worn out by Edwardian
staged portraiture wearing down the

                         iii.

appeal of history’s crawl backward
toward its cradle, unashamed to
appall everybody else whose disgust
you’ll pull with you as
you freefall, the one bassinette

of benefit civilization canceled when
it sought to make more
marketable the illusion of progress
tools perform, machinery never was
worth abusing us all just

to conform by cuneiforming back
to the start our collective
cluelessness that consciousness is the
hottest commodity and cannot be
bought, what I’m on about,

now, perish the thought, is
that we’re still in the
Revolution, we haven’t even gotten
to the Terror, never mind
punishment by execution, crucifixion, amputation

of the right hand and
left foot, or long-term exile
for Mohareb (Farsi, via Arabic,
“waging war against god”), making
offerings to the demons for

                         iv.

what they’ve done, simulated mirth
I shun, my writing comes
out of silence, in great
discomfort, as poetry arises from
pain, cigarette smoke of the

hours ashing away waiting for
love to take the place
of its illusion after the
lie fades, inhaling the room,
spewing emptiness only blank pages

consume, tears of ink for
strangers’ eyes to chew in
the unruly nudity of a
life lived like the lie
of a movie, navigating untidy

endings as Method as finding
moments of emotional truth in
false circumstances, you need to
be crazy to do what
we let others witness us

do, undoing what has been
done to us while we
exploit rude truths, in pursuit
of believing in ghosts or
love at first sight are

                         v.

the same thing, ignoring the
world whose hordes ignore what
lands hard, only learned the
hard way if at all,
how 666 Dead Sea Scrolls

were found in Qumran, Cave
4, another correlation ignored, like
the Why of the Sect,
the When of the End,
the Who of the Enemy,

the myth of making new
friends, as if the ones
we have we’ve always had,
only just to be destroyed
by iconoclasts to achieve R.I.P.

Status, the perpetual what-if, whether
figurative or literal, inconsequential, it’s
Death making an ass of
himself as if the receptacle
of a man is the

spectacle, unmade in his image,
ever out of focus but
getting in touch with being
non-linear, half whore, half martyr,
wholly star, sensual centaur splintering

                         vi.

to shards in the fragmented
narrative of my breaking heart’s
filmic noir, taking place in
parts, part art, part slaughter,
shard of a mirror light

winters far, temple prostitute soliciting
patrons at every stall in
the local bazaar, riding a
tide of scandal, accumulating emotional
residue, I am the Apocalypse

of John, I am exiled
on Patmos, penning our end
on a blog, I am
Babylon coming unglued, a fatwa-favouring
double-fisting image-maker slaking hard a

jizz jihad reigning terror in
her cum gutter, I am
sick of so much bullshit
becoming news fodder, I am
the original bullshitter who knew

from the start that the
feed was just an online
trough for another washed-up author,
whose pig pen mouths what
no one else will bother.