existential crisis caused

by too much sleep/not enough

sleep/moon too bright freaking outs

S14: Top 14 UEFA Champions League Group Stage Teams Not From The Major Five Nations In Recent Years

The comparisons for us stupid fat self-important Americans are always made between soccer (world’s football) and football (concussion ball), but with the UEFA Champions League knockout stage 2016 starting up today, it seems obvious to point out the most glaring parallel between world and American football. American football, at the collegiate level (if you can call it that), has undergone some major transformations in recent years, not really in the game itself but more so in how different teams align themselves in allegiance to making that money. A handful of top conferences have bodied their way into control of most of the lucrative spots at the end of the season, and in terms of quality of teams, sure that makes sense. Except in terms of fairness of play, not sure it does. I mean, being the third best team in a power conference doesn’t necessarily have a better claim to challenging for the best team in the nation than a championship team from a lesser conference.

The same is going on in the Champions League, as the money is bigger than ever, so the top domestic leagues are wanting more and more slots in the Champions League, which at one point back in the day only included the champions from each national top domestic league. But the 1990s were transformation into big business for world football, both the with the reformatting of top flight English football into the Premier League (to squeeze out the poors and also bring in them corporate dollars, plus TV dollars, which those two are intertwined like tween girls using fore and middle finger to visually display besties forever), as well as the updating of the UEFA top club tournament into what it is now, with multiple entrants from top leagues. In fact, this season, Manchester United are seen as a huge failure, not because they’re not going to win the Premier League, or even contend, but because they specifically look like they’re not going to finish in the top four, which means they are outside next year’s Champions League field looking in. So the top teams in Europe (from a few nations at least) are talking about wanting to change how it goes, which means they’ll either give more of the CL spots to top leagues, or some super league will form, likely comprised only of those famous clubs from the top leagues.

For me, and perhaps I’m simplistic and not putting enough attachment to the money to be made, and simply regard this as a good ol’ competition for declaring the best team, it all seems a lot like the NCAA basketball March Madness tournament. Personally, I feel the top team from every conference has a stronger claim to participate than any 2nd place team, much less a 6th or 7th place team from a power conference. Like if you’re not the biggest fish in your own pond, even if it is a small pond, then you have no claim to being the biggest fish in all ponds. And sure, if you put a 5th place team from the SEC in football in the middle of like the Mid American Conference (or Tottenham Hotspur in the top Polish league), they’d dominate. But the point is, they’re not in that league.

There is the argument, “Well, we want to see the best teams play.” But I don’t buy that, because if you limit the best teams to one from each, then you make seeing the best teams play more memorable, and harder. How fucking crazy would people be going in England this year if it means Leicester City was going to take the only Champions League slot available? They’d be losing their shit, and demanding more teams get allowed in. Which is what we already have, and I understand we’re not gonna put that genie back in the bottle, but much like the NCAA basketball tournament, I fear we’re going to move further in the wrong direction (more fluff from the top, at the expense of the smaller places on earth).

Really, these changes in European soccer certainly make a lot of sense coming after the fall of the Soviet Union, and “free market capitalism” taking over the earth, and though we are swinging that way, same with college football in America, it will be interesting to see the pendulum swing back the other way once these abstract bubbles of ETERNALLY BUILDING MORE WEALTH OUT OF NOTHING get burst by Molotov cocktails, assassin’s blades, sniper rifle, and chaos in the streets.

Nonetheless, I thought it would be fun to faux-analyze this by looking at what teams have scored the most points in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League that past 14 years. Except to display my thoughts about smaller fish from bigger ponds, I’m only going through clubs from nations not in the Big Five of UEFA domestic leagues: Germany, England, France, Spain, and Italy. That means most of the famous teams you know aren’t in this list. But all these teams had to earn their group stage points, likely against a lot of teams from those leagues, over the past 14 years. So what teams have performed the best (according to how many group stage points they’ve earned) the past 14 years in Europe’s top continental club competition, but aren’t from those five football-privileged nations?

