Jeremy Drummond

 

Once an old and honoured poet left his wife for a boy poet and he wrote the boy "Sonnet to the Asshole," which may have been specifically about the boy's particular asshole, but, being a poem, was also about assholes in general. This was in Paris, a city so ugly the citizens turned inwards and developed their tongues and noses to a degree we find unimaginable. We cannot even tell the difference between a fine and mediocre truffle! What hope do we have in distinguishing one asshole from another. We lack sophistication. We cannot be poets or gourmands, but merely vulgar. The vulgar speak vulgar. Wash their mouths out with soap. They froth like rabid squirrels. In the end nothing is clean and they just spew forth more vulgarity. Is it possible to be clean and dirty at the same time? Only if you are a poet. Pure and vulgar. Let my mouth be your anus, and the nose everywhere, picking up stray molecules. Soap just leaves a scum. If you leave things alone long enough they learn to clean themselves, they develop a personality. A pong. City of lights! Only because the sun never shines. Citizens scurrying along the grey streets. They don't use maps, they just follow their noses and arrive in little holes where a snack costs forty-five dollars. When poets procreate all we get is a pile of words that don't make sense. Cross the honoured, old poet (Verlaine) with the wild, young poet (Rimbaud): Bataille.