Posted by NL on February 05, 2005 at 14:30:56:
Robert Silly! Little Dorfy!
I knew Robert Silly as well as the next man, I guess, having endured far too many of his notorious temper tantrums, raving maniacal drunken binges, maudlin crying jags, and other mood swings. And yet I admired him. I admired his WORK, as few others could, having an aesthetical sense so highly evolved that the rest of the human race is still, even after all these years, trying to catch up. I wish them luck. Try they ever so much, I do not believe they ever will catch up. Just let them try! As for Robert Silly, I must say, not all could or would appreciate the man's great genius:
Brussels sprouts,
Brussels sprouts,
I like them real good.
GOD gave me the apple!
GOD gave me the orange!
But the devil made Brussels Sprouts.
Yes, that was Robert Silly. And this too, is Robert Silly:
Oh why am I always suffreeeen,
Why am I always so blooooo,
And then why am I always
so sad, when I could be dead?
TOOT! TOOT!
Oh why oh why, I wonder, how it came to be, that that self-same Robert Silly, whose meanings meant so much to me, that that self-same Robert Silly I say, with a snuff-stained snout and a mean temper-MENT, always so pissed-off as well he should be in this vile shitty excuse for a World of Wonder-- I ask again and again why oh why that that self-same Robert Silly SLEW Little Dorfy, SLEW her one fine day, and ate portions of her left tit?
It seems I sometimes hear as of old, Robert Silly, my good friend! cry out again from that crapper where he practically lived, emitting the vile shit he called his own, given the evil diet he was all but doomed to consume, given the paltry income his writing provided: "Oh! Say it again! WAS Eggbutt of Angling Briton so fine a soul, and DID that ancient gentleman really advance the art of poesy so, as some men of learning claim, or was that Eggbutt of elder tymes but a shit dawg dunce, a wuthless arsewipe, as I rectum him to be-- and am I not Robert Silly, and must you not mess with me?"
Probably not, as Rober Silly is dead, done to death, prosecuted and persecuted by some scum bag big city DA out to make a name for himself, although I admit, I sometimes myself had an urge to kill him (Robert Silly), especially when he hit the bottle and got belligerent and stood toe-to-toe with me, swirling his tiny fists in the air just beneath my nose, threatening to expunge me and mine for all generations for affronts and offenses I had no knowledge of-- most likely epiphenomena grown out of an alcohol fog, and a methedrine mania. I am aware of no drug or substance that Robert Silly was known not to abuse and in that he was all too much like a Welsh poet, living his substance down to the last bitter dreg. But those words! Those thoughts! Gentlemen! Gentlemen! I am speaking of an enormous riot of untamed fancy-- but perhaps all along those enormous boobs, and the precious freckled dancing buttocks of Little Dorfy, that other great cultural icon of this age of infamy, hung like a sort of cloud of doom over the rapier mind of Robert Silly. I do remember a time when I took pity on him (Robert Silly) and invited him over to drink some beer with me and watch some tv and eat some pizza. He had had but little experience with the mass media, living alternately in public toilets and cardboard boxes as he did, scribbling verse on any handy scrap, and as soon as he stopped cursing me for the shallowness of my taste, and the abysmal quality of my beer, the cheapness of the pizza, with it's melted plastic cheese, his eyes glazed over and a long thin line of drool formed at the corner of his mouth and ran its way down to the point of his chin, where it began to drip into the slice of pizza he held in one filthy mitt. I wondered instantly what the matter could be, and there upon the crt there danced and cavorted Little Dorfy in her summer dress, and it seemed that sun-kissed boobs and a bulging freckled butt filled the room-- I forget what she was selling that time. It could have been something for vaginal itch. It could have been a dental floss. It might have been the President. It little matters. I sighed, then, inwardly, and cursed myself for a fool. What oh what had I done? My job, if I chose to accept it, had been to preserve and insulate and isolate the World's Greatest Living Poet from the tacky cultural influences that would seek to contaminate him. But I fucked up. I fucked up big time. Robert Silly had fallen under the spell of Little Dorfy like a veritable naif. And it was too goddamned late to do anything about it.
Well, shit. Sigh. The next thing you know, Robert Silly vanished and Little Dorfy turned up dead one day in her big Hollywood mansion, stabbed to death, with half of her left boob eaten away by some creature with small, sharp teeth. And next thing you know, there was Robert Silly, looking weird in a suit several sizes too big for him, with his hair cut and slicked down in an unnatural fashion, his beard gone, being persecuted by a scum bag big city DA with a name to make, little knowing or much caring what the fuck he was doing to the state of American letters. And then not long after that, Robert Silly vanished behind bars, on death row, and not long after that they killed him. And then they danced in the streets, all those who had worshiped the very air Little Dorfy breathed, happy they were, they say, to have had their vengeance. The way I think of it, the World's Greatest Living Poet collided with a trivial poptart of a being and the poptart won. Yes, Little Dorfy won, even though she died pretty bloodily, if you can believe the lies on tv. I don't.
I leave you with this, from Robert Silly, in his prime:
Look! There's Robert Desnos in a trance!
Half-buried in his bedclothes
he looks like a Sicillian
bill collector's victim!
Maybe his dream contains
an ancient "vision of wings"
gleaming in Europe's sky!
No one here can speak for him
but I wish I could
exchange his dreams for mine.