Submissions to Bullshit Lit's Second Anthology close soon

 

Submissions to the Anthology close in 2-3 days. Their standards of bullshit are very high. Haha! My submission below reeks of it but fell short of their mark:

A Shithouse Narrative

 

‘The most beautiful flowers grow out of shit but it is shit alone that helps us create’. 

Celine

 

This is a poem about shit/ is shit- 

you be the judge.

 

1

The Greater One Horned Rhinoceros 

produces about 25 kilos of dung per day

they are the ultimate loners-

while foraging in the wild

they use their keen sense of smell to sniff

out the freshness of droppings of their own species- 

only to head the other way.

 

2

At Sutherland Railway station on platform 3

face the eastern wall under the bridge-

if you look closely

you will find the collected excrement

of several generations of pigeons-

layered in waves of muck

4 by 2 metres in size.

 

3

The great late Canadian poet Al Purdy 

was fascinated by shit-

he wrote about it often in his work.

In ‘When I Sat Down to Play the Piano’

he describes how Eskimo dogs had a wild

appetite for human excrement. In another masterpiece,

‘Death by Numbers’ fearing the approach 

of death, he describes

how he daily inspected his faeces 

for traces of blood.

 

4

In Kejimkujik National Park in B.C.

there is a warning sign in a hemlock forest which reads:

‘A free standing tarp is recommended

to avoid falling frass (larval faeces) from

the Pale-Winged Grey Moth’.

 

5

When my eldest son Abel was 2

I took off his nappy

to air his bum out in front of the TV.

When I returned from the kitchen

he was smearing the boob tube with poo.

Was this a pubescent act of anarchy, or simply,

a natural disdain for mass consumerism  ?

 

6

In Swift’s satirical ‘Academy of Lagado’

a visiting surgeon describes at length 

how human excrement is analysed in detail 

at the academy to determine the original 

composition of the food consumed as a means 

of detecting anti-government conspirators.

 

7

During the 14^thCentury

the bubonic plague

was seen by some scholars as resulting

from a sort of ‘cosmic constipation’-

the breathing in of some foul fumes

wafting up from deep inside

the bowels of the earth.

 

 

Dear Reader 

 

You can probably surmise from the above anecdotes

that I have collected dozens of other equally ass-kicking ones.

 

You may also be wondering why I have this obsessive fascination with crap,

and deep down, what the shit I hope to achieve?

 

I don’t really know. Honest.

 

Perhaps I am attempting to explore excrement as an emblem 

for human endeavour. As a kind of a universal and personalising 

force which solidifies the artistic process…

 

Sorry reader, what it you say? 

 

OK yeah, I admit it: I’m full of it!

In contrast, Red Focks the editor of Alien Buddha Press had no qualms about accepting this previously rejected masterpiece for The Alien Buddha Gets Rejected Part 2 (February 2023). True story:

Bathurst After lunch

 

We check out

the Visitor’s Centre

to see if there is

a winery nearby.

 

On the way out

I head to the Gents

for a quick piss.

 

Opening a cubicle

the toilet bowl

is a mass of

shit & blood

 

as if the bloke

has blown a gasket.

 

He must have been in

too big an emergency

 

to actually turn around

& flush the goddamn toilet!

Then again Red rejected  this tongue-in-cheek satirical work I believed in:

This One Is For Free

 

Most readers,

consumers 

want everything

for free

these days.

 

Newspapers & magazines

are massively shredding

staff. Others have folded. 

Independent presses are drying up.

 

Most things are available now online

with the click of a mouse.

 

I tell you dear reader the best 

I can offer you now is this humble poem.

 

There may not be very much to it

in substance 

style

or effort-

 

but you get what you fucking pay for

you cheap prick! 

Featuring Kevin Ridgeway

NO TIME FOR LOSERS

 

We both lay here in our adjacent beds,

my roommate at the sober living and I, 

his cheap old transistor radio dialed into 

K-Earth 101, Queen screaming that 

We Are the Champions of the World.

Both of us jobless, stabilized by a trove 

of psychiatric medication, enough to 

sedate an elephant, too foggy to rule 

the world.  My roommate shares all

of his manic delusions with me, and 

I’ll keep on fighting to the end to keep 

my own sanity while he jabbers on 

about the Russians and Boy George, 

how they are tapping his phone, which 

rests on his bare fat belly, rising up 

and down in victory breaths, my 

roommate shirtless while he waits 

for his deodorant to dry so he can go 

downstairs and mop the dining room 

floor. While he does that, I sweep 

the carpeted stairs that lead up to 

our second story room to make our 

landlord happy we finished our chores,

then back to a life whose soundtrack 

is K-Earth, conversations surreal 

paintings on the ceiling we stare at 

together all day, trapped here inside 

a sideshow nobody would pay to see.  

