Daniel Borzutzky

Ain’t nothing more beautiful than a French diplomat in an Italian suit discussing the intimate ties between poetry and constipation with a United States Senator in a discount blazer from the Men’s Wearhouse bought especially for the occasion of proposing the Anti-Chimera Act, a prime indicator that if children were once the future, they are not the past, which is growing hairier every moment, so as to keep us from penetrating its insides, which we must nibble on as if nibbling on donuts, by which I mean rubrics, glittering rubrics in the dry heat of an empty test bank full of raccoons with flexible snouts and long tails that materialize in the shrubbery as thick-set stocky fraternity brothers suicide bomb colleges full of free thinking mavericks with tuning forks in their ears and rubber dicks in their pockets, a veritable cure for loneliness and its side effects, including the desire to fantasize about mythological genitalia in the pants of pundits who declare that to be alive is fundamentally okay as long as poets test their verses on guinea pigs before submitting them to us humans as we exit the amalgamated marshland of surplus value and enter an ordinary evening on which ordinary people dream of lubricated condoms for dogs, of mules who practice the pull-out method, of birth control pills for cats, of floating trousers that haunt city squares in search of red-walled boutiques where silk stockings and boot-cut chinos fight for the attention of disembodied legs while merchants masturbate, aroused by visions of painless castration, aroused by hands without arms scribbling conjunctions into dusty ceilings, aroused by hands without arms stirring infinite bowls of soup, aroused by module-makers who insist only on the metaphorical value of money as represented in the hieroglyphics painted on the walls of financiers who accumulate capital through the unjustified sexual behavior of adulterous women who appear asymmetrically—legs over heads, hands coming out of butts—in public ceremonies in which syringes suck out erroneous feelings from their bodies while suits and ties stuff bones and ears into decorative bottles and jars.

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another man’s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new charged of sodomy. A spokesman for the police department said they found him with his pants down and it appeared that his penis was in another man’s anus. But since they could not prove to what degree his penis had penetrated the other man’s anus they dropped the charges of sodomy and filed new charges of assault and battery. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that he assaulted a worker from the Department of Public Health who used a Q-tip to extract from inside of his urethra a rare strand of bacteria capable of causing pneumonia in chickens. He was placed in solitary confinement and a spokesman for the Department of Corrections suggested that he was a serious threat to the community. They examined the strand of bacteria found in his urethra but since they did not properly store the bacteria in the appropriate container with the appropriate seals and signatures they could not charge him with intent to commit crimes against humanity. They dropped the charges of intent to commit crimes against humanity and filed new charges of larceny. They said he had stolen the rare strand of bacteria from his employer and that he had done so with the deliberate and malicious intent to harm as many civilians as possible. They tried to verify for whom he had worked during the given time period but since they could not verify the name or location of his employer they dropped the charges of larceny and filed new charges of tax fraud. When they discovered he was privately employed, they dropped the charges of tax fraud and filed new charges of theft with an unregistered weapon. A grocery store in his neighborhood had recently been robbed and the cashier said that the thief had carried the same model of weapon that the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies. They dropped the charges of theft with an unregistered weapon when they discovered the cashier was partially blind and that the weapon the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies had been properly purchased and registered. When they found on his bookshelves several works of fiction with blind characters, including King Lear,Oedipus Rex,Endgame, and Blindness by José Saramago, they accused him of conspiring to use the rare strand of bacteria to blind not only the grocer but the seven other blind residents of his neighborhood, each of whom had had perfectly good eyesight until he came to town. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness, but he refused to answer the question. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness and when his attorney arrived the man in question said that he did not know why he had so many books about blindness. They asked his friends and family why he had so many books about blindness. No one knew why he had so many books about blindness and they accused him in the press of anti-social behavior. When his neighbors testified that the man in question enjoyed society as much as he enjoyed a quiet night at home, they dropped the charges of anti-social behavior. They dropped the charges of anti-social behavior and filed new charges of jaywalking. An undercover police officer filmed him with a video camera as he illegally crossed the street. At the advice of his attorney, he pleaded guilty to the charges of jaywalking. He agreed to pay the fine.