#1: FC PORTO (of Portugal) – 120 group stage points, advanced to knockout rounds 8 times, but not this year, when they finished third in their group thus got demoted to the Europa League knockout phase. Porto is one of the oldest clubs in Portugal, and considered one of the big three clubs in that nation (don’t worry, the other two will show up in this list as well), which is probably one of the nations countering that Big Five Nations argument. In fact, Portugal’s coefficient was higher than France for this CL, so really they’re #5, not France. However, Portugal’s football history has not had the same evolving history as some other nations, as Porto and the other two of the Big Three have been in the top flight every year ever. Current season of Portugal’s Primeira Liga has Porto sitting in third, but 7 pts clear of the 4th-place team. Porto was the only team not from the big five nations in this 14-year period I looked at to win the Champions League though, and in fact were the last team not from those big five to do so (in the 2003-04 final, beating AS Monaco from France, which actually Monaco is an independent state, but their main football club plays in the French league). And I would say it might be some time before that feat is duplicated again.

#2: OLYMPIACOS FC (of Greece) – 92 group stage points, advanced to knockout round 4 times, but not this year, finishing 3rd in their group behind Arsenal and Bayern Munich, thus relegated (like Porto) to Europa League knockouts. But to give an idea of the disparity between being in the Greek League as opposed to the English or German leagues, in 1998-99, perhaps the best Olympiacos team ever was making its way through the CL, and narrowly missed making the semifinals. That’s considered a high point for the club, although they continue to dominate the Greek leagues. Additionally, they moved to the knockout stage of the Champions League three out of six seasons from 2008-2014. That last time in the knockouts, they were drawn against Manchester United in 2014, and won the first leg in Greece, 2-0, but dropped the second leg 0-3 at Old Trafford, thus was knocked the fuck out.

#3: FC SHAKHTAR DONETSK (of Ukraine) – 77 group stage points, plus advanced to knockout stage 3 times, but came in 3rd in group stage this year behind Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, thus (like the other two teams so far) got put in the Europa knockout stage. Despite the working class communist-era beginnings of Shakhtar Donetsk, they are currently a known commodity in Europe, owned by billionaire/perhaps organized crime boss Rinat Akhmetov, part of that class that came to power once communism was replaced by oligarchic klepto-capitalism. In fact, Chelsea superstar Willian came from Shakhtar Donetsk during a summer 2013 selling off of their biggest assets. Despite that, and the chaos of war which has fractured the top Ukrainian league, Shakhtar Donetsk remains a top club there, hugely supported, and bound for yearly trips to the Champions League so long as Ukraine holds onto their extra spots. It should be noted that this year, for example, though Shakhtar Donetsk, being the second place team in the Ukraine, had to go through the 3rd Qualifying and Play-off Rounds of the CL just to make Group Stage. But even though they’re not top five nation status, they’re big enough to muscle their way past the European minnows still floundering along during those early rounds.

#4: S.L. BENFICA (also of Portugal) – 73 group stage points, and advanced to knockouts 3 times, including this year, matched up against Zenit St. Petersburg. Benfica is the second of Portugal’s big three teams, based in Lisbon, but they had a financial decline from the mid-‘90s until around 2009, which includes about half the 14-year period this stupid list looks at. But they have won the Primeria Liga the past two years, three of the past six, finished no worst than second those other three years, and sit at 2nd this season right now. And perhaps they are an example of free market capitalism working because they are now (since 2007) a publicly traded company with stockholders who have not wasted money on ridiculous transfers like many of the bigger English teams are well-known for doing.

#5: PSV EINDHOVEN (of the Netherlands) – 66 group stage points, advancing to knockouts 4 times, including this season, taking on Atletico Madrid. They beat out Manchester United in their group this year. Dutch football is well-known, and PSV Eindhoven is one of the Netherlands’ big three clubs. Famous Dutch fucker of football note Arjen Robben honed his little Dutch fucker craft for Eindhoven. The city itself is not quite on par with Amsterdam, and considered a lesser city of peasants, so the club (and it’s supporters) pride themselves on that. But really, at this point, how can any major club really claim peasantry, even outside the big five? They won the Eredivisie last season, their first time after about a six year spell of not winning, which ran against the previous decade’s trend of winning shit all the time. Their current squad continue the club trend of mostly Dutch dudes with a minimal sprinkling of foreigners, including a little South American flavor.

