Surreal Prose and Cons

Umbrella to sewing machine on dissection table: I salute you, old ocean/Breton scorns Hippies/Semi-automatic writing bursts from deviant posers in suits and ties/Euro-egghead Marxist manifestos/Hughes was right/the New no longer shocks/who reads Lautréamont?/surreal like a permanent collection at the Whitney/Breton scorns anarchists/politically incorrect smoke fills café/Man Ray meets Apollinaire at debutante ball/nightclub for nihilism’s fools/Dada’s brooding child/Artaud screams Van Gogh! as they forcibly administer antipsychotic meds/subconscious dreams of inevitable commodification/expect predictable juxtapositions/Breton scorns punk-rock/revolutionary footnotes to an arts thesis/who even reads Maldoror?/dregs of surrealism sold as T-shirts/waiting-room posters/hip postcards/neurosis celebrated/cerebrated/fetishized/fades

The shock of nothing new is so surreal;
Rebellion filters down and fades away
In images that T-shirt merchants steal.
The shock of nothing new is so surreal!
Nor Freud nor Marx can anything reveal,
And Maldoror has nothing more to say.
The shock of nothing new is so surreal—
Rebellion filters down and fades away . . .

PROMPT #3: write a surreal prose poem

Dada Knows Best

golden-calf

Rebellion—for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know . . .

Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you—
and it meant a lot more in ’32.

You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics—moo !—now draggin’
or herding aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um, make people think . . .” Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus—tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I seem to note, in your constant thrust,
dearth of artistic ability. Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad. . . .

They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).

I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art? NO !
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God . . .

You: Postmodern Art—to the firing squad!

Dada Dethroned & Postmodernism Deconstructed

golden-calf

Rebellion—for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know . . .

Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you
and it meant a lot more in ’32.

You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics (moo ! ) now draggin’
(or herding) aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um – make people think . . .” Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus—tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I seem to note, in your constant thrust,
dearth of artistic ability. Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad . . .

They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).

I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art? NO !
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: “thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God . . .”

You: Postmodern Art—to the firing squad!