Needless to say, this is a rather important moment for all of us, so I thought short and hard about what to say. Or, more precisely, about what not to say, as in just another searing, trenchant explication of sound conservative principles. My social and political insights were crucial for thinking BOTFers before Number Two Thousand, and will remain so well into the future. For this landmark post, however, I think for once I'll just do something for me, about me; I'll look inward, not outward, to an expression of existential struggle in the form of an original sonnet. I briefly considered my as-yet unpublished essay, "When I Am An Old Man, I Shall Wear Burlap", but it features my joyless life in the meat world, not my daily frolic on the golden Fray. Here it is then, formerly-titled and once-published as "Bath Time Again", now republished, with new allegorical resonance, for this occasion, as:

Fray Time Again

Exuberant hatred and joyous pain
Suffuse my foul trunk in the tub again;
Earnest anger, with no apparent strain,
Pours toxic balm upon my fevered brain.
Extremities coated in candied mire,
With all a peckish maggot might require
In my putrefied core; a maggot choir
Sings Requiem over my brackish pyre.
Two guilty hands make peace in fists of love,
Two fists unclench, discard a mangled dove
Which, like my dreams, was wont to soar above
The filthy earth, sarcophagus of Love.
Down the warm brown towel, up with plug and chain,
Now, see how much of me clings to the drain.

Thanks for the memories, BOTF! Let's make some more.

Inkberrow, Christmastime 2008

Fail!

Try harder for the 3000th.

:)

I think there is whole lotta faking going on. Now if you went and read that poem in front of some Greenwich coffee shop in the sixties you might get a robust applause or smiling faces acknowledging some fine work. Which it may be, but it would take me a lot of time to go over the words and phrases carefully to digest it properly. That simply cannot be done during a reading, hence, the primary point of my post, i.e. poetry readings are kind of phony. Do you agree?

As to your contribution here, well it might be pretty good, I am obviously no expert. What I disseminated is that the subject in your poem has a low opinion of himself or his accomplishments in life, or of life itself. He is asking “What’s it all about, I really don’t know, but I loathe my existence since it consists of failure, uncertainty and my only contribution is that I am humble enough to admit it. Life gives no answers.”

(both of whom have unresolved divinity issues), I think your sonnet is pretty good, in a cinéma de nausée kind of way.

I do look forward to reading your literate and original, if occasionally perverse, points of view.

As Mao said: "If you have to fart, comrades, fart! If you have to shit, shit! You'll feel much better!"

I resolved all my divinity issues, thank you.

Who died and made you the judge, anyway?

I did.

Only to find out I wasn't quite done.

He asked me to keep you busy while he chased some nymph.

Congratulations on your milestone!

Your poem was really depressing.

I haven't had a bath in more than 10 years.

THOTH

Forsooth! Upon us you have wrought
a soliloquy of rancid thought
with imagery to sound the glee
of schizophrenic melody;
A wordsmith yes of noble taste
wouldst Voltaire bow to thee in haste.
A soldier of the sanguine fray
where all who venture rue the day;
Wield rapier and mace and shield
to cast the ignorant far afield!
Thence plant your flag at castle-keep
before defeated foes who weep.
Oh Canada take back your brood
this son of yours is far too shrewd!

I liked it. Now please make sure all the guns are locked and the medicine cabinet is cleaned out. You need a pick me up Inky. Merry Christmas.

I don't bother to lock up my guns, but I don't keep any amunition around -- I figure that "guns don't kill people: bullets do!"

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my medicine cabinet lacks any medicines that offer much temptation -- my wife's hormone replacement pills, her allergy medications, shit like that.....

fail more impressively, if there is to be a 3000th for "Inkberrow", anyway. I'm considering an Impassioned Goodbye post, then sneaking back in under another nic after a month or so.

versifyer's frame of reference it's not bad.

Re your interpretation, agreed, but don't you also concur that there's a certain sort of slimy, backdoor pride to an ostentatious or fetishized self-loathing and humility? There's more than one Uriah Heep on the Fray.