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The House That Fauci Built
Within the U.S. government, he was the highest paid
He sighed, denied, and p-lied; he was a yo-yo on display.
Like Doctor Faustus, Doctor Fauci, sold his soul to be
an actor on the World stage, there at the CDC.
The Wuhan lab—this is the house that Doctor Fauci built,
and was adorned, by the American taxpayer gilt.
This is the virus in the house made by the CCP.
experiments in gain-of-function, bringing them to be.
A wingless bat from some wet market, lo, a bio-mouse
that ate this gain-of-function virus lying in this house?
Here is the cat that chased the rat in this house Fauci built;
from which South African, Brazilian, and UK strains spilt.
This is the panda bear who ordered covering it up,
the fierce pandemic issued forth from vial, bamboo cup,
bamboozled by the CCP, with sev’ral millions killed,
this is the house of Xi Jinping Doc Fauci helped to build.
.
.
Blah, Blah, Blah
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
—George Orwell, “Animal Farm”
O, horror, horror, horror, horror, ho! This mob’s like sheep.
They claim that they are woke when really they are fast asleep.
They claim there’s more than one race in the World—when there’s not.
They claim there’s more than just two sexes. What a bunch of rot.
They claim all lives don’t matter, only some lives count to them.
They blather—blah, blah, blah; all others are barbarian.
They shout down others with their bleating, angry vitriol.
They love to cancel culture from their gritty, shitty hole.
O, horror, horror, horror, horror! They are in so deep.
The BS that they shovel out makes one gigantic heap.
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Each
Each second of each day and night we billions go about…
our business, good or bad, inspired or not, in grace or out.
Across the Globe, the powerful wreak havoc on the weak,
self-righteous and outrageous ones attack the kind and meek.
How strange it is to live among such crude barbarians,
who constantly are barking…mad…and crass contrarians
When I consider how much better life could be without
the fussing and the fighting over everything in doubt,
then I imagine many others too must think like me,
and happily I rise and sink into eternity.
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An excellent posting from Mr. Wise with the perfect photograph of Doctor Fauci from Evan Mantyk.
Love it all! But especially the last two. And, yes, the photo is wonderful. Here’s my hope . . . the sheep–gleefully, dutifully, smugly, in assurance of personal superiority–take their medicine, and, so doing, ensure future elections will not be so close. Amen?
I am thankful for Mr. Mantyk’s willingness to post some of my poems @ SCP due to my contrarian views on poetry, my poetry is less liked here than elsewhere, and the kind of spontaneous poetry that I write. As I mentioned to another editor this week, my poetry is the bane of an editor, as it has been for Mr. Mantyk for these last eight years.
It is that spontaneous poetry I write. In this respect, my poetry is like that of Realist Walt Whitman’s in that I am ever revising…after…the publishing; for it is then when I see the original product in print that I am able to more abstractly criticize it. Then I can be more accurate, and acute.
Take, for example, “The House That Fauci Built”. Of the three poems here, it had the most potential; but it failed in many ways. After its first three printings, I see that; in the midst of its production I did not see that. Its main failure is its unwieldliness. I attempted too much too soon, a typical Wisean flaw. I like the idea, but I never got control of it. Even now the corrections I would make are cursory. In its fourth printing (if there is one), I would put L1 & L2 into the present tense; I would place an exclamation mark at the end of L9, and replace the question mark in L10 with a period; I would replace rat with mouse in L11, and expand on the cat there as well. I feel I should also tighten up S4; but the poem really never settled in my mind. And that seems unlikely, as I have already written other poems, and more successfully, though they are not yet published.
The second poem, this is its first printing; however, creates a different dilemma. The Shakespearean nod in L1 & L9 is too histrionic. I should alter them; but I don’t know what to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a word, whatsoever. Here the problem is not with what I have written, or how I have written it, but that I felt compelled to write it. That is a telltale sign that I have control over my material. What surprises me most about the diction is its pedestrian quality. I am utterly amazed at that voice, because of its unexpected simplicity. [I am seeing the brilliance of Mozart more and more.]