#6: AFC AJAX (also of the Netherlands) – 61 group stage points, moving to knockouts 2 times, but this year didn’t even make it beyond the 3rd Qualifing round, getting knocked out by Rapid Wien of Austria. Ajax is an infamous team, not only for its on-field success but also for having one of the more infamous hooligan supporters bases for a team not from England or Italy or East Europe. They actually won the Champions League back in 1994-95, and more historically important, when the competition was still called the European Cup and only featured domestic champions, they won it three years in a row from 1971 through 1973, behind the skillz of Johan Cruyff, who forced that Dutch Total Football philosophy onto the world, which the Dutch are only now really starting to contemplate moving beyond.

#7: FC DYNAMO KYIV (of Ukraine) – 55 group stage points, moved to knockout phase once, which is this season, which is where they likely get crushed by Manchester City. Dynamo Kyiv was a top flight club even when still part of the Soviet Union, and was one of the few Soviet clubs to break the dominance of Moscow-based soccer clubs on that Soviet league. They won the Soviet league 13 times, and have won the Ukrainian top league 14 times since then. Keeping it Ukrainian, they’ve tended to be top source for the national team, and that was actually true during Soviet era as well.

#8: FC BASEL (of Switzerland) – 53 group stage points, knock out times 3 times, but this year got knocked out in the playoff round right before Group Stage by Maccabi Tel Aviv. I am halfway through this thing and losing interest fast and being nobody pays me it’s hard to give a fuck to POWER THROUGH, especially for some Swiss club that sounds too close to FC BASIC for me to really think about anything other than that.

#9: FC ZENIT ST. PETERSBURG (of Russia) – 49 group stage points plus 3 knockout trips, including this season, drawn against Benfica, WHICH MEANS THAT AT LEAST ONE TEAM NOT FROM THE BIG FIVE NATIONS WILL MAKE THE QUARTERFINALS. Early on in me thinking about soccer was years ago when they won the UEFA Cup and had big ol’ riots to celebrate, and I was watching the news bit on the television because internet didn’t exist in 2008, and I was like, “oh man that’s awesome, it’s foreign people rioting in celebratory excitement.” You see, my American life then – as now – was missing celebratory excitement. It’s all so mundane. However brief Wikipedia research shows me that Zenit St Petersburg are owned by something called Gazprom, which is probably a phone company or some shit, but being it’s foreign and weird sounding and I’m a fat lazy American, it might also be some robot overlord hellbent on fucking up the entire earth, like a Voltron Drago. I’m afraid of Voltron Dragos. Also pretty sure this is one of the teams full of racist fans (I guess that’s every team in Russia though) so I’m really afraid of Voltron Dragos who have a lot of drunken scary racialist Russians as supporters.

#10: CELTIC FC (of Scotland) – 48 group stage points, 3 knockout trips, I think but I’m also questioning whether the column of my excel spreadsheet I thought was for times in the knockout stages might be for some other weird shit. Let’s just stick with it since maybe two people will read this max, and being one of them is a Celtic fan, I’ve strategically placed this caveat at the perfect spot. Celtic is a team with leftist fans who have been loudest drum beaters during Scottish movement for independence in recent years. Celtic, along with Anglo-friendly Rangers, were the twin opposing forces of the Old Firm rivalry, perhaps the most bitter of all soccer derbies on earth until Rangers financial incompetence has led them into multiple administrations, relegation to the bottom of Scottish football pyramid, and so on. They may make it back to Scottish Premiership to compete again with Celtic next year, but they may be administrated again. Who the fuck knows? Kinda funny the pro-English team would suffer financial calamity while the pro-independence one does not (although stadium attendance looking pretty sparse lately at times). I’m of the belief we all need enemies to motivate us, so without good legit enemy to death, Celtic has become complacent. They’ll be King of Scotland (pun intended) for as long as they want, so the talk moves to a superleague or admission to the English Premier League, where Celtic pride combined with EPL TV dollars will mean CONQUER THE WORLD. But that also feels a little like English “conquer the world” thinking too. Still though, I always pull for Celtic from afar – in the pack of non-big five nations teams I always pull for, there’s a couple (Celtic, Fenerbahce, that may actually be it) that I really hope do well just to fuck up the hegemony at the top of the world footballing pyramid.

