Blunt/Sonnet by Ben Roylance and Gabby Gabby

                Blunts and sonnets go together quite nicely. Modern day poets don’t touch the stuff. Heck, most modern poets are vegan; they don’t even touch dairy products. So this sort of brings me back to an earlier time, a more decadent time in poetry, where poets were disgusting human beings. I’m talking shooting their wives, hating people, stealing money from drunks. You name it. They did it. Part of me misses those times. However if they were that way I wouldn’t host them in my lovely deluxe apartment with wife and kids. 

                This starts out quite nicely. ‘My identity is what I throw away’. I say online is where your identity is. Everybody’s identity is online. Let me go even further. It is far more likely your online identity is more real than your IRL identity. See this poem. It discusses Google searches (another form of identity) and Macbooks (I don’t own one but again that’s another personal choice). Gabby and Ben even talk about technology like people. Androids are compared to human beings. And which one are we closer to? 

                I like the new approach. For the first few lines I’m getting shouted at, told about Black Flags, society and politics. Society and politics are lazy. That’s why they are interesting. Not sure if I agree about shopping malls. Shopping malls have fed me before through the ‘free sample’ racket they run. See food on a toothpick. I eat it. I’m hungry. I have $1 in my pocket.

                Beach times come up. I love the Beach Boys though not as much as my friends. Animals hang out in malls, having a wild time. Feel happy about the garbage men. When I was young I wanted to make a short-lived series about garbage men fighting evil demons over the night shift. Not sure why I never followed up on that idea. It probably had to do with it being terrible. Save the sharks. I know people who have eaten shark fin soup though. 

                Don’t eat people. They support it. I reject it. Cannibalism is wrong. Gabby knows this as she says ‘maybe just one tit’. My hope is a tit would taste like ‘Snowballs’ those delicious trashy treats. If that happened I would definitely become a cannibal. Happy to hear Gabby’s gone to upstate New York and swam in the beautiful lakes. Tank tops seem expensive. I love the internet too. I live in the internet more than I do IRL. Maybe that’s unhealthy. But there are no car crashes on the internet so maybe it’s safer. 

                Giraffes come up a lot in these poems. I’m glad I’m not the only one obsessed with the creature. The internet is a huge piece of meat. The internet is the ultimate sausage party. It’s sort of similar to alt lit in that sense. 19 year olds have kids all the time. Why they tattoo the names of their kids on their shoulder baffles me. Do people forget their children’s names that easily? Zoos and aquariums make me sad. They charge too much to see poor animals confined in cages. I’d never pay money to visit an animal prison.

                Humble is a great thing to be. I’m too humble. Actually I think I’m the most humble person on the entire internet. Try to out-humble me and I’ll probably let you do it. I’m that humble. Shame about what they say about sharks. Sharks just want to have fun. And they’re all like ‘Humans are terrifying but have smaller mouths’. Good thing I have a tiny mouth. Butterflies in the stomach kill themselves. They grow up from caterpillars into beautiful butterflies. People worry too much so they never get to see the stomach butterflies. Occasionally stomach butterflies fly south to procreate in Mexico before they die. Just like the jocks from high school go there for one last glimpse of cool before the world stands up and says ‘No’ to them. 

                Asses are different from one another. Capitalism is all about being an ass. I like the exploration of ‘Post Emotions’. Think all emotions should have ‘posts’ after them once we’ve gotten over ourselves. Guess you can only use them after you’re out of school. Gabby wrote the ‘butthole’ part. I can feel it in my slothy bones. The friend needs to get better headphones. People seem particular about what music they encounter. I am. I yell ‘shots shots shots shots’ outside of dorm rooms for fun. 

                The internet is the portal to our souls. Slow internet simply reinforces this point. When things take a while to load that’s why we feel so much pain. I want to move to South Korea sometimes because they have super-fast internet connections over there. I’m jealous. We tweet at each other to feel alive on the internet. 

                Nobody asks me for nudes because I’m a sloth. Gabby’s speaks about her college experience, carrots, nudes, Neil Young, etc. Hope Neil Young didn’t ask her for nudes. Neil Young is such a creeper. I have no idea who makes money off of their talents. Sometimes it seems what people excel at is completely different from what people want to do with their lives. I’m experiencing that feeling right now. Wonder if I’ll ever be paid for what I love. 

                I laughed at ‘What’s that chemical that turns your skin blue? Bright Eyes?’ That part is amazing. Planets seem to collide a lot in the poem. Kind of like YouTube has parodies of itself up on itself for further introspection. Can a technology have a negative self-image or is the technology for making technology feel bad about it not there yet? 

                This is a really good collection. Ben and Gabby kill it with this collection. Hope they keep on putting out amazing quality funny-depressed stuff.