Acute Aversion

Goosed by the Freudian principle that

what one mightily claims to detest may in fact

be what vitally one most desires, most

of the Creatures residing inside him began

to devise what they thought would be wise ways

of torturing him, by providing the vividest visions

of what he can’t stand: in their belief that by

driving him mad he would reach a catharsis –

releasing the largest out-pour he’d yet known

of imprisoned potential: they audibly groan

with this prospect so loudly he thinks it’s his

own grumpy bowels. What his creatures are sure

is his most covert love is his most overt hatred

of anything “cute.” One after another they’d

send up their sweetest most heart-wrenching

plump heffalumps from the cuddly snugglery

where more and more would await to be let

through the gate to implore their new savior

to savor abjectly adorable sentimentality. Now

he hates them in what has become his intensely

demented reality: he sadistically crumples each

sketch in a fist – impales the crunched paper on

sticks, row and row of which, speared with their

quarry like new-severed heretic heads, line his

lawn in a grave conflagration. One by one they’re

consumed in the flames. He defames them with loud

incantations he’s sure will arouse and awaken

the minions of Satan to come and assist in defeating

this scourge of The Cute. He meets with success:

his urges to purge are completely assuaged.

The fires he lit quite effectively rage to consume

them. Now nothing can ever exhume them – or him.

Art is exceedingly dangerous. Be here warned

to avoid what this verse has implicitly, torridly

drawn as its moral: never read Freud.

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