#11: PFC CSKA MOSCOW (of Russia) – 46 group stage points, two trips to knockout stages, this year though finished 4th in their group. This was the team of the Soviet Army during Soviet days, and since then has had partial support from the Russian Ministry of Defence, which is all sorts of weird. Could you imagine an NFL team being owned partially by the Department of Defense? Actually they all might be for all I know. PATRIOTISM through sport seems prevalent throughout the world. But CSKA literally stands for “central sports club of the army” so I don’t know, that’s next level shit.

#12: GALATASARAY SK (of Turkey) – 38 group stage points, 2 trips to the knockouts yall. Galatasaray are part of the big rivalry in Istanbul, Turkey, between them (the more elite club) and Fenerbahce, which is more like the people’s team, although there’s also a third team Besiktas which is like an anarchist team to an extent, so I don’t know. But Turkish fans are well-known for their stabbing techniques, especially against English fans, and Galatasaray have always blown big money to maintain that big status on a big name from somewhere in the world. Didier Drogba played there briefly. Current international superstar is Wesley Sneijder, but it didn’t help them finish better than 3rd in their group, meaning they were relegated to the Europa League knockouts. Galat’s supporters are INSANE though, and their home stadium is infamous during both domestic as well as international games for being one of the most intimidating places on earth to play. Basically, fans set off red pyrotechnics everywhere, so it’s smoke and fire and loud singing and dramatic shit and a proudly self-proclaimed Welcome to Hell atmosphere.  Galat supporters are big on the large banner displays not so common in England but still prevalent in South America as well, unfurling giant images of opposition teams getting ass raped or something like that. But even all this atmosphere is sort of manufactured because the real old ass stadium they played in has been retired because of the fancy ass new Turk Telekom Arena built in the financial sector of Istanbul. The high dollar support helps keep the team at their high level but it’s that “gotta spend money to make money” bullshit too. Actually, you could a thousand anthropological thinkpieces on football in Istanbul alone, with the big Galatasaray/Fenerbahce rivalry (plus Besiktas) and how that straddles classes and continents and cultures. But I’m just some simple ass dude who does a blog (plus zine plus books plus whatever the fuck else), not a cultural anthropologist.

#13: RSC ANDERLECHT (of Belgium) – 33 group stage points, never made it to the knockouts, and didn’t even make the Champions League this year. I think this is the team all the jihadis who did the attacks on Paris played for.

#14: SPORTING CP (again, of Portugal) – 31 group stage points, 1 trip to the knockout rounds, third of the big three in Portugal, yadda yadda yadda, I got dinner to make.

If you enjoy this type of dumb shit, consider supporting Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts. If you already support it, buy it for a psychic comrade. We need to build our psychic comrades network before these next 20 years. 

objectifying monkeys

making mindless physical

toys of unblemished youth flesh

"trailer trash" jokes the shineface

across the table from me;

I sit, quietly, stifled

our permanence will one day

be choked out by feral vines,

our hearts eaten by coywolves

TOP TEN GRASPS THRU THE FOG

gr0w c0bw3bz 1n br41n
VnVs3d c0rn3rz c0ll3ct dVst
s3lf-l0b0t0mY#haiku#rojonekkuhttps://t.co/cygeKMtUta pic.twitter.com/fBNTVAhZrF

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

t4p bVtt0nz t0 f1nd
m1ss1ng 1nf0rm4t10n t0
m1ss 1nf0rm4t10n#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/cygeKMtUta pic.twitter.com/Cu1dn9aven

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

34ch m0m3nt'z kn0wl3dg3
r3m41nz c0nt1ng3nt Vp0n
pr0p3r c0nn3ct10n#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/Qh6xShmyCs pic.twitter.com/OfDmD6oyCp