I. One reason to eat is to not speak, said the man with a mouth full of food. When she told me that my silence was worse than her silence, I agreed, even though she was wrong. It is shallow to fight for things, he said, but sometimes it can be fun. You look like a tunnel, she said, and kissed my lips. What I like least about words is their capacity to invoke more words, she said, as she trashed my poem. According to the New York Times, gay teenage boys want monogamy while heterosexual boys prefer “friends with benefits.” My psychiatrist told me it was okay to lie about the important details of my life. As a result, I fell in love with her. I stopped seeing her as a patient but when we dated the spark was gone. If, as Cioran writes, existing is plagiarism, then what is death? I was lost all night in the forest only to discover these were streets I knew quite well. In the Oresteia, Apollo argues that the true parent is “he who mounts.” Because the Furies fail to ask what happens when the woman is on top, they lose the case. In evaluations, a student wrote: “Daniel would be a better teacher if he wasn’t such an asshole.” Weren’t such an asshole, I wanted to tell her, though as her comments were supposed to be anonymous, I could not admit that I recognized her handwriting. On a first date, I innocently went to the bathroom when the check arrived. She thought I was trying to stick her with the bill but when she realized I was unaware of dating etiquette she was charmed.  We had a nice kiss goodnight, but afterwards I was so flustered I went to a bar by myself, drank whiskey, and smoked my first cigarette in years. II. Throughout my life I have always wanted to tell the truth, even though I knew it was all a lie. In the end all that matters is the truth content of a lie.

They took my body to the forest They asked me to climb a ladder I did not want to climb a ladder But they forced me to climb the ladder If you don’t climb the ladder we will bury you in the foamy mud I had to decide: should I die by hanging or by burial I climbed the ladder and they wrapped a belt around the thick limb of a tree And then when I could no longer breathe they tossed me into a stream And I floated to the edge of the village where someone prayed for my soul It’s like this in a lullaby for the end of the world: The options for the end are endless But this is not really a lullaby for the end of the world It’s about the beginning what happens when we start to rot in the daylight The way the light shines on the ants and worms and parasites mauling our bodies It’s about the swarms of dogs gnawing our skin and bones Do you know what it’s like when a ghost licks your intestines Do you know what it’s like when a rat devours your brain To avoid the hole the children must sing sweetly, softly To avoid the hole they must fill their songs with love

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes    ...    Yo no sé! — César Vallejo They sniffed us out of the holes with the animals they had programmed and there are blows in life so powerful we just don’t know and there were trenches and there was water and it poured in through our mouths and out of our ears and there were things we saw in the sand at that moment of sinking: mountains and daisies and tulips and rivers and the bodies of the people we had been and the bodies of the people we had loved and we felt hooks coming through the trenches and we felt hooks coming through the sand and I saw hooks coming through my child’s clothes and I wanted him to know that they would never be able to scoop us out of the sand but of course it wasn’t true they had scooped us out of the sand and our mouths were so full of dirt it is what they do when you’re dead and they made us spit and they beat us until our mouths were empty and they paid us for constructing the mountain and it was me and L and we looked for S and we looked for J and J and we looked for O and we looked for R and we looked for J and S in the holes in which the bodies of those we loved were hiding or dying or sinking or stealing some shelter some little worm’s worth of cover to keep their bodies from dissolving into the maniac murmurs of this impossible carcass economy

There should be a writing of non-writing. Someday it will come. A brief writing, without grammar, a writing of words alone. Words without supporting grammar. Lost. Written, there. And immediately left behind. —Marguerite Duras (translated by Mark Pollizzotti) It came. Words smashed out of the sky and from the mouths and off the pages and from the flesh and blood of the bodies and the words hit the readers and were destroyed like more bodies and the fields of the nation were littered with bodies and dead. Carcass love, they called it. Carcass economy, they called it. And the readers found the carcasses strewn across the pages and the readers came and stripped their innards and twirled intestines above their heads like lassos. The carcasses fell onto the pages and were taken away in wagons and trucks and they were replaced with new carcasses that were sold for words before the flies laid eggs and the wounds had time to fester. FALSE CARCASS ECONOMY! Will the souls of the carcasses miss themselves when they die? Will the bodies whose lips slurp out the souls of the carcasses miss themselves when they die? Will the words from the bodies who slurp out the souls of the carcasses cease to exist when the bodies themselves die? The readers grovel in the pages and find themselves in ditches with the carcasses but they do not know the rules of the false carcass economy. In this book the readers can feel their feet being removed. In this book the readers can feel the splash of the abattoir blood that sprinkles the page with poems. How do you know if the poems have too many bubbles? That is, how do you know if the blood of the poems has too many bubbles? When we speak of our own lives, says the collective voice of the readers, we certainly don’t mean human life. On the page the readers find themselves crawling around like quadrupeds with hands full of grass and earth uprooting plants and trees setting out for home and not getting far counting corpses on the fields to hell with animals there is God grinding his teeth with joy forging his way through the ruins of failing flesh there is the machine that has annihilated the bulk of humanity is it semen or is it a carburetor that makes us unrecognizable we know who we are through decay and in someone else’s story this is a lot worse than knocking your own brains out with good results then drinking tea with sugar and milk and suddenly feeling revived then exploding with words and speaking with animals and sinking in mud and being found by peasants who clean turds and who are like silent gods with holes in their shoes it is horrible to eat horrible to bulge in the belly with food horrible to blink when so many can’t blink oh to ruminate once more on the air polluted with liability on the hair singed from pollution the eyes burning fingers shrivelling the exact moment of ending will not come for many millennia we will not be able to document it it will document us it’s okay to kill some bodies speak of nothing and you’re lucky to make friends flank kidney liver swollen body on the sand who are you now that I am speaking with a mouth full of words that do not belong to me I crawl across the page and I don’t know if I’m dying or dead.

