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An Approximation of Shit

          "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."
          --Ernest Hemingway

since Bukowski passed
a lot of shit passed
unnoticed

much of it
imitation shit
smells like the real
thing
need
a detector

it's thick
need
a gondola

THE TEMPLE/OUTHOUSE

outhouse on high
where Whitman shat
uncollected poetry
and used leaves
of grass to wipe
his

Hesse
made alliterations
to it using words
like library 
and theater
he died in
his bed of
cerebral
hemorrhage

Hemingway missed the seat
when he was sick and
nowhere else
to go
it was
his greatest work

June left for a weekend
Miller and Nin went to
the only place suited for
the kind of profanity
they needed

outhouse/temple smells
of a thousand broken
hymens lusting lusting
moaning screaming 
with lust

when wearing sunglasses
Robbins can sometimes
see it
sometimes
just too
corny

but
the real thing
has been hidden
in Macondo
filed with
Cuban smoke

temple/outhouse
the place to see
the shit

ALL LIFE IS SUFFERING
DEATH TOO

they want to hang
his balls
on their
forehead

they want
to beat him down
when he's out for
the count

they will
take his corpse too
shove their hand
up his spine
move his lips
make him confess
to being
unhappy
and drunk

they want the shit-king
the shit-grandaddy
the first man to really
use the word
to eat it

but
it is you and me
friend
it is me and you
that eat it
and grin a
shitty grin

don't know shit
from shallot
need a detector
I grew up with
this shit
since birth
perhaps embedded

perhaps even
perhaps even
this piece

this
piece

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