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

4s 1nt3ll1g3nt
4s mY 4b1l1tY t0
s34rch 4lg0r1thmz#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/Qh6xShmyCs pic.twitter.com/dQ4FXy3ToI

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

n0t s0 mVch s34rch 4s
0bt41n r3sVltz r3l3v4nt
bY r0b0t st4nd4rdz#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/cygeKMtUta pic.twitter.com/qOd8U53YH7

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

st1ll m0r3 4n1m4l
th4n r0b0t, bVt r0b0t s00n
b3 m4j0r1tY#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/cygeKMtUta pic.twitter.com/X7dDRVmOqU

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

0nc3 m4j0r1tY
r0b0t 1n br41n, h34rt & gVtz
b3c0m3z n3xt t4rg3tz#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/Qh6xShmyCs pic.twitter.com/KsZpqQ4Tj7

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

n3v3r n0 r0b0t
h34rt, plVs k33p mY gVtz fVll 0f
w1ld b4ct3r14#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/Qh6xShmyCs pic.twitter.com/G75Y5ervcr

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

st4y pr0-b10t1c
4nt1-r0b0t1c f00l h34rt
pr0f3ss10n4l l0Vng3#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/cygeKMtUta pic.twitter.com/zjdkhmtFoR

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

th3 m4nVf4ctVr3d
f0g h4s 3nv3l0p3d mY th0Vghtz
bVt n3v3r mY h34rt#haiku#r0j0n3kkVhttps://t.co/Qh6xShmyCs pic.twitter.com/EC9wUQvPgZ

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 11, 2016

#1: gr0w c0bw3bz 1n br41n/VnVs3d c0rn3rz c0ll3ct dVst/s3lf-l0b0tomY

#2: t4p bVtt0nz t0 f1nd/m1ss1ng 1nf0rm4t10n t0/m1ss 1nf0rm4t10n
#3: 34ch m0m3nt'z kn0wl3dg3/r3m41nz c0nt1ng3nt Vp0n/pr0p3r c0nn3ct10n
#4: 4s 1nt3ll1g3nt/4s mY 4b1l1ty t0/s34rch 4lg0r1thmz
#5: n0t s0 mVch s34rch 4s/0bt41n r3sVltz r3l3v4nt/bY r0b0t st4nd4rdz
#6: st1ll m0r3 4n1m4l/th4n r0b0t, bVt r0b0t s00n/b3 m4j0r1tY
#7: 0nc3 m4j0r1tY/r0b0t 1n br41n, h34rt & gVtz/b3c0m3z n3xt t4rg3tz
#8: n3v3r n0 r0b0t/h34rt, plVs k33p mY gVtz fVll 0f/w1ld b4ct3r14
#9: st4y pr0-b10t1c/4nt1-r0b0t1c f00l h34rt/pr0f3ss10n4l l0Vng3
#10: th3 m4nVf4ctVr3d/f0g h4s 3nv3lop3d mY th0Vghtz/bVt n3v3r mY h34rt

gregorian calendar

timepoint of birth - got fatter,

don’t smile as much, still alive

unseen forces calculate

your future moves through tracking;

make your data deceptive

what the fuck am I doing

with my life? all these moments

wasted zoning out with words

frybread sonnet #027: FRIDAY FOG

Disconnected - not enough capital to earn
respected status, feel a thousand miles away
from those left next to me, waiting for fog to burn
off, but it don't; manufactured clouds grow each day,

thick cobwebs of not really confusion so much
as exasperating distraction. Stay bone tired
yet stay unwoke, sleeping through this perverted clutch
after "life", sensory as fuck, uninspired

and still somehow desensitized at the same time.
Not feeling it, blanketed deeply by the smoke
and mirrors reflecting self-loathing, innate grime
of pure primordial muck denied, thus we choke

on the forced shine stuffed down throat, through brain into heart,
thus gut intuition is to tear shit apart.

