Flarf poetry is confusing. Poets.org provides a brief guide to flarf which somehow confuses me further. There were three options of a definition to observe: 1) Wrong. Un-PC. Corrosive, cute, cloying, awful. 2) Poetry with a heavy use of google searches, almost community written. Poems that are continuation, revision, or even a plagiarization, all out in the open. 3) Flarf as a verb, to show the deep awfulness of something, even an existing text. 4) To be wrong, awkward, or fucked up.
I kind of love this. I love the freedom and defiance of it, in a way, I love the pettiness of it. Since 9/11 and the dawn of the internet, we now have this global knowledge that is so overwhelming, it’s paralyzing. There are so many things to care about, all of them important, all worthy of complete attention but they are all happening at the exact same time and at that exact same time you also have to be a person.
A person who eats nutritious food, has a gym routine, has enough friends for bridesmaids, have a fulfilling career but don’t focus on the money, take care of your family, go to therapy, and on top of that you should be dating and going on adventures and relaxing and being spontaneous and loving people well but then you also have to care. About everything. All the time. And you have to be polite and calm and not worry even though literally, any moment, a hurricane could take you out but nothing good comes from worrying.
One of my favorite books of poetry is by Fatimah Asghar, titled If They Come For Us, which follows Asghar as she is growing up in the United States as an immigrant from Pakistan, especially focusing on her experience as a Muslim following 9/11. I think she writes flarf poetry in her own way. One of her poems is in the grid of a bingo card, each space filled with a microaggression that has been thrown at her, titled “Microaggression Bingo.” One of the spaces reads, “The villains are wearing headscarves in yet another fantasy series.” Personally, I can think of three movies without much effort.
I was inspired by her creative forms and wrote a few poems, unfortunately, I could not figure out how to format any of them on WordPress. This is a bit of a flarf poem. I am trying to open some sort of social investigation of these old movies I used to watch with my parents, starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. In the movies, the duo is always on a roundtrip to some exotic location—I use that charged word purposefully, as the movies themselves are deeply problematic. As the two men fall into scrapes and make humorous fools of themselves, they also manage to insult cultures from one continent to another, mocking tradition and religion. They are also deeply, deeply misogynistic. I pulled lines from each movie to show that underneath the humor, there is a menace. Both the title, “Found on the Road,” and the poem are a work in progress.
FOUND ON THE ROAD
with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby
I just want you to stand there,
my nose is an iceberg
whoops! Quack, quack!
You storm. I’ll stay here and drizzle
with a spray gun,
*this* time it’s not dangerous.
He must’ve seen the picture!
Now’s the time to go out and get the popcorn.
We’re going to get married on… . uh… .
[hands him a hand mirror] Who’s that?
This might be a plot to get rid of us!
I just hate being killed, that’s all.
Are you admitting you’re a dirty coward?
This picture’s over right now,
we’re gonna have our heads chopped off.
She probably thought you were a father figure,
I’ll never look at another banana split.
[Hanging off the high wire] Help! Help!
Next time, I bring Sinatra.
Two fellas, one girl.
Do you always fight over girls?
You can’t sell me, you don’t own me!
How’d you put that on,
an impressionable young thing falls for an elderly fellow?
Why don’t you just run for Congress and leave us alone?
[Both are hit on the head by a goon. The two fall]
We’ll be smiling ear to ear.
Am I dead?
Oh, buster!
You just became a full-blooded American idiot.
Didn’t anybody in the family wear the pants?
I’d hate to be around when he comes for a divorce!
I think he rolls his own.
Oh, stop squawking—
“Drinks are on the house!”
[cannibal’s stomach growls]
Who wants to work? We’re musicians!
That was just a mirage,
when is the big day, Dream Thing?
This kid’s got her own antenna,
are you waiting for your broom?
Oh, keep politics out of this!
My brain’s rushing to my head,
if those hoodlums—
gimme that, you got one.
She was my mother, Queen Tama of Vaatu.
Never get off that boat,
you’ll fall off when you’re ripe!
With our throats?
“If they hear us, we’re dead ducks!”
he heard someone say.
Must’ve been someone he ate.
Get out, when they’re dead they’re dead.
Well, what else can we fight over?
Hey, jungle fever?
I don’t like the look in her eye—
Dang, woman!
I’m not sure about Flarf either, but I know that what you wrote is pure magic. Thank you for sharing in such a beautiful way!
I think there is a connection between Flarf and found poetry–though I always think of Flarf as being a produce of the digital age and the strange tools it give us. The Bingo poem is a bit different though–it uses a form associated with games (bingo) to carry a very different kind of content. Part of the power in that content is the way in which the words in the boxes seem cool and distant, but also full of pain. It’s a really fascinating approach–repurposing specific casual or bureaucratic forms and combining that with a different kind of unexpected content.