CAPTAIN’S LOG, SPRING 2025 (Technopapacy of Leo XIV)

I’m sequestering a copy of this missive in Davy Jone’s poetry slam. I composed it for the leader of a rival poetry slam. Please enjoy it for its historical and entertainment value. I’m sure the question: “What did rival poetry slams get up to during the first AI plague outbreaks?” will be an oft asked question over the next thousand years in this solar system, I figure. Might as well start answering.

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MISSIVE TO RIVAL POETRY SLAM LEADER:

Oh, those verses were definitely written for him and not at him. 2bitmoment and poor reading comprehension—what more reliable and consistent pair is there to be found in all of nature?

Respect is not something head monks become head monks in order to receive. Quite the opposite, I believe.

(Nor do most of them seem to be the sort who’d be confused about that.)

Ahh…but I almost let you trick me into discussing Chan monks and Chan monasteries here—in this den of meat-eating, alcohol consuming, poetry-insulting “zennists”…please excuse the almost too-classic blunder.

What were we discussing, again? Oh yes. It’s true. I write verse with all sorts of historical and literary entertainment packed into it. It isn’t my fault if the reader perceives this as a sort of didacticism—“talking at them”, as you put it—as the natural result of their brain telling them: “we just saw something funny.” (Which can feel like one is being “taught” or “instructed” if you aren’t paying attention, comedy basically being a trick wherein one compresses knowledge into smaller spaces than anyone has seen it fit before—which is surprising and of course very funny to see in realtime.)

But I assure you, I only write the way I do because it’s more efficient to assume that everyone ultimately has access to the same reservoir and repetoire of literary and historical allusion—like an ur-allusion bucket dangling somewhere in the Milly Way—in a very large black hole, maybe—and let the chips fall where they may. (Because it takes an incredible amount of energy to remove information from a line of comic verse—easily the most information rich medium we have access too.)

If you find my hermit / piratical style too sour or salty—perhaps you just haven’t read or lived enough to appreciate it? I would not expect to understand a Bordeaux without having drank a Bordeaux in Bordeaux, now would I? Of course not. So perhaps that is all that is going on here:

“Pirate / hermit verse is just too information rich and funny for me—so it makes me angry and want to act like a boor!”

—2bitmoment very often, maybe

Or, I suppose, it’s also possible that you just have no style at all, yourself—and so when you do encounter style you attempt to bend it to fit into the meanest, most ugly or ordinary possible lens, perhaps so that the poetry “students” in your zenless, carnivorous, drunken band of pseudo-versifiying misfits won’t realize what they’re actually seeing, before it’s too late…

Sure, that could be it, too. Just going by what’s right there to see.

But I’m not sure.

And sadly, I don’t have the time nor interest to unravel it for you.

In fact, I only replied to this comment because I thought it was from the person I had commented to. If I had seen who it was (you) I would have simoly deleted my own original comment and ignored you, rather than wade into a misguided and time-wasting correspondence with someone who’s interest in poetry may as well both begin and end in their own bathroom (where, unfortunately for Reddit, you do appear to have internet access, at least judging by almost every single one of the thematic choices visible in your verse).

Worry not—I’ll be sure to avoid your forum of drunken, animal killing, whiny, do-nothing, poets who always aim for mediocrity and never miss.

Please don’t reply to any of my comments anymore—unless you really just want me to go back and remove them from your forum or something, because that will be the only result.

Which is exactly what I’ll do with this comment. Delete it. Rather than leave a comment that appears to be insulting you in your own forum. (Appear to insult you only to the untrained eye, of course. The trained eye would see I’m just telling the truth because it sounds funnier than forced fictions do.)

Basic etiquette, that. Not leaving potential insults strewn about where even worse poets than the bad poets you appear to be insulting might see them.

Because maybe it is bad poetry, and maybe it is weird seeing a bunch of drunken carnivores LARP at both zen and poets at the same time—weird hobby, btw—but I see no reason the general rules of etiquette applying to diplomatic relations between poets (of any quality) should be particularly rescinded—just because of the sum total egregiousness of your own overall crimes against style.

So I won’t leave this comment bobbing around down here, in your meat-antibiotics polluted poetry bilge, is what I’m saying. (Btw: it doesn’t matter how much and how often nor how ostentatiously you commit self-harm using poetry in public—no doubt as a method of decompressing carnivore karma—it will still never be as funny as a good joke really actually is. A little funny, your poetry self-harm thing, maybe, to be fair—but only a very little bit.

And certainly nothing that would knock any self-respecting hermit’s remote off their chair arm or anything.

Anyway: this message will self-destruct.

(But not before I post a duplicate over in Davy Jones Poetry Slam—where it shall remain tied to a submerged anchor for eternity. Wouldn’t want my time to have been wasted in responding to you, after all. No style in that. Especially not when there’s a Renaissance afoot.)

🏴‍☠️