Circle CXVI, Ring xix, Onionrings: The Crocodile's Tears: Adding Machines-Crisco

The Poet as immigrant is schooled in the opportunities afforded by the levels of Hell devoted to the sins of capital. The poem continues in the elegant yet flaccid form variously known as Terza Stupid, Terza Reamya or Terza Slapstick derived from Dagmar Whimsy's monumental anthology, The Unintentional Slapstick of the Moderators and Psychophants of the Buffalo Poetics List, 415BC to 1999AD . The last two shorter selections below aren't real bad, but the longer opening section is tedious in the extreme even when garnished with exotic expletives like 'motherfucker' or highly descriptive terms like 'bitch' and 'ho'. Pall Putzsell, literary critic for the Instruction Booklet That Comes With The Juicemaster 5000, writes "the entire poem seems to be blown along by nothing more than the poets inherent windyness; a dietary problem no doubt." Even the author suffered from bouts of text induced narcolepsy during the spewing of this section. When it was recently pointed out to the Poet at a press conference held in the Security Office of the P'yongyang Marriott that many of the souls that inhabit his Recidivist Inferno are still living, the poet expressed shock.

All selections represented below have been rejected repeatedly and vociferously by Poetry Chicago, Poetry Dubuque and Poetry Phnom Penh, as well as the N.Y. Times, Sports Illustrated, Sixteen Magazine, Guns and Ammo, Vogue, the Journal of Applied Soil Technology, Vanity Fair, the Weekly Standard, The Nation, Hustler, Fortune, The Watchtower, The American Spectator, Health and Fitness, the Brain Research Bulletin, the Heritage Foundation Newsletter, Soldier of Fortune, the Journal of American Orthodontia, Deutsche Bank, the William Randolph Hearst High School Year Book Committee, the American Poetry Review, the Catholic Standard, Jet, Lingua Franca, the National Reconnaisance Office, Brides, Barron's, EMBASE, the Bell Atlantic Phone Directory, the DC Transit Authority, USAID, Voice of America, Citibank, the Club of Rome, the Group of Seven, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Harlequin, the BBC, the Skull and Bones Society, ARENA, the White Hand, the Knights of Malta, Fox's Funniest Home Videos, Forbes, the Florida Department of Corrections, the NEA, the National Enquirer, the Pugh Charitable Foundation, the Atlacatl Battalion, Cosmopolitan, the VFW, the Harvard Business Review, Readers Digest and other fine publications and organizations that funnel cash to murderers and felons and otherwise give aid and comfort to future Ornaments of the Doggerel below.

Note: Some of the above publications and organizations have filed a Class Action Restraining Order against the author which stipulates that "the author named in this injunction" must remain at least 2000 yards away from the editorial offices of the plaintiffs and beyond shouting or hailing distance (approximately 2 miles "given this guinea's lung power," as one judge put it) from the persons of the managing editors of the publications named as plaintiffs. As a consequence of this injunction, and on advice of attorney, none of the above publications felt at liberty to discuss with the editors of FlashPøint, the repulsive and perfidious nature of the text that follows or why FlashPøint, among the thousands of publications flourishing in the dawn of the New World Order and High Tech Freak Show, would stoop to publish such squalor.

Die Reise Weider Antreten:

And  Forcas began, "On earth the Hell of Rationality was a hell of victims: 
Here Reason targets its employers; we stress subjectivity; No Observers;
No Voyeurs of Nature. Tell him, Tiresias." "This is true, I owe both 

My darkness and my wisdom to gawking at Athena soaping up.
So mesmerized was I at the sight of her spreading and stroking those 
Flawless Petals in the waters of Hera's clear pool." Forcas took the hem of 

The seer's filthy cloak and wiped the drool from the Blind Pariah's Chin 
And then said: "And Science's Suzerainty has reduced Tiresias to the Little Beggar
For Fate even though no techne can claim priority over things in themselves."

And gesturing over a Shimmering Lake he added, "Here, those who ignored
This Proscription, suffer what is beyond dispute." And Virgil said, "A city 
Filled with their Curiosities is on our route. But we must hurry to make 

The Ferry that will afford us passage." And with this Forcas prodded 
Me with Lovett's Boner and I followed my guides striding ahead of me 
Along the Shore of the Lake. But I had not  traveled a yard or two

When I went under and disappeared from view. "Looks like a
Sewercide," cracked Forcas, who, hovering, strained like a citizen 
Retrieving his remote from behind the couch; finally, pulling 

Me up by the Hair on my Nape, gasping and swinging above the Lake. 
And clinging to my Hirsute Leg was a Soul patterned with Decay. Forcas
Shucked the Barnacle from my Limb with one stroke of his trowel-like wing. 

