Crap
Published July 2005
Centennial Press
Milwaukee
26 pages
Crap is an interesting little book. It's a long poem in ten parts and, on one level, is quite literally about crap—a joyous cesspool of scatology. However, Crap also covers the figurative crap we confront in our lives: unread books, American Idol, the TV news, Britney Spears and bestselling poetess Jewel, the overly-talkative man sitting next to you at the bar, a woeful lack of adequate expletives in our language, vociferous geese, and the neighbor's dogs. Ultimately, Crap considers what's divine and what's profane, and if the distinction even matters. A sample section is below.
Crap was originally written over a long weekend in March 2005 on an old Royal Model A typewriter, crafted as a response to A.R. Ammons' Garbage. Although this was the first chapbook I published, Crap is a very unusual work for me; it's different in terms of style and subject than virtually anything else I've written. In some ways, the poem is a record of its own creation, describing my friends with me that weekend and even commenting on how crappy it may be to read a poem entitled "Crap." It's fun, though, and I remain proud of it; in the end, I hope you too will agree that Crap is good shit.
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6. holy crap, people say, when they wish to confuse the divine with the profane,
and chuck says a silent prayer every time i take the lord’s name in vain,
and that’s fine, i say, but i’ll try from now on to be less and less vain,
as god doesn’t play dice with the universe, einstein said (this coming
from a man who was instrumental in the development of the most unholy
device of mankind): and god gave, as chuck would say, canadian geese
the blessing to take lukewarm craps while in flight, and their bones are hollow tubes, sacred flutes perhaps, and their fingers have elongated so easily,
the better to pray with each beat of their wings, and i think about this
as i take a shit in the library: and it smells like a vanilla candle
puked in there, which is to say it smells like crap, but not real crap
but faux crap, as if that was somehow better, a shitty scent
to cover up the scent of shit, and among the leather-bound sages—
addled ornithologists dithering about migration patterns, flyways,
habitats, egg colors, and nesting: all that kind of crap—
while on the toilet, i think about the prayers of birds, and i think:
holy crap: —holy crap.
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