2016 Royal Poetry Rumble: Number 9 Number 9 Number 9

Probably we should get down to business again, although this is not really business but nonsense. I guess that’s poesy and Big Poetry though, one is business and the other is nonsense and the nonsense one is way more important than the business one but the business one holds down the reputation. Nonetheless we are into our final six in this Royal Poetry Rumble, and today we will whittle that down even further to four.

#6: Robin Coste Lewis (represented by “Mother Church No. 3”) vs. Bobby C. Rogers (repped by “Spring Recital, Beethoven Club, Memphis, Tenn.”)

Robin Coste Lewis is back up in this bama, having previously eliminated two other poets, and she faces a man named Bobby C. Rogers, who has not even entered our competition until now due to luck of the randomizing function of the Excel spreadsheet on dirtgod computer draw. Ol’ Bobby Rogers was a Witter Bynner Fellowship award winner last year, meaning the then poet laureate of these United States of AmeriKKKa thought, “Hey, Bobby C. Rogers is great, let’s give him an honorific award.”

Lewis’s poem title conjures in my brain thoughts of the Mother Mosque of America, which – contrary to what one would expect – is located in Iowa. At one point I was looking up all the oldest mosques in America, ya know, just for digital wireless fog wasted moments hahahas OMG three decades later you’re dead with nothing to show for it. Unfortunately for Robin Coste Lewis’s poem, I found the Metaphysics of Ibn al-Arabi book lying towards the bottom of the pile of various readables beside my bed, and had been reading on that last night. The esoteric nature of al-Arabi’s spiritual beliefs do not complement an ability to appreciate this particular Robin Coste Lewis poem. There is:

We sing nine-hundred-year-old hymns 

That instruct us in how to sit still 

 

For forty-nine years 

Through a fifty-year drought.

But then I think of even earlier times, older than these hymns, traditions that didn’t survive the passage into Western Cultural Traditions, or Big Poetry, and I don’t know, Robin Coste Lewis is a woman of color and coming from outside that, but also assimilated into it, and I guess I’m kinda bored with how fractured yet so obviously homogenized in a terribly flawed way that Western Cultural Traditions are. So I’m hating on her poem.

Ol’ Bobby C. Rogers’s poem also seems to be related to church, and is also not quite insanely outlaw in nature, rebelling against Big Poetry, but I enjoy the poetic flourishes more. However though, this causes feelings of conflict in me, as I know that one of these poets is a woman of color and the other is a white dude. As someone who would be identified from beyond as “white dude” I am uncomfortable feeling like that somehow makes me biased. But then again, we can’t know our biases really, or else we’d probably not be so biased (one would hope). There is no doubt I enjoy the Rogers poem more, but is that due to my own innate conditioning? I don’t know. But this is also why in the process of setting this thing up, I kept the names of the poets off the poems, so that our esteemed the kvlt scholar would not be biased by pre-knowledge of somebody. (However, I guess one can’t really identity their own cultural biases when deeper than that, to the drill-down level of what is being said. Whatever though… if we think about anything hard enough, we will paralyze all our actions.)

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I like both "Mother Church No. 3" and "Spring Recital, Beethoven Club, Memphis, Tenn" and there is not a lot to choose between them imo: the first speaks to me as a guy who only has The Revelation of Saint John the Divine left and then he has read the whole King James and is so an expert in all matters regarding Faith and its Complications, some of which are outlined here; the second, as a guy who is familiar with the wildness of seeing Art Things emerge out of children in ways that are not I guess not completely unexpected but still somewhat surprising and also moving. The whole end part is exactly right, probably: "From our place in the crooked rows of folding chairs, we just hope the pictures turn out. And then there it is, the architecture of a Bach the counterpoint of the piece emerging uncorrupted by technique or facility, suddenly readable against struggle’s bright foil." Yeah that's really good.WINNER: "Spring Recital, Beethoven Club, Memphis, Tenn."

So it is decided, Bobby C. Rogers – only having been drawn once – makes it to the final four. And Robin Coste Lewis is eliminated at #6.

