the loser's manifesto

i will not: write for my country / exhume a national identity / sip the wine of honour / dab
tears from my heart / describe the evil flowers of my soul / explicate boredom to the
bored / eviscerate the words of babes / submit the thing i sit upon / speak the dialect of
educated slaves / insult the living in footnotes / categorize the abstractions of being:
modernism postmodernism retropostmodernism: hell no (i will not: nurture sweet sibilant
syllables /submit fiction to elegant zombies / conspire with the loyal and true / dispense
language in a pharmacy / open the tin cans of metaphor / admire admired contemporaries /
cease mental fight / wield a merciful sword / blow the phallic balloon of aesthetics /
intone sacred art / seduce virgin syntax / insert simile like simile like simile / forge the
signature of the writing instructor /

he sd:

some nights, he
sd, i expect to
wake
in the prison of
kindness:

i will: praise this unjust world /

i will not: write poetry /

© Robert Martens