Clickbait

Clickbait or
clitbait?
Seems a lot of online articles exist
so (dis)connected people can rub their special
spots
furiously, working their way toward
their “O” face
of outrage;
getting off on
hair-trigger warnings
and incendiary stimuli.
There was once a time when
it was an artist’s role to
provoke
through “controversy”—
the word meaning literally
to “turn against”,
like a fingertip turning against
the G-spot
to provoke a climax and
catharsis;
but now everyone is a critic
trying to earn finger-clicks
by denouncing everyone else’s work,
all in the pursuit of that social justice cause
known the world over as
ad revenue.
Well, as a creator
daring the fray of online competition
among the bland, common flow of
mediocrity, let me tell you something:
thanks.
Sincerely— thank you.
After all, you are the
Baptist
to my
Bootlegger,
beloved.
My most adored.
Mon amour.
Without you and your
triggers
what good would my work be?
What good is a rotten egg
unless it can make a big stink
on someone else’s front porch?
And what good is the moral
high ground
unless you can lob
rotten eggs
of your own?
So hold me, dearest,
as we twirl about this
symbiotic tango,
to and fro,
as our audience croons
and rubs their clits and dicks
in vicarious climax, which is
ever deferred and ever
profitable.
You are my
sugar momma,
and I am your sugar
Dada,
and how sweet the succor
we favor in each other,
like plastic fruits we eat
while we eat
the scenery, the two of us as
actors upon a social media stage,
waiting for the audience
to throw roses, or
rotten tomatoes, the latter sustaining better
in their own way
than the petals of praise.
You are my destined sweetheart,
my star-crossed lover
courting justice against my
controversy,
and as you vilify my work
I adore you, for everyone loves a good
villain,
and this paradox is the path to
prosperity.
So bless me with your
condemnations,
tell me I’ve been a
bad boy,
tell me I’m a
racist,
a misogynist,
a homophobic redneck,
and bend me over your lap(top)
for a good spanking.
I will work all the harder
as you hunch on my provocative art; as you
hump upon it viciously to show your
dominance
while we both turn tricks for a few
pennies per thousand clicks,
like Pornhub, but the two of us being
too shameful
to show our true faces.
Sometimes this feels so good
I almost forget
we’re both faking it.
Aren’t we?

The Mind/Body Relation/Ship

I am captain of this ship of bone and blood,
overseeing its sails of sinew, its wheel of nerves,
and it rides the great ocean of Life, that grand flood
of experience, for I am the master whom it serves.
Lord of my vessel, I do as I think I please,
charting a course for a fabled treasure hoard,
and while sailing these seven sensorial seas
I discover a coffin, by chance, and haul it aboard.
Curious for coin, I open the casket to discover
no coin, but a woman who has no beating heart;
yet she rises and embraces me, like a lover,
and tells me her name is Francine Descartes.
I know not what to think of her, or her cool skin,
for while she is beautiful, there seems something strange
in her eyes, and her movements, as if within
her heart there is a hollowness of human range.
Yet, strange as she is, she does me no harm,
and wishes to do little more than to dance
round and round in clockwork circles, arm in arm,
keeping rhythm with me—yet so odd in her glance.
While dancing on deck with this flotsam daughter,
I cannot tell if she is made of flesh or of wood
and so, curious, I throw her out into the deep water
and watch her float—as I would float if I could,
but such heavy thoughts now weigh upon me
and doubt makes me pause at the edge of starboard
to stare at my ship’s reflection upon the open sea,
knowing that the ship is my soul, too, my mind thus moored
in that flawed flesh; and no matter how I plot this trip
body and mind are as one, the same, ever together
so that the captain always goes down with his ship—
always, inevitably, even if he prays for halcyon weather.
More frightening, I think of Theseus and his long-lived boat
and the paradox of his many-timbered hull
and wonder if I have replaced myself while afloat
in the brain fluid of my waterlogged skull.
So many timbers have rotted and cracked and sank
during my journey’s course heretofore…
Perhaps “I” should just walk the plank
and become another shipwreck on the ocean floor.