"That Thing, that Ghastly, Disfigured Thing" cried Virgil, "Is Benoit Mandelbrot. 
And the Rot that etches him Inside and Out are the Fractals
That his Triflings have brought about." And a Malignant Paisley 

Of Serrated Tumors corrupted his Pulp-like Predator to Prey. And the Designs 
Which mimicked Leeches collapsed inward upon his Substance like Mold 
Upon the Fruit's Form. And Tiresias said, "As Lucretius observed,

Its [e.g. Benoit's] affliction is a kind of Mathematical Grout
Brought about by the Humors collecting to rout the
Invading Data. But matter breaks down when Too Much

Aqua Vita..." "Oh, shut up!" Cried Virgil, "And let Benoit speak. 
After all, nothing is more Enlightening than to hear Nature echo 
Through the Emptied Conch of one of its Creations. The alternative 

Is Silence, the Blank Screen." And the Being's left hemisphere propped on a
Festering, Tatooed Limb, and began, "I meant this Pilgrim no harm. But the
Shore of this Lake is determined by Fractal Shapes.

Its Discretions are not of a Substance that the Living would 
Attempt to negotiate. So Your Charge, mistaking Earth for its Numerical 
Ideal, plunged into a Mathematical Fake. An All Too Common Mistake.  

When topside I considered the question, 'How closely does the
Model resemble the "real"?'; but I was never troubled by the fact
That the Model being, unlike its source, Pure Invention, 

In the course of study would prove too Thrifty, too Elegant 
A Temptation. The so-called "real" Being too Connected, 
Passionate and  Indiscrete. Though our longing for it Bursts, 

It is no longer Fungible. Methodologies, Analogue Expressions, 
Statistics & Normative States have replaced the real as the Objects that 
Frustrate our Calculations as Mind &/Or Body once frustrated the Ancients.

And so it was decided that I would be made an example,
And every Atom of my being would be scrubbed Numerically
Clean. These Lesions are the Subordinal Gaps that the Fractal Lake

Engages in excruciating Synapse." "Right,Back-you-go, Queequeg" said 
Forcas. And seizing Mandelbrot by his Tongue which hung like a Bad Tie,
Tossed him to the Center of the Pool. And we all stopped to reflect on the 

Mathematician's Confession, looking out over the Lake with 
Its Iterating Waves as monotonously serrated as a Thespian's Sea or
the Lope, Lope, Lope of an Oscilloscope, yet Pathogenetic 

With those Periodic Furbelows that Iterate a Sympathy for those Living 
& Dead and Living/Dead who never had an artistic impulse but reserve 
Art for their Suzerainty. Sotto Voce, (that is, in a whisper) Virgil interrupted 

The Hypnotic Monotony of the Fractal Sea, "Poet. Of all the Ignorance 
In Hell, this Lake and its City will bring you closest to Despair. 
For here the Ding An Sich is slag; the Spent Phantom of Experiment;

An Asymptotic Appetite. And the Guilty are in part confined
Because even in Hell they don't possess the art to assess 
Their Crimes and continue to gauge their Encroachments by their

Instrumental Capacities. All of Nature has become a Matter for the Most
Graphic Designs; a Rejection of the Unsentimental and Discommodious Object 
That Li Po and Wordsworth reveled in." And suddenly hopping along 

A distant cut like a Kangaroo, a form wailing a Ditty,
Bounced into view. And the Simple Rhyme went, "My
Thermostat has Three Beliefs; it's too Hot in here;

It's too Cold in here; it's Just Right in here." And as he 
Approached , I could see that his Pogo Stick was a 
Thermometer shoved groin to gullet on which he

Bounced along. "John McCarthy; Strong A.I.,"
Tiresias dismissed. "Yeah, the Unfortunate Simpleton,"
Forcas said, "God mistook McCarthy's Ditty for a Poke at

