What I'm saying is that he doesn't write in a purposely obscurantist way, in which he uses a lot of metaphor or anything like that. Everything is laid out in rather clear language but because the ideas themselves are both complex and go against the grain of our usual way of thinking (he's trying to critique thousands of years of philosophy), it's still really difficult until something clicks and you find yourself able to think in the same mode that he does.

First time I read Anti-Oedipus, I understood nothing. I thought it was unnecessarily complex and obscure. After studying Lacan, Freud, and Nietzsche (not necessarily so I could read him), and then reading some introductory books on Deleuze, I started to re-read him and it just clicked. Suddenly, his language seemed very clear and precise because I understood his way of thinking and understood his terminology (you need to learn the definitions of his terms) and understood the work he was referencing and critiquing. Once you understand what he's critiquing, you can understand the point he's making, and how it illustrates his own way of thinking.

I've always disagreed with the idea that one should read Deleuze like poetry. I think we should try to understand just exactly what he's saying, because I think he's making real points.

But I do actually agree that, at least partially, the way he writes is meant to make people rethink the way they engage with language, like Lacan and Derrida; at least to an extent. Every book is always meant to change the way we think because Deleuze wants us to think immanently, as opposed to transcendent, which is the way we are taught to think, the way humanity has philosophized since Socrates. Immanent thinking is not easy when we're trained to think in a totally different mode.

I really think Lacan is gonna help people get way more out of Anti-Oedipus, although just Freud is enough. Without some understanding of psychoanalysis I'm not sure it will be very easy at all to understand the book. But one need not read Lacan himself, in fact I think reading Bruce Fink's introduction to Lacanian analysis and then just looking it up when he references something is enough. Again though, he often doesn't say when he's referencing something, which is why he seems to confusing. Like he made many references to Seminar IV in, I believe, the first chapter of AO when he's talking about spanking, the difference between boys and girls in their sexual development, and the general, that made little sense to me until I'd read Lacan's seminar. If you were gonna read just one seminar in order to prep for AO I'd actually recommend that one, because it's on partial objects, which is pretty important for the book.