#5: Patrick Phillips (repped by “The Guitar”) vs. Frank Bidart (repped by “In Memory of Joe Brainard”)

Patrick Phillips is back after his first competition our last day of this thing, and I failed to mention he was part of our field because of being on the shortlist for the National Book Award for the poetry last year. His opponent is only now entering the competition, and I think of all the wonderful poets we’ve already seen knocked out, and it does not seem fair that Frank Bidart is just now starting out, with only five people left, but that is how this shit works. Bidart won the PEN/Voelcker award in 2014, so shouts out to him.

Now I will be clear – my house with my wife and I can be a creatively intense one at times. We do not self-identify as Creatives (because lolol who the fuck does that that is not fake as fuck?) but we always have some shit going on. So at times, one or the other of us has to check out, so to speak, and turn the constantly spinning heart math off ever so briefly to recharge the physical existence. For me, I will be honest, this usually involves either watching old crappy wrestling (hence, the Royal Poetry Rumble) or playing Football Manager like a crack binge. For my wife, it involves vegging out into some stupid TV show. Her current veg out is Nashville, which sounds nice from the next room as I’m pecking away at whatever madnesses I’m indulging, but whenever I go in to actually watch, it’s godawful. But I understand the need to retract thought ever so briefly for recharge.

So here is the deal (and the reason for the tangent) – there are some really hokey and horrible “country” songs on that show. They all sound almost just like something famous, maybe, I think, but are not quite, and ultimately all sound like bland and wretched garbage that has been spit shined by robot spit into something godawful (because if there were a god, she would not allow for such atrocities by her creations – and she probably wouldn’t self-identify as a Creative despite being The Creator). So this poem “The Guitar” is worse poetry than a lot of the songs on Nashville, thus smdh forever at it. I mean, I’m sure Patrick Phillips meant well, but fuck man, this is a poem that never should’ve made it to the internet as example of a known and published poet’s work.

“In Memory of Joe Brainard” however is not much better, and I’m suddenly very disillusioned and not sure I like poetry at all. Like this whole project is feeling like a big mistake.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I have played guitar(z) for way more of my life than I have not played guitar(z) and I make songs and put them up on soundcloud (to meet the exacting demands of my fanbase) and I *really* like to do those things but I am fairly unromantic about guitar(z) as physical objects, which is probably weird, because I am ludicrously Romantic about all kinds of things, but just not guitar(z) exactly? I think this is probably just contrarianism contra what I think is probably an over-romanticized thing in the culture broadly I guess? Like there is something maudlinly boomerish about romanticizing guitar(z) or something that I find unbecoming, maybe? The only Romantic idea about guitar(z) *qua* guitar(z) I like is something Neil Young said about every guitar having a certain number of songs in them and you just have to kind of figure out which ones are in there. I like that my guitar looks and sounds metal as fvkk and I like that I bought my bass with paper route money and selected that particular bass solely on the grounds of how much it looked like Cliff Burton's (may peace be upon him) but beyond that what is there; what is there. lol ok though I don't like "In Memory of Joe Brainard" at all though so while I am sorry for the poet's loss we are going with the guitar one and can I just say at this time that it is *killing me* that Laura Kasischke is on the outside of this Rumble looking in at this point whilst poems of this calibre are tipping other even lesser poems out over the top; this is an *outrage* (much like the Rumble so often is itself I suppose so this is all exactly right but DAMN IT).WINNER: "The Guitar"

Yeah, I guess it’s like a real Royal Rumble in that all the shit I care about is probably long gone but I’ve paid attention this far, goddammit I’m gonna force myself to the horrible end. But we probably should’ve just quit after Kasischke’s mushroom poem. But Frank Bidart is knocked out at #5, and now we only have four poets left for this thing. Here is a recap of up to this point (with nothing written after it, so it’s sort of like poet-metrics, but also not at all):

#30: Lucie Brock-Broido (eliminated by Angie Estes)

#29: Terrance Hayes (eliminated by Laura Kasischke)

#28: Marilyn Hacker (eliminated by Alan Shapiro)

#27: Alan Shapiro (eliminated by Nathaniel Mackey)

