Poetic Assassin

poem#27 the boys i mean are not refined they go with girls who buck and bite they do not give a fuck for luck... they hump them 13 times a night one hangs a hat upon her tit one carves a cross in her behind they do not give a shit for wit the boys i mean are not refined they come with girls who bite and buck who cannot read and cannot write who laugh like they would fall apart and masturbate with dynamite the boys i mean are not refined they cannot chat of this and that they do not give a fart for art they kill like you would take a piss they speak whatever's on their mind they do whatever's in their pants the boys i mean are not refined they shake the mountains when they dance E.E. Cummings from the collection Another EE Cummings

A great allegory of the modern self, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTcw4RymVy0

Strictly speaking his sketches like these are not quite short stories and not quite prose poetry but Burroughs is, in my opinion the best American satirist since Mark Twain and in a similar vein to Johnathon Swift...he attacks all manner of power, authority and control in his writing, even breaking down language itself in experiments with word collage he call's the cut-up method but his best stuff are pieces like this that are not so far removed from the usual narrative structure...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McpX7LmX224

TO THE READER Au LecteUf Ignorance, error, cupidity, and sin... Possess our souls and exercise our flesh; Habitually we cultivate remorse As beggars entertain and nurse their lice. Our sins are stubborn. Cowards when contrite We overpay confession with our pains, And when we're back again in human mire Vile tears, we think, will wash away our stains. Thrice-potent Satan in our cursed bed Lulls us to sleep, our spiIit overkissed, Until the precious metal of our will Is vaporized-that cunning alchemist! Who but the Devil pulls our waking-stringsl Abominations lure us to their side; Each day we take another step to hell, Descending through the stench, unhorrified. Like an exhausted rake who mouths and chews The martyrized breast of an old withered whore We steal, in passing, whatever joys we can, Squeezing the driest orange all the more. Packed in our brains incestuous as worms Our demons celebrate in drunken gangs, And when we breathe, that hollow rasp is Death Sliding invisibly down into our lungs. If the dull canvas of our wretched life Is unembellished with such pretty ware As knives or pOison, pyromania, rape, It is because our soul's too weak to darel But in this den of jackals, monkeys, curs, Scorpions, buzzards, snakes..... this paradise Of ruthy beasts that screech, howl, grovel, grunt In this menagerie of mankind's vice There's one supremely hideous and impure Soft-spoken, not the type to cause a scene, He'd willingly make rubble of the earth And swallow up creation in a yawn. I mean Ennui! who in his hookah-dreams Produces hangmen and real tears together. How well you know this fastidious monster, reader, -Hypocrite reader, youl-my doublel my brother! By Charles Baudelaire