Anthony Robinson
Important Things
It’s so difficult to be serious
about love or death with so many
people dying everywhere.Look! They’re dropping like flies,
falling, not getting up.
Be careful about making jokes.The people next door are always
kissing—is this love? It seems
perfectly normal to me.Art reflects our deepest concerns,
which may explain the paintings
of food. They’re called “still-life.”To be still-born is awful, more
awful for the birther than the birthed.
We love what’s a part of us.In other countries, people die
all the time. Not so here. The milk
in the fridge expires. Criminals “go bad.”One usually goes bad at an early age—
a childhood without love
may cause aberrant behavior later on.My sex life is unspectacular.
This fact has little to do with love.
My love life is, in fact, great.Loving cable television and food
too much can result in obesity, laziness,
the loss of a certain sensual acuity.People who are comfortable w/
their bodies have better sex. One
need not be a model or an athlete.Two of my grandparents died
on the same day, six years apart.
It was funny-strange, not funny-haha.“What thou lovest best remains,”
wrote a fascist, some say crazy,
little man from Idaho.Is it possible to love what can’t
love back? I love coffee. I love
Scotch. I love a girl with long brown hair.Some people fall in love w/
inanimate objects. This is called
a fetish, and isn’t always harmful.Types of love: platonic, agape, eros,
homosexual, heterosexual, homosocial,
old pals, paternal, maternal, fraternal.Types of death: by fire, by gunfire,
by excessive bleeding, by suicide,
by heart failure, by heartbreak.The new taxonomy: broad legal pad;
divide into two sections with a line;
love on one side; death on the other.Everything important is essentially
sexual. Sex is unique in the way
it fabulously fence-sits. It can’t decide.On the legal pad, sex is written sideways
on the line. Lines can also be borders,
e.g. the space between breast and belly.I told my best friends I’d be dead by 40.
I’ve got a few years. At my wake, I hope
everyone is in love. I hope people get laid.The love of poetry is essentially useless
except that it keeps some of us
from ending our lives (and loves) too soon.There are some people (called hippies)
who love trees and animals
more than people. How odd!People in love disgust me—they’re
always making faces and baby
voices and they look so smug.When I was a soldier, I thought
about killing people. I never
got the chance. I wonder what I missed?My friend Ezra is in love w/
an English Professor. She studies
“great literature” written by dead men.The funniest things are also
the saddest. Nabokov knew this—
I can’t help but laugh at the birds.It’s odd that one can buy pleasure.
“Self-indulgent, solipsistic,
Doesn’t communicate to anyone.”When those planes hit those towers
and everything fell, a lot of people
died. It wasn’t particularly funny.“Arugula” means “rocket” in Italian.
Italian is the language of Lovers.
Dante only found love in death.A close poet friend of mine (a girl, a beauty)
has never read the Divine Comedy—
What’s so funny about love and death?It’s fucking hilarious! The kids
are laughing! The goats are laughing!
The people you love, alive and dead, are laughing!