Because lines like “unicorn believers don’t declare fatwas” and “King Hussein and President Fabio, always just about to touch each other on their devolved sparkle-offs and Neil Patrick Harris appreciation pages” oddly inspire me, and because it’s Monday, I can’t think of a better way to start the week than some flarf, with some shitty illustrations drawn by me. “A” for effort?

Flarf, by the way, is not a silly word I made up (though I wish it was). It’s a controversial new avant-garde poetry movement, and I say “controversial” for two reasons: first, flarf is inspired by results from Google searches, like “grandmother’s explosive diarrhea” or “annoying diabetic bitch.” And second, because flarf started as a joke. Poet Gary Sullivan was intrigued by vanity presses, which were notorious for unfailingly praising your “exemplary” work and then accepting your poetry (and more importantly, your money) for publication. Sullivan wanted to see if they would still accept a poem that was really bad. Mind-numbingly, shockingly, irrefutably bad. So Sullivan wrote one. To get an idea of how godawful it was, here are the opening lines:

Yeah, mm-hmm, it’s true
big birds make
big doo! I got fire inside
my “huppa”-chimp(TM)
gonna be agreessive, greasy aw yeah god
wanna DOOT! DOOT!
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!
oooh yeah baby gonna shake & bake then take
AWWWWWL your monee, honee (tee hee)
uggah duggah buggah biggah buggah muggah

The poem was accepted. Sullivan subsequently dubbed his new style of poetry “flarf,” sent it to all his friends, and a movement was born. And like all movements, it evolved from something really bad into something subversive and actually quite good. Good, that is, as long as you’re not looking for pretty lines and stanzas that seem to be plucked from the very heavens. Because pretty, flarf ain’t. It’s wacky, and weird, and kinda funny-looking. But then again, that’s why I like it so much. It’s a refreshing break in an industry cluttered poems that are overly complex or sentimental. And like all avant-garde, I think it’s healthy to push at the boundaries of what you think is “poetry,” or “writing,” or “storytelling.” Even if your work is (relatively) conventional, pushing at the boundaries helps you to better understand what’s inside them.

So without further ado, here’s some flarf. With illustrations. Read more »