Heaven Help Us

I tried on a kimono and danced all night in the summer parade.
Problem is, costumes are not for me. I never wear robes and I’ve
never tried on a dress. Cross-dressing has become the thing.
People are confused about their identities but I don’t care
to change my sex.

Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not all about panties and lip
gloss. People are obsessed with externals: he wants to sue
because his boss forgets to call him, her. This suggests to me
it’s not about sexuality. It’s about power. The desperate
pursue a foothold. They don’t want to be girls. They want control.

They’d like to boss other people around. It’s a kind of mugging.
Here’s my dick: kiss it. We are dealing with desperation, not
sexual confusion. Not insecurity but political correctness.
People are not content to be themselves; they have
to have others confirm it; they’re looking for confirmation.

The pleasure in sexual difference must be the joy of ditching others,
discovering one’s private space. Today the different want to join a club.
They are not unique; they are lonely. They want to live in a leper colony
with a Ferris wheel. People will soon greet strangers by smelling each other’s
crotches. In time, we’ll be on all fours.

It’s a canine revolution; the impulse to defecate in one neighbor’s
yard. My best advice is to get away. Turn yourself in. Find
a country that puts felons on a deserted island and commit a crime.
Get appointed to the Supreme Court. Live under an overpass. Become
a chicken farmer. The only escape is to avoid university graduates.

Disconnect. Become a Muslim and head for Saudi Arabia.
Don’t let them force you to nurse your child in public. Don’t let
them turn you, a boy, into a girl. Run away. Be careful, though.
They are heading for the barn with a paid brush and a bucket.
It says now all men are created equal.

No Longer Fit to Print

I have always wanted to be a girl named Polly.
I know. One wonders why. Why Polly? There’s
Pollyanna, after all. Polly, want a cracker? No.
Polly has always loomed large to me. Polly,
that’s me. That she’s not a man means nothing.

Polly wants a cracker. Yes, me, too. Cheese and
crackers at that, preferably a good Emmenthaler,
not just Swiss. Good Christ, that and a complete set
of Trollope. That is what pleases a man in the long
run. Don’t forget I am not a girl, yet.

If I were a girl named Polly, I’d wash up before supper,
of that you can be sure. Even if they don’t wash in
Nashville, they do in Memphis, on that you can bet
the farm. The girls have gone to town to lose their pride.
You are terribly lucky to have been left behind.

Trollop is far superior to that dreadful Cervantes,
just don’t spill the beans. Harvard’s Loeb Library
thinks itself very grand but it lost the option on Tom
and Jerry. With that, much can be explained. Borges
would have known what to do to stop the death of learning.

They’ve been traipsing around Europe for years, like
Paul Bowles and Christopher Isherwood, whoremongers
in the wrong hotel. Men searching for boys and being
sold underage girls. The sort of fellows who pay to have
their backsides polished. The kind of people who teach.

Too ridiculous to be pretentious, that’s what L.A. is.
A fairy tale without a theology. No doubt, one reason
it fails to rain properly on the plains of destiny. Good
grief, what do you expect? She’s been at him since
he ran away with Polly. They’ll read the will tomorrow.

In Rehearsal

Darling, I don’t think so.
Can I hear that again, please? More feeling.
More?
Would you try that, please? Once more, then.

Darling, I don’t think so. How was that?

“Darling, I don’t think so.” Is that the line?
Line!
Where’s Sarah? Sarah!

Miss Saslock is dead. I rang you this morning.
What? That Sarah? My reader? Why didn’t you say so?
Our Sarah? Does she still have my script?

Well, send someone over to retrieve it, will you? I really don’t
give a shit right now about her privacy. Just get that fucking script,
is that too much to ask?

“Darling, I don’t think so” can’t be the line. Who says that? What
is this, Noel Coward? Even fags don’t talk like that.

Uhm, Ian, I take offense at that remark, if you don’t mind. I don’t think
there is any reason…this language is not called for, is all I’m saying.
For crying out loud, would you shut up? Just shut the fuck up, will you?
We are working. This is not a sand box. If you want to play house,
go take a walk, go to the park.

What did you say? What did you just say to me?
I said, if you want me to prove how much I love fags, take out your fucking
cock and I’ll suck it. Otherwise, please shut the fuck up. MEN AT WORK.
You get it?

I never. I’m leaving. I WILL go to the park. I’m going. Anyone want to join me?

What are you going to do?
Shit on the grass, what else?
Let’s all go shit on the grass.
Yes, let’s.
I love it! Fuck Sarah Saslock.
That’s right. Fuck her.
Fuck death.
Fucking A. Somebody bring some toilet paper.

French Revolution

It’s all about the money, not the population.

Let’s revert to the camp fires.
We’ll take up flints and arrows.
We’ll make spears and pierce the heart of this so-called art.
Smash it all; shred it; throw it into the sea.

My friend Keisha McCormick took one look at Mark Rothko’s Void #3
and wanted to vomit. She redoubled her gaze. “I look at this painting
but can’t find my people. I only see you.” Where, she demanded,
are my African-American brothers and sisters?

This is not part of my people. We’re not at the center;
we’re not even at the side. Why must I study this perverse style?
This is not Mississippi. The sexes may be mingling, but the races are splitting.
In future, Kanye West must be shown at the side of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

We are radical practitioners of right thinking, determined to destroy
Western Civilization. We must step back to move forward:
first go the arts and the decorations, then the courts, the laws and institutions.
By the time we’re through, they’ll be nothing left
but vaginal jelly and sawed-off shotguns.

If I can’t see my people, I want to get rid of it as Genghis Khan
and the Taliban dynamited Bamiyan. We’ll destroy the offending statuary.
Why should a museum be a sanctuary? We are determined to enact our purity.
There can be no beauty without justice.

You give us our cut. 13 percent or we’ll burn the art, set the museums on fire.
We’re kind-hearted, loving and caring, but you give us the sculpture
or we’ll cut your necks. Oprah deserves to be right up there on that Sistine
Chapel with Louis Farrakhan and Michael Jackson.
Until that day, that’s nothing but another ugly ceiling.

Guernica? The Prado: what’s that got to do with it?
Why’s that horse’s neck cut in two? Picasso use a guillotine?
He’s as much a sadist as an artist. I’d call that horse a gelding.
How can the symbol of human suffering be depicted by animal mutilation?

It is not just about renaming Yale after Malcolm.
We must demolish the Washington Monument.
We burn with righteous resentment. My parents only make $229,000 a year.
They can afford to send me to college but can’t buy me an Audi.

Put this shit in a vault, send it to the university archives. Who
wants to see Chippewa or Oneida paddling bark canoes?
Subservience to white settlers is offensive. This art depicts a race-based view.
Those offended have declared it harmful. The First Amendment is racist.

This country needs new style of art. How about renaming the Grand Tetons?
Or Michelle and Barack Obama, both nude, placed on a golden chariot?
They’d look cool next to Lady Liberty. That’s what I’m saying.
Where is the people’s eternal flame?

It’s all about the money, not the population.