 

 

 

 

SON OF A PHANTOM INMATE

 

I go for my evening walk 

& I pass a car whose driver 

has got their phone on speaker:

THIS IS A COLLECT CALL

FROM A STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

& I want to accept the call

with the expectation it’s my father 

on the other line, serving life 

in prison in one hand,

battling lung cancer in the other.

I haven’t heard his voice

in months and I don’t hear it now,

a letter in the mail with my number

sent along two weeks ago

just in case he lost it.  

THIS IS A COLLECT CALL

FROM A STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY 

is automated music to the ears 

of my desperate sonic reach 

to know him in this world again,

so much time lost only to be waved 

in my face with a brute slap 

against the loud walls of my mind,

where memories of my father 

sit at an organ and play, unmasked:

so ugly they’re beautiful—

I hope we share this again,

the scars hidden in our DNA.  

 

 

 

 

LOW PATIENT CENSUS

 

There’s no one yelling,

no meltdowns, no crisis—

in fact, the entire back patio

of my treatment center 

is encased in holy silence:

only ghosts of patients past 

and me, serene enough 

to walk out of here, 

but this is my headcase

sanctuary.  Strands of smoke

from my cigarette rotate 

into warped mandalas 

rising out over the fence

into the adjacent alleyway

where nirvana is interrupted 

by a homeless man’s 

dirty chain-linked fence 

request for a spare smoke, 

which I push through to him, 

an inmate of the streets 

I am reprieved from for now, 

hidden in a seaside ghetto,

blessed by Medicare 

and Medicaid 

smooth sailing today 

not a bothersome motherfucker

to suck the wind out of me 

and lead me to drown.

 

 

 

 

COST OF LIVING

 

wars

tornadoes 

hurricanes

earthquakes 

cancer 

viruses 

mental illness:

we all have 

our own 

disasters, 

buried 

in the debt

of fate

FAMILY PHYSICAL

I was five years old

and my brother was 13.

We both sat in the

examination room

of the doctor's office

in nothing

but our white Fruit of the Loom

brand jockeys, our mother

waiting with us, our clothes

piled high in her lap.

I wonder what she thought

as she watched us argue

and punch each other, 

two young men she went

through so much pain

to carry into the world

and make sacrifices for

only to look on, helpless

at the older of her two sons

taught the younger one

how to make a fart sound

with his armpit and his hand,

and we continue to flap

our pasty arms in

a raunchy symphony

to announce the entrance

of the family practitioner,

who gave our poor mother

one long and dirty look

that told her neither one

of us would ever be cured.

 

 

 

 

AS SEEN ON TV

 

I mimicked film and cartoon characters,

adventure heroes, even villains if their 

skin was more comfortable than my own, 

blonde hair and pale flesh I wanted 

to discard for a dark complexion 

and a jet black pompadour 

like Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba,

a dark handsome knock to the jugular 

on a Fender Stratocaster, 

ladies tearing me apart at concert's end–

no more autographs, please.

No plane crash with Buddy and the Bopper

for me, either, I always rose from

the living room carpet with only minor rug burn, 

sleep in my eyes, tired already of having 

better lives waved in my dream-weary face.

BIO: Kevin Ridgeway is a Southern California native currently based in Long Beach. His books include  "Too Young to Know" (Stubborn Mule Press) and "Invasion of the Shadow People" (Luchador Press). His work has appeared The Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Big Hammer, Trailer Park Quarterly, Misfit Magazine, Cultural Daily, Spillway and the American Journal of Poetry, among others. 

New Poem: John D. Robinson

RESIDUE

I am the hacking opium

 cough of Marty Matz

and the elegance and 

mystery of Lamantia,

the natural voice 

conserving Snyder, 

I have the vision of Rimbaud

and the bollocks of Bukowski,

I have the steel nerve 

passions of Corso

and the beat swing of 

Kerouac, the

gentle swirling dreams

 of a raging Patchen,

 the vast windows 

of Frank Lima,

like the doors of 

Ray Bremser and

Bob Kaufman, are

 always open,

the grinning Gagaku 

 of Steve Richmond

 is forever

present, I hear the

 roaring mouse of

McClure and the

 weeping of scattered

Streets belonging 

to Jack Micheline,

I see William Wantling, 

he is high and

is looking for the 

next hit and 

follows me,

I hear Doug Draime

 raise hell and the

eternal alarm for us all,

 as I found

the bullet of Lew Welch,

 the buzzards

circled above, 

I feel

the inspirational 

strength

 of Di prima, 

Anne Waldman, 

Joanna Kyger and

Brenda Frazer and 

Caroline Cassidy,

Magda Cregg and 

many 

sisters rise in 

a literary beacon of

 majestic skies,

as Dan Propper counts

 down gloriously

and Charles Plymell

 radiates poetic

solidarity, as 

Douglas Blazek

 stares with

independence 

and revolution,

I know, 

I am poet.