IN THE MUSEUM OF MISANTHROPY Poem by Ann Cotten

Pots!
At eye level - Shards!
All these dippers and ideals,
imagination healers, bigwigs of the world,
dried, ground, decorated protection,
sieved kernels, beloved fruit, used pelts,
anguish, anguish, anguish, beauty through cruelty,
exceedingly small fake windows.
Basics over basics.
And rotten, evil ancestors,
jealous pitch-black turds.
Recurring patterns on pots.
Important questions that are not new.
Several prominent personalities up to their knees in plural.
Pearls. Divides. Vessels for delicate swine,
mixed, confused, covering their faeces
with delicacy, with giggles, with one another.
Howling of chickens.
Dust, little dust, and fresh information boards.
Where our alphabet comes from! Someone
has fooled the pedagogue with ridiculous scribbles:
Is comes from of a butterfli in Japan!
Where our alphabet comes from! From mistrust
never overcome. It was holes in rocks, became dust.
((Hair and nails are in my way
while I write this. They are sent by the gods.))
Yurts. Buckets. Rugs. Bowls and scarves.
Snow goggles. Jackal deities, venom, three shrunken heads.
Fibers from a hula skirt. A claw from the natural death
of a cockatoo. All that helps and all that does not help at all,
one thousand museums. Idiotic traditions.
Alongside traditions allowing survival under conditions
that maim almost everyone. Blinkered square patterns.
Survival is degeneration. The eternally human is the eternally unpleasant.
If you no longer would like to exist, you may bite the dust.