Business Casual
Let’s workshop this poem about how the banal corniness of everything--as laughable as a nasally satanic metal band in try-hard costume--can be the deepest soul-crusher, the best avatar of the void.
scent of the day: Myths Man, by Amouage
Myths Man (2016, Daniel Visentin, Dorothée Piot, Karine Vinchon Spehner)—a smoky-floral fragrance that evokes not just a high-sun funereal pyre shot through with ferny sharpness but also, given its steady presence of leather and booze, none other than the death-obsessed Dionysian Jim Morrison himself (dancing like a two-spirited shaman in his signature lambskin pants, a lei of yellow and white and violet and salmon mums around his neck, perhaps in oblivious disrespect to the Ganges mourners having to deal with yet another blotter-acid white vomiting fetal-curled drunkenness all over the place)—
begins with a melancholic-mineraloid combo (rooty-powdery orris, which imparts damp-stone texture and violet-like undertone, and bitter-herbaceous chrysanthemum, which imparts chalky-silken texture and menthol-medicinal undertone) calling to mind—especially given the contribution of purse-flask tipple (a rum note that reads like rice wine) alongside fungal-musty elements (old-lady rose, perhaps some unlisted myrrh and patchouli)—a staccato jump-cut progression
from the hospice nightwatchman’s pussy play and Peter-North facials to the ozone-scrubbed embalming table to smooching Grandma’s cold-marble cheek during viewing hours (or, in my case, snuffing the alcoholic bitch in her mummy-ass mouth because she still owes me money, only then—disgusted at the caked-up makeup on my knuckles—clocking her one last time before uncles and cousins swarm me) and finally to the Dudley-Moore-looking lush of a cremation tech pocketing scrap dental gold among the silken powder and bone shards,
this boozy-floral mélange of greyscale purple imparting—especially when coupled with the lemony-pepper sunshine of elemi incense—an alluring ayahuasca-adjacent surreal smell (somewhere between a citrus-eucalyptus urinal cake activated by a flush, on the one hand, and a hot-toddy take on Thera-Flu menthol citrus-berry tea, on the other) that slowly gives way over the early hours (although the Halls honey cough drop never fully dissolves) to a grave core of rough-yet-plasticky leather and chrysanthemum-boosted cigarette ash
(both mainly a function of musky-snuff labdanum and sooty-tephra Javanese vetiver and both together seemingly meant to convey what a Chinese dragon—not nail-salon snatch but literal Chinese dragon—smells like or, since most of these mythological serpents are associated with aquatic-ozonic smells and do not breath fire, perhaps in particular what the volcano-making dragon Fuzanglong smells like)—
the overall result being a cremation-chrysanthemum fragrance that, while bringing forward the various facets of this Caitlin-Doughty-approved death floral (wormwood, tarragon, camphor, pollen, tea), showcases perhaps above all its cold-ash facet, a so-fine-it-is-creamy ash that falls somewhere in the romanticized space between settled pyroclastic dust and the sandalwood ash of an incense cone (still holding its shape next to the mummified home death who lit it over ten years back) but can at times border on a sulfurous-gunpowder aroma that (if only due to the dragon cover art) calls to my mind Chinese dragon dances at the annual Kaifeng Chrysanthemum Cultural Festival where fireworks are set off to frighten evil spirits and clear the way for good fortune;
the overall result being, in other words, a volcano-dragon twist on the iris-leather family (Black Knight, Lover’s Tale, Cuir Cannage, Cuir Mauresque, Cuir Ottoman), a kiln-ash twist that (while arguably bent slightly toward softcore masculinity, as we might expect from the fact that Fuzanglong like most Chinese dragons are at once gentle and yet yang-sun in voltage as opposed to yin-moon) has some strong similarities to Bracken Woman (both giving us smoky-vetiver leather with mint-berry tea and flower-stem greenery in a balance of buzzing-blooming sun and rhizome-rooted solemnity) and brings to bear an androgenous-metrosexual aura placing it squarely as a member of the artsy-dandy trifecta of Chong-era Spring-centric releases: Portrayal Man (incarnated by Oscar Wilde), Imitation Man (incarnated by Jean-Michel Basquiat), and Myths Man (incarnated by Jim Morrison).
Business Casual All of it is corny as hell, and that—not Nazi ovens or Pompeiian pyroclastic ash clouds, let alone crucifix pussy stabs or pea-soup horror tropes— is the truer face of shadow: even satanist organizations have lanyards, QR codes, PayPal portals for quarterly dues.
"Business Casual" is a satirical and darkly humorous poem that redefines the nature of evil, arguing that its most pervasive and chilling form is not overt horror or extreme violence, but rather the mundane, bureaucratic, and "corny" aspects of organized banality. It functions as a critique of institutionalized evil and the normalization of the absurd, challenging conventional notions of what constitutes true "shadow" or horror.
Formally, the poem is structured as an argument by negation and redefinition. It begins by explicitly dismissing traditional, sensationalized images of evil: "not Nazi ovens / or Pompeiian pyroclastic ash clouds, / let alone crucifix pussy stabs / or pea-soup horror tropes—". This immediate rejection of graphic and extreme forms of horror sets up the poem's central thesis. The enjambment between these lines creates a quick, dismissive rhythm, underscoring the speaker's contempt for these conventional representations. The core assertion then arrives: "that—not Nazi ovens...— / is the truer face of shadow:". The "that" refers back to the opening line, "All of it is corny as hell," establishing banality and "corniness" as the true essence of terror. The final lines provide the clinching evidence for this argument: "even satanist organizations / have lanyards, QR codes, PayPal / portals for quarterly dues." This juxtaposition of the inherently transgressive and frightening (satanist organizations) with the utterly mundane and bureaucratic (lanyards, QR codes, PayPal, quarterly dues) is the poem's comedic and critical punchline. It highlights the insidious creep of corporate and bureaucratic structures into every corner, even those traditionally associated with rebellion or profound evil.
Thematically, the poem delves into the banality of evil, echoing Hannah Arendt's famous concept, but twisting it to include not just the administrative aspects of horrific acts, but the inherent "corniness" and tediousness of even seemingly "dark" organizations. It suggests that the true "shadow" or threat is not the spectacular manifestation of malevolence, but the insidious process by which anything, even radical evil, can be subsumed by corporate structure, routine, and a veneer of "business casual" normalcy. The poem implies that the most terrifying aspect of evil is its capacity to be systematized, regularized, and stripped of its dramatic flair, thereby becoming less recognizable and more easily integrated into the fabric of everyday life. By humorously reducing satanism to a corporate entity, the poem critiques the pervasive influence of corporate culture and bureaucracy, suggesting that these forces are the ultimate homogenizers, draining even the most extreme forms of human expression or belief of their inherent danger or meaning, leaving behind only the "corny" husk of organizational ritual.
satire, banality of evil, institutionalization, bureaucracy, corporate culture, mundane, horror, evil, normalization, absurdity, dark humor, social commentary, critique, contemporary poetry.