Poetry Friday
This one is years old now, but seems to have gained new relevance. I also, I hasten to point out, wrote it about four years before the first episode of Deadwood aired
Fucking Poem
The fucking music that we fucking make
with fucking expletives is fucking fine
by me. I’ll fucking tell you fucking why.
Like Humpty Fucking Dumpty only better -
not paying fucking words to fucking mean,
but fucking paying them to not mean fuck.
I mean how fucking fucking ceases meaning
the merest fucking thing to do with fucking.
It fucking purely becomes fucking rhythm,
an imbecilic fucking glue that binds
our fucking syntax into fucking meter -
a fucking pre-semantic nursery rhyme
like back when fucking fucking meant fuck all.
The fucking linguists fucking call it something -
“like”; “um”; “you know” – I’m fucked if I know what though.
Of course it’s fucking not as fucking simple
as I just fucking made it fucking sound,
since what the fuck is fucking but a fucking
imbecilic fucking rhythm binding
us fucking pre-syntactically together?
And fuck, when we say fucking it’s a marker -
and fuck it but we’re talking fucking men here
since fucking women have more fucking words -
where the fuck was I now? Oh yeah, that fucking
is how we say, We care about this subject.
And what do men care more about than fucking?
Not fucking much, is what. Not fucking much.
© 1999 by Jim Henley
Comment by charlie —
March 2, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
What the fvck. Your comments policy says mask profanity. Poetic license? I’m just asking, I don’t give a sh;t.
Comment by Madeline F —
March 2, 2007 @ 11:50 pm
Aw, jeez. I had this delightful counter to your poem, but charlie’s comment spiked that but good. You really want us to mask our profanities? Bother. I am distraught. Have I caused aught of offense by my innocent usage of American in this blog’s hallowed halls? Pray assure me that this is not the case! The soul rebels to think that one could bring so cruelly the crushing blows of the outside world into this home of gentle reason thou hast so generously provided! The horror! The horror!
Comment by moocat —
March 3, 2007 @ 12:20 am
I get it.
I like the Curly poem more though — way frakking more!
Comment by bago —
March 3, 2007 @ 12:30 am
What’s worse? an atrocity, or ising the strongest $%^ing language to oppose it?
Comment by bago —
March 3, 2007 @ 12:31 am
And by ising I mean using.
Comment by Michael —
March 3, 2007 @ 12:32 am
I believe this calls for a bluestocking filter for WordPress. If it sees one of the CarlinWords, it wraps it in a span with a class that lets the system pick how to deal with it, such as “clocksacker” A simple javascript style selector could change from “Rummy” to “Cheney”, with variations in between. “Goodness” and “Oh my bows and buttons” would encode “d@mn” and “sh!t” for Don, whilst the Dick setting would also include Pat Leahy and acts attributed to Rick Santorum by Dan Savage.
It’s a win-win.
Comment by Mona —
March 3, 2007 @ 7:22 am
Oh my stars and garters, I had no idea I was being hosted at such a pool of filth. But as long as Jim brings it up:
True, so true. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.