In the third poem, published as frequently as the first, I am okay with Mr. Mantyk’s alteration of the title, from “Ea-ch” to “Each”, where deconstruction yields to clarity of theme. I would revise the misspelling in L8 to “everything”. In retrospect, I see the Beatle-Keatsian-Herder dismount is odd, but I still like the final line.
I know it may seem odd that I comment on my own poetry; however, there is reason to this madness. Who other than Poe could have critiqued “The Raven” in his generation? and who other than Pound could have improved Eliot’s “The Wasteland”?
Hi BDW, setting aside your poetry’s history and political point of view, which I disagree with on every point, I do think your estimation of your poems is about right. Your first poem might benefit from a more focused argument; but then poems like yours are difficult to critique. You’ll never write great poetry writing poems like these. They’re in the same genre as the propagandistic poetry of the Soviet Union, Mao, or North Korea.
On the other hand, writing the poems is/was probably cathartic and cathartic for others to read. So, a short shelf-life for poems like these but they do make a glorious little flame before they sputter out.
Addressing first, these few critical comments, I wonder why Mr. Tessatore finds this an excellent posting, what about the last two tennos M. Gail loves, and how R. F. Brooks thinks these poems make a glorious little flame.
“How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
—William Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice”
I am thankful for R. F. Brooks’ willingness to remark upon my three tennos and my critique of them. First off, although I cannot do so, M. Brooks’ willingness to set aside Mr. Wise’s “poetry’s history” makes Brooks’ criticism no different than everyone I know of in this generation. Mr. Wise has written essays and microbios on the topic, but the response has been “no comment”. The main concerns in this last decade of Mr. Wise’s poetry have been 1) the internal line, 2) the tennos, and 3) docupoetry—
all missing from previous decades.
I do believe M. Brooks is on to something important when he calls these works “cathartic”. Here I find I am in complete agreement; for not only does the second tennos feel exactly like that; but that is exactly what Wise was striving for when he wrote it. Here his models are the ancient Greeks, particularly the dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the Greek lyricists.
However, M. Brooks has missed entirely the rhetorical influences on the poetry of Wise. Take, for example, this more recent poem, which shows the influence of paranoid, PostModern leftists, like Mr. Ginsberg:
The AG Report
by “Weird” Ace Blues
America, we heard it was the Russians for four years.
They ate Ed Snowden when he told them all about his fears.
ObamaNation frightened him; the Swamp grew more corrupt.
Demonic-Rat crime-families feared you might inter—rupt.
America, CCCP fell 1991;
they didn’t take the Commi-tsar but put in this here one.
America, it was the Scarlet Dragon plaguing folks;
the CCP, in 2020 hindsight, stole our votes.
America, this isn’t 1961 no more;
a doped-up President and bro, with mob and reds at war,
America, this Resident, demented, social, mad,
disrupted the Moroni-c Trumpet—Damn that tune was bad!
The Mob and NeoCommunists are happily ensconced/
Wisconsin, what the hell has happened? You came to the Swamp?
Actually influencers on Wise’s rhetoric include so many figures I hardly know myself. Shakespeare, I suppose, has had the largest influence; but even a Modernist voice, like that of George Orwell adds important nuance, as E. E. Cummings added powerful finesse. It is true that my unpublished work “Sonnets From the Chinese” looked at 59 writers, including Mao. As well, the last three centuries of Russian literature have had a profound influence on my rhetoric; it is the Soviet dissidents in prose and poetry, that I frequently go to, to help understand the present. The philosophers from the preSocratics to the New Millennialists have also influenced my rhetoric. I love the rhetoric of Plato and Aristotle, but also Nietzsche, the Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein. In fact, the influences are so numerous I dread to even think upon them, lest I fall into a hole, far deeper, and more profound than Lewis Cxarroll ever surmised.
The shelf-life I am thinking of is at the edge of a grand new future Continent whose enormous reach is beyond my ken, but which excites me to no end!