The Art of Crippled Verse

For the new school term, cripple yourself. IF YOU CANNOT BREATHE WHEN SAT UP, EVERY WORD IS ALIVE WITH URGENCY, PLANGENT WITH THE STRIFE OF A LIFE CONSTANTLY NEW.

"A kneecapped poet is twelve times better than a solidly functioning biped specimen," thus spake the labia majora of Mahatma Gandhi to me yesteryear.

Broken bodies can still travel in straight lines, whereas broken minds cannot perceive straight lines. Write for a broken mind with a broken body.

Coleridge's rocky narratives, Wordsworth's straight and narrow. Beryl Bainbridge's face from writing in a draught. "But my feet are cold!" spake the most abject fucker in Christory.

I am serious, most serious when I tell you my friend, that the crippled body is the new Zen, the Leonard Cohen self-mutilation of the new decade, for the post-decadents.

Fuck the Emperor's New Clothes! Fuck! JG Ballard walks tall amongst inebriates in Shepperton, whilst Larry Eigner puffs pillows in heaven, smilingly.

I care about people but do they care about me, when I hate them so like insects? Statistics collate a life, and I seek a characteristic stria of contractile tissue for these post-holiday blues.