Here the readers gather to watch the books die. They die suddenly, as if thrown from an airplane, or from spontaneous cardiac arrest. They live, and then suddenly they die, and the reader who watches this is at the moment of the books' death bombarded with images documented through the smiling lipstick face of a journalist who has shown up to report on the death of the books. The milk was poisoned and forty-two babies died, she laughs, as she fondles the ashes of the dead books. And the death of forty-two babies is equal in value to the death of this book which is equal in value to the ninety-year old woman who shot herself while the sheriff waited at her door with an eviction notice which is equal in value to the collapsing of the global economy which is equal to the military in country XYZ seizing the land of the semi-nomadic hunters and cultivators of crops who have lived in the local rain forest for thousands of years. The reader opens a dead book and finds an infinite amount of burnt ash between the bindings, and when the ash blows in the wind the lipstick says that every death in the world is equal to every other death in the world which is equal to every birth in the world which is equal to every act of dismemberment which is equal to the death of a jungle which is equal to the collapse of the global economy; and hey look there’s another lady falling out of a window; she looks about equal to the poet hurled out of his country for words he wrote but which did not belong to him and whose death is about equal to the girl who was shot on the bus on her way to school this morning which is just about the same as the bearded man whose head was shoved into a sac while water was dumped over it and he died for an instant and came back to life and talked and talked and that’s about equal to the steroid illegally injected into the arm of a beautiful man who makes forty million dollars a year for injecting his arms with steroids so he can more skillfully wave a wooden stick at a ball, and in the ash we see the truest democracy there ever was: hey look it’s a little baby found in a dumpster how equal you are says the smiling lipstick to the civilized nation whose citizens walk the flooded streets looking for their homes, and in the ashes of the dead book the dead streets are equal to the eating disorders of movie stars which are equal to the dead soldiers who are equal to the homeruns which are equal to the bomb dropped by country ABC over weddings in the village of country XYZ which is equal to the earth swallowing up and devouring all of its foreigners which is just about equal to the decline in literacy in the most educated nation in the planet. There is no end to this book. There are no paragraph breaks to interrupt the smiling lipstick that goes on and on in one string of ashy words about how the declaration of peace is equal to the resumption of war and how the bodies that fall are equal to the birds that ascend and how the bomb in the Eiffel Tower is equal to the rising cost of natural gas, and the murmurs of the voices in the mud are equal to the murmurs of the expensive suits falling out of buildings and these are equal to the silence that kills with one breath and coddles life with another.

“This is my last communiqué from the planet of the monsters.” Roberto Bolaño , Distant Star When I watched the Barbaric Writers defecate on my manuscript, I felt a great sense of relief, a great sense of fraternity with these men who loved literature enough to destroy it, and I recalled a poem I had once written, but never had the confidence to publish, about a so-called poet who shat himself into a toilet, only to float on his back as torrential downpours of power filled the bowl and drowned him. I have always know that constipation is essential to poetry, though what I did not realize, until recently, was that poetry itself is repulsive. Words on their own are bad enough. But when placed alongside other words, when formed into rhythmic lines and stanzas: no act of creation is more hideous. In the salons, I have often watched, before my turn came on, our local poets reciting their verses. They speak politely, and with grace, to an audience that sips wine and chuckles at the words that flow not from their mouths, but from their plugged-up behinds. What a holy mockery of literature! Were the barbarians to see such a spectacle, no theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter. No, poetry is not what I want. Only defecation on poetry. For after years of humiliation, I have finally learned that to humanize our poems, we must shit on them. We must shit freely, with arms raised, as detectives in blue sport coats examine our feces for sustainability, all the while fighting off other detectives in bluer sport coats who take our poetic leakage to their laboratories to search for parasitic demons, or diamonds, depending on the angle. We smear what drips from our self-inflicted wounds onto our verses, combining blood and ink into new poetic forms in which we rub our faces, the better to smell our disgusting children with, the better to drool on our disgusting children with; and once we have bled and drooled and driveled, we declare our poems complete, the better to wipe our asses with, before submitting them for publication. We smear our typewriters with pus and semen, and chastise any fool crass enough to declare himself a poet, an offense punishable by confinement in a cage surrounded by Barbaric Writers who expectorate between the distinguished author’s eyes, his hands tied behind his back to prevent him from cleaning his face. For poetry is hard work! It is hard to create such filthy, vile putrescence.