A Goonie (like Lady Bunny)

Let's workshop this bitch!

A Goonie (like Lady Bunny)  

Bataille and de Sade held by him
in high esteem, his core crew—
let no one ever get it confused— 
is an eclectic band of misfits
(living, dead, and yet to be born),
challengers of groundless taboos:
apologists for miscegenation, 
for crossdressing and cannibalism,
for zoophilia and necrophilia, 
for polyamory and incest,
for prostitution and suicide; 
exposers of hypocrisies like 
glomming down (morning and night) 
cow and chicken while finding 
it immoral to eat dog and horse, or like
glomming down (morning and night)
the reproductive flesh of plants—
creatures that cannot run away,
that scream when cut—while finding 
it immoral to steal milk and honey
(the only two murder-free foods)
from cows and bees.—So no,
never is he to be lumped together 
with the regressive right. Ecce homo.

His war is against the cancellers— 
especially the weird among them since,
on top of seeming the loudest right now,
the biggest enemy of weirdos are weirdos 
who do not want to be seen as weirdos.
His war is against the censors,
the anti-Nietzschean shamers, who  
impose the anti-diversity demand 
that reality be made a “safe space”
where they will never be shaken 
by literature and professors,
by statistics and comedians,
by science and outsiders—
a world where it is “wrong think” 
(indeed, traumatic violence) to say, 
for example, “Obesity is unhealthy” 
or that “There might be a basis 
in biology to sex differences” 
or that “There is likely a fad element 
to entire friend groups of tweens
all of a sudden coming out as trans”
or that “It is sad to see kid surgeries
to eradicate body parts merely at odds 
with antiquated sex-stereotypes” 
or that “Young people especially
are just itching to be offended—well, 
at least to say they have been—since 
we live in a victimhood culture
rather than a nobility culture”
or that “black victimhood mentality,
the (lucrative) mindset of little hope
that individual initiative could rise
above the barriers of white supremacy,
so sabotages black excellence it seems
the very design of white supremacy.”

His war against this safe-space ethos, 
including those HR and DEI officers 
who enliven it well beyond theory, 
has uncomfortably entangled him
with anti-weirdness bigots,
with rightwing freak-haters, more
anti-Nietzschean shamers who—
although finding it as ridiculous 
as he does that, for instance, 
professors are fired for their art,
for their Twitter, for their lectures 
on the unsettling facts of history 
(especially if they mention rape
or, heaven forbid, the n-bomb)—
are mean and petty enough 
to mock trans and fat people 
for being “vomitrocious,” who 
lack the courtesy to call others 
by their chosen pronouns, who
themselves scream falsities like 
“Men cannot give birth” or like 
“Unless demented, lying is anyone
who tells you obesity is beautiful.”

*This poem is unpublished—indeed, extremely warm from the oven. So it could use a lot of help!

Photo Credit: David Shankbone