This poem was originally published in the February 2000 issue of The Polemic, one of two student run literary journals at Mary Washington College. The author (I'm going to refer to myself in this post using the third person, a pretentious thing to do, surely, but it will allow me to provide an analysis of my poem, something nobody else seemed likely to do) has described it as “an attempt to write the worst poem I possibly could.” To his great despair it was for the most part taken entirely seriously by the Mary Washington community, many of whom personally congratulated the author on his great talent and thanked him for sharing so much of himself. He hopes that the work’s re-publication here, along with some brief explanatory notes, will correct these unfortunate misreadings and show once and for all that its author is of marginal talent at best and has shared absolutely nothing of himself.
The Bitterness That Colors My Life Gray
The zookeeper ran down the beach screaming,
"Fuckers! someday I will show you all that I can dance with the best of them!"
and the little children kicked sand in his
navel and laughed at his missing feet which the grizzly bear had eaten.
An albatross flew overhead, dropping its droppings on the heads of all who desired it; namely
the masses, who pray for
Sunny Delight which is not forthcoming.
and the Flying Fish Flew
and the Chinese Pandas Died
and the empty days
piled up like discarded socks in God's hamper.
God Bless America.
Notes-
1.The title is an allusion to the final sentence of Testimony, the memoirs of 20th century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. It was chosen because of the author’s affinity for Shostakovich’s music, and his equally great distaste for Shostakovich’s prose, which may be described charitably as clichéd and self-pitying.
2. " The Zookeeper"
Animals and the keeping of them are motives that appear throughout the author's work, and this poem in particular. The zookeeper character is representative of unwelcome authority, specifically the author's own parents who are always bugging him about stuff. He recurs in several of the author's later poems, notably, “Libyan Aftershave Lotion” and “The Emasculation of Francis.”
3. "'Fuckers!'"
For publication in the Polemic it was necessary to replace “Fuckers!” with “Bastards!”
4. " I can dance wiht the best of them!"
It is interesting to note that the author is incapable of dancing. The zookeeper’s words here therefore show both the author's touching identification with his oft-maligned parents, and a poignant reminder of his own absurd social inhibitions.
5. "little children"
The author does not like children, and often mutters under his breath at them.
6. "navel"
The author inserted a break here purely for the sake of being like e. e. cummings or somebody else good (technical difficulties prevent the inclusion of that break here. It is certain that this does not in anyway detract from the already horrifically bad poem).
7. "grizzly bear"
The author has said repeatedly that he likes bears, because they are “big and fuzzy,” and indeed, his love of bears dates back to a boyhood fascination with Winnie the Pooh. The grizzly bear in the author’s work is therefore usually interpreted as a representation of the author himself, and thus the bear eating the zookeeper’s feet becomes the author’s rebellion against authority. By eating his parents’ feet he deprives them of their mobility, weakening their hold over him. However at the same time he renders them unable to dance, creating a point of similarity between them and himself. This simultaneous rejection of and identification with his parents is typical of the kind of empty, ridiculous symbolism to be found throughout the author’s poetry.
8. "an albatross"
The albatross in this line was included because it seemed appropriately strange and might be mistaken by the reader as being in some way profound, possibly as an allusion to The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
9."who pray"
Here the author expresses contempt for the common man, whose prayers to a higher power he equates with asking a large bird to shit on your head.
10. "Sunny Delight"
Once referred to as "orange juice and milk's bastard son," Sunny Delight is a disgusting synthetic drink that the author associates with the deterioration of civilization.
11. "Flying Fish Flew"
Yet another animal reference, the author thinks of flying fish as engaging in a Sysiphisian struggle to escape the water that sustains them, only to be pulled down again by gravity. Here they at last escape water to truly fly, but free of the water, asphyxiate. The author clearly has no understanding of biology, choosing instead to use the fish as yet another vehicle for expressing his oft-expressed feelings of life’s futility.
12. "Chinese Pandas Died"
At the time the author wrote this poem the last surviving panda at the National Zoo had just died and had not yet been replaced. The reference here communicates something of the despair of the time, when important symbols of international goodwill seemed to be dropping right and left. Furthermore, when taking into consideration the author’s strong identification with bears, it becomes a moving contemplation of his own mortality.
13. "empty days pile up like discarded socks in God's hamper"
This line was stolen- lock, stock, and barrel- from the author’s favorite show thirtysomething, specifically an episode called “Michael Writes a Story.” In this episode the protagonist, Michael, attempts to balance his need to create art with his need to attend to everyday practical matters. This struggle does not seem particularly relevant here, and the line's use can only be attributed to bad taste in plagarism.
14. "God Bless America"
With this statement the author arbitrarily turns the work into a political statement. He appears to be saying that life in the United States is in some way unsatisfactory. However, it is not made clear in what way it is unsatisfactory, and the reader is left puzzled and feeling that he has wasted his time.
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