A Small Gesture of Gratitude

I have to tell you something. There is an actor in the world

called Joaquin Phoenix, and he’s been acting pretty strangely

lately (messy beard, monosyllables, not promoting random

blockbuster, etc.). Two robots who embody barely one

percent of everything worth hating about the media were

on a 24-hour news channel “analyzing” his “controversial”

interview with David Letterman, a talk-show host.

These polished zombies were speculating about “this whole

controversy” under unkind studio lights, quizzing each

other about whether this actor is acting or actually crazy

or on “drugs”—desperately dry-humping the finer points

of one of the least crucial issues of our moment—

and whether the talk-show host, who all but patented

mainstream deadpan irony, was in fact pissed off

at this actor for appearing on his eponymous talk show

and creating a “controversy” that the human lampreys

who dole out the news with coffee spoons could fasten

themselves to, thus escalating ratings, ad sales, etc.

I have to tell you that I was in a public place, scribbling

about this completely irrelevant but also kind of excellent

Warholian non-interview, and at the very moment my pen

was poking into said cloud of pop-culture effluvium,

I overheard two women behind me, talking about the self-

same non-controversy—let’s just call it a nontroversy:

I think it’s an act I think he’s crazy He’s on drugs I don’t think

so You don’t? But I can’t turn around because I’m afraid

that if I see their faces—let alone make eye contact,

acknowledging in even the smallest way that I am complicit

in the nontroversy—a huge blood-crusted mortar and pestle

will descend from the ceiling and grind my head into a paste.

TV news is killing us and the people who own it are killing us

and the criminals at whose behest they concoct more nontroversies

are killing us and the tons of hairspray and makeup they smear

on the toxic marionettes who mouth nontroversies are killing us,

as is our ignorance of the reality of everyone killing everyone.

If it’s true to say the incubus fills us for the succubi to suck us dry,

why shouldn’t I? Pointing into bottomless, topless, sideless

madness is what scads of poets do and have been doing all along:

we take facts and/or feelings, herd them like butterflies

into killing jars, then run pins through them for the aesthetic

and/or ethical scrutiny of a tiny audience made mostly of other

butterfly-killers. I have to tell you something else:

I have “invented” and am promoting a neologism

for the perineum: the boyband—as in,

“I’m walking funny ’cause I just had my boyband waxed”—

injecting something useless into the lexicon, if you will;

messing on a micro level with the zeitgeist, if you won’t.

I’ve been running this new term—the boyband—

by a number of people recently, thus exposing

and/or confirming myself as the frivolous, vulgar idiot

I frequently am or act like; but that’s the kind of behavior

everyone has come to expect from Americans anyway,

so I am in this sense as American as anyone else.

This poem is turning into a shuddering black hole

of broken rules, much like the Cheney/Bush regime,

albeit silly rules I tend to bray at my students about not

breaking: referring to the poem itself and (worse) to myself

writing it, invoking Penelope and Eliot and celebrities,

hawking awkward similes, referring to “teaching poetry,”

overusing quotes and/or italics, pay no attention to tenses,

not caring whether I’ve inadvertently stolen

a phrase or an image, deploying the word “reality,” etc.

Maybe certain poets should have breathalyzers

connected to their computers or typewriters or hands

so they can’t do what I’m doing right now to this poem.

Next week, if I accidentally meet President Obama

because someone I adore performs an amazing feat or merely

something “controversial,” gets invited to the White House,

needs a plus-one, figures I’m good for a laugh, brings

me along, and I get 15 seconds of face time with

our new commander in chief, I’ll just fuck it up: forget

to mention Prop 8 or Darfur or health care or education,

instead squawk some idiocy about how I’ve decided

we should all call the taint the boyband or hey,

what about that Joaquin Phoenix, so crazy! Maybe not

as scandalous as Grace Slick, a singer, who came this close

to dosing Richard Nixon, another president, with LSD, a drug;

but either way, whether Obama cracks up laughing,

high-fives me and says, Yeah, but what about the girlgroup?

or has the secret service 86 me, or barely blinks and moves on

to the next guest, some perfect mound of reptilian excrement

like Rush Limbaugh will catch wind of this non-event and funnel

it into one of his flatulent Hindenburgs of “controversy,”

so folks can be distracted by “that whole boyband thing,”

or christen it Taintgate—once a thing has a -gate, you can stop

calling the thing “that whole _______thing”—and I’ll take

only this notoriety to my early grave. Nonetheless, I’ll be known

for something—like Penelope, who loomed, or Orpheus, who lyred.

By the way, thanks for nothing E. Spitzer, R. Burris, T. Daschle,

R. Blagor;asld,gkjp—at least S. Palin isn’t, at the time of this

concocting, melting our collective American face off

with her down-home hubris, end-times agendas and meth-

cooking, wolf-killing kin. Has anyone else come up

with the phrase lipstick on a Dick yet? Probably—I call

it The Anxiety of Coincidence (see above for annoying

tics). So much to do, so many rules to redo. But now,

my beloved friend who takes me to the White House,

unwitting kindling for the media blaze, I tell you

this: I’m sorry. Also, you’re welcome. And to those

witnesses who prefer to be protected from poems

and butterflies, I tell you that I’m sorry some insidious force

led you here, but that you, maybe most of all, are welcome.