Anti Rebellion comes from The Greenwood Poet, a book that came out last week as part of my ongoing romance with doubling my years on odd years and then writing that many poems.

I spent a couple of years, off and on, writing about the gothic fantastic and the environment and death, before and after COVID (thought that obviously wasn’t the original intent). I’m going to serialize them on the site for subscribers. If you subscribe for three months, you’ll get this for free. And besides, subscribing is free for the first seven days, so why not try out the Showbear archive?

Of course — 20% will be free for everyone and I encourage you to pick up a copy of the hardback.

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Anti Rebellion

“The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels.”

— David Foster Wallace

Give me childish gall or give me death. 
Give me my child's gall at the moment of her death.
In a chalice. Watered down with
Three-dollar wine.
Make my entendre take vows of celibacy.
Revere untrendy human troubles:
Idol idylls, 
Enshrine sincere shriners
The big beer belly ones with the tiny jelly belly cars in the annual Little Egypt Parade.

Convict me of sadness.
Convict me of courage.
Do not convict me of a sad courage.
Only courageous sadness:
To be a man and to weep openly,
Grown ass tears in public streaming down
A muscled, bearded frame, or
An unmuzzled, clean-shaven cheek with its kamikaze attempt at poetry
Till death do we part.

"You have been charged, how do you plea?"
"I plead that I am happy, your honor."
"The court finds you guilty on all counts. Twenty years, no parole."
"They will be my happiest years, your honor."
"Are you being ironic? Are you making fun of me?"
"No, ma'am. I'm happy to go to prison for this, your honor. I deserve prison and prison will be a monastery for a man such as me."
"Are you mocking my honor?"
"No, ma'am, I believe You're Honor's your honor, your honor."

I ought not start writing such poems.
It'd be the death of me. 
And my kids (see above).
And my poems: still
Births in the literary wing of the hospital
Oh wait, it has a heartbeat?
Post-birth abort it, then.
Oh wait, you resuscitated it?
Gas. Injections. Slay the little childer.
Too sincere, repressed, backward, quaint. 

Virgin-birth-naïve.

Gollum, in his way and with more excuses
(For brief acquaintance)
Made the same mistake:
Confusing kindness 
With blindness.

Water-to-wine-naïve.

Give me your yawns, your rolled eyes, your cool smile, your PBR, your bald-with-beards, your long-on-top, your feminine jeans that you don't quite remember whether it is a good or a bad that they're feminine anymore. Or if they still are feminine -- per se -- anymore -- you make them tighter, yes tighter for the girls: leggings, please, you beg. Let pants fade into non-pantity. Make panty pants. Panting, you thirsty un-rational animal, you. And now yawn after feasting. Roll your eyes. Cold blooded smile. Give me your huddled hipsters. Not the external kind. The seen-it-all, done-it-all, don't-mean-shit kind. I lift my lamppost beside the wardrobe door:
Are you ready you non-pardox? You tertium-quidless binary? You unironic irony? Poor hollowed out thing?

Give me banality or give me death.
Give me banality that gives me death.
Give me, give me, give me my banal death. Drought or drowning.
My death. Seriously, shut up and hand it over right now. I want it back. Please. And thank you. 
They're called the magic words. 
Give me anxieties and pains and sufferings and whatever kind of death shall please Thee
Even now from thy hand, willingly and cheerfully I receive it.
It's hilarious. 
Dying.
(No irony. I mean it:
I scoff at this stingless boney thing.)
And give me liberty and give me death.
And give me the liberty of my death.
I receive thy child's gall. My child's gall. And the gall of her three-dollar wine.
Give me the heat death of the universe.
Give me the nonentity of fading science.
Give me the decay of art.

I lift my lamppost beside the wardrobe door:

Let it fade. Let it fade. Let it fade to black.
Let the black fade to nothing per se.
Let it really be a real Nothing.
Not black, not space, not time ticking.
Just nothing.

Then make it a real, live Nothing.

Then give me the Resurrection of all things,
Wake up whatever causes sleep. Real ones, every one listed in the
Manifest.
I mean it. 
I will not avert my gaze. 
It's a staring contest. Double dare. 
Look into my eyes. My born ogler's eyes.
My healed Tom Sawyer eyes.
My childish voyeurism with no lust in sight.

You blinked.

Or maybe I just see through you?
Maybe I see through you who see through everything?
You are not the means by which I 
See tree and stock, rock and wave, heat and grave,
Flame and flagon.
Soil. And breath. 
Real things. Water never disgusts me.

Oh you poor, poorrich littlebig nothingthing.
What, do like dewdrop-laden morning grasses hurt your newly bare feet?
Is gossamer now razor wire on those see-through now-gloveless fingers of yours?
Did mocking substance cap your bare knees?
Is seeing through things making you see-through?

Most windows forget their sills these days.
Very few glasses bear lenses. 
And fewer still remain ensilvered.

But last of all?

Only like three kaleidoscopes and four spyglasses remain.

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Photo by Kourosh Qaffari on Unsplash