The Trinity. Otherwise such a Silly Soul would never
Have been condemned to locomote for all of eternity
With a Calibrated Stick up His Hole. Tell him, Tiresias 

What God told You." "Well, he said, that he had made Humankind 
In his own Image and would not sit by as Cartesian Man milled HIM
To inconsequence, preoccupied with making Nature conform only to 

Patterns technicians could install. So, though at first amused at  Strong A.I.,
In the end, its fraud and conceits from John Von Neumann's Rigid Member to
Marvin Minsky's Meat Machine, proved enough to warrant

Personal considerations for their Perpetual Amortization in Hell."
Then Virgil picked up the Discourse; "At first, with Descartes,
Newton, Leibnitz and the like, a Physical Correlative was 

Their Goal and Mathematics, a Tool. Then 
Came Quantum and changed all that. Physical Understanding
Regarded as impossible became Less Relevant. And the

New Understanding was a priori Mathematical. Violence
And Narrative---." Forcas interrupted, "Shut up. You Roman
Slut. Here comes Asmoday and I swear among his Legion of Ghosts

He has Diogenes of Sinope in tow." And Tiresias gushed, 
"The Dog!, Thuuuh Dawwg!! Is Coming this Way. 
Oh, to smell that Son of H. again after this reeking Mantuan Lily." 

[Here because the Philosophical Argument of the Poem 
Exceeds the Author's Grasp, he has chosen to replace the 
Great Poet of the Founding of Rome with a minor 

Greek Cynic more in tune with the Author's Limited Capacities.]
And Virgil sneered at Yours Truly, "So it's come to This.
Your Weakness for the Fragment and the Anecdote

As well Shit and Fuck Jokes has gotten the better of you, 
And now the Shards of this Shrunken Athenian Goat 
Are to attempt exegeses upon the Profound Anomalies of Hell." 

"More like Color Commentary," quipped Forcas, turning to kiss 
The Three Heads of Asmoday. And Diogenes sang, "The Ram gave him tongue, 
The Bull was well hung, but the Man gave him Real Reason to Praise."

And Asmoday's row of heads turned to us simultaneously
With this greeting, And in reply Virgil,
Tiresias and I said,  And with this

Contact a Great Oscillating Harmony not unlike curling up 
In a Vibrating Recliner seemed to envelop Hell. 
And I taken with Asmoday's Thrifty Eloquence mixed

With a New Found Urge to kiss some ass commended Him
On his Salutory Precision. "Simply, Sir, the 
Most Elegant Greeting I have ever had set in my

Path. A bona fide Hedgerow of Truth; a Moat
Of Circumspection; an Aqueduct of Equanimity;
A positive Wall of Communication; an indubitable Dike of Discourse; 

A veritable Electrified Fence of Data; an absolute Corral of Information;
A Drainage Ditch of Illumination; a Trough of Acuity; a Buffer of
Cognition; a Goose Pen of Good Sense; a Sack of Sagacity;

The Shroud of Shrewdness; the Eel Net of Enlightenment; the
Inoculation of Enucleation; the Copse of Comprehension; 
The Bear Trap of Actuation; the Frontier of Perception; 

The Border of Perspicacity; the Limit of Logos; the Third Rail
Of Reason; Mind's Margin; Dialogue's Dam; Wisdom's Closure; Probity's Pit;
Razor Wire's Ratio; Fidelity's Phalanx; the Picket Fence of Proof;

Objectivity's Jam Jar; Candor's Tunnel; Veracity's Sea Wall;
The Spade Spayed; the Truth-Lover's Fine Print; Learning's Locks; 
The Blow from the Evenhanded; Shooter of Straightness; Dealer of Plainness;

The Beaker of Continuity; Objectivity's Gelding; 
Bane of Heraclitians; Ockham's Norelco; Freedom's Padlock;
Desire's Bolt; Prajna's Berm; Love's Levee; Fortune's Latch; 

The Express Lane of Consensus; the Barricade of Plutus; 
Midas's Medium; the Roadblock of Reason; the Detour of Discovery; 
The Great Shining Obstacle; the Great Shining Obstacles

Blinding Enlightenment; the Blinding Enlightenment's
Great Boulders set in their Sack in the Middle of the Road;
The Pilgrims First Impasse and His Last." 

Until Forcas had heard enough; "Put a Sock in it, Pindar,
And let me deal a little with the Dynamics of this Place..."