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 14thCentury
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!