#26: Ross Gay (eliminated by Marie Ponsot)

#25: Lawrence Raab (eliminated by Juan Felipe Herrera)

#24: Angie Estes (eliminated by Amy Gerstler)

#23: Ada Limon (eliminated by Dennis O’Driscoll)

#22: Rowan Ricardo Phillips (eliminated by Laura Kasischke)

#21: A. Van Jordan (eliminated by Emily Fragos)

#20: Kevin Young (eliminated by Laura Kasischke)

#19: Dennis O’Driscoll (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#18: Marie Ponsot (eliminated by Juan Felipe Herrera)

#17: Nathaniel Mackey (eliminated by Alice Notley)

#16: Claudia Rankine (eliminated by Arthur Sze)

#15: Juan Felipe Herrera (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#14: Jane Hirshfield (eliminated by Robin Coste Lewis)

#13: Amy Gerstler (eliminated by Laura Kasischke)

#12: W.S. DiPiero (eliminated by Laura Kasischke)

#11: Mark Wunderlich (eliminated by Robin Coste Lewis)

#10: Alice Notley (eliminated by Arthur Sze)

#9: Laura Kasischke (eliminated by Arthur Sze)

#8: Emily Fragos (eliminated by Patrick Phillips)

#7: Gregory Pardlo (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#6: Robin Coste Lewis (eliminated by Bobby C. Rogers)

#5: Frank Bidart (eliminated by Patrick Phillips)

if I could escape, I would;

ain't really chosen my path

so much as did whatever

land leveled and lined, lighted

by electric grids only

limited by man’s darkness

TOP TEN TOWER OF BABEL TWISTS OF TONGUE

google alphabet
babel tower unicode
generated wealth#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/6EM55hGT9h

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

silicon fake tit
valley trickle down rev new
stream start-up abstract#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/407dNzTSdF

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

apple-a-day first
world tablet technology
african coltan#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/NeTbRYl94x

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

conflict minerals
colonial vitamins
new world repurposed#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/GeBk4vn3Ir

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

diversifying
whiteness is whiteness working
assimilation#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/GiP3XRx7A5

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

smartphone genetics
fragmenting psychology
but whatevs thumbs up#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/eYav8dF26l

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

integrate zeros
and one through mainstream into
arteries and veins#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/CumLgtgfTK

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

scrolling my pwned brain
all thoughts clouded, lifetime for
download of archive#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/lJzhsTD4Wi

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

heartware malfunctions
commonplace due to data
programming virus#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/nX24O0WLWk

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

shout out to cyborgs
fight lizard people syndrome
with fire - deep earth fire#haiku#rojonekku#cyborgtheory pic.twitter.com/Hu1KeiLyZz

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) February 7, 2016

#1: google alphabet/babel tower unicode/generated wealth

#2: silicon fake tit/valley trickle down rev new/stream start-up abstract

#3: apple-a-day first/world tablet technology/african coltan

#4: conflict minerals/colonial vitamins/new world repurposed

#5: diversifying/whiteness is whiteness working/assimilation

#6: smartphone genetics/fragmenting psychology/but whatevs thumbs up

#7: integrate zeros/and ones through mainstream into/arteries and veins

#8: scrolling my pwned brain/all thoughts clouded, lifetime for/download of archive

#9: heartware malfunctions/commonplace due to data/programming virus

#10: shout out to cyborgs/fight lizard people syndrome/with fire - deep earth fire

calligraphy written by

supernatural mystics

lacking awareness of deed

frybread sonnet #026: ODE TO NO WEEKS EVER END CLASS PEOPLE

No more weekends in AmeriKKKa - remain working
whenever possible (even when not got paid)
because status slipping (into noose?), doom lurking
so seven days forever slob, dreaming of shade,

motherfuckin' vacation long past overdue
but don't come in bright-colored envelope so gets
ignored in the juggle; born in the struggle, flew
straight from womb into instability, no nets

to land in, high-wired self with amphetamine dream
states for long periods, but now mostly reside
(hide?) in the vicodin fog; land still ruled by C.R.E.A.M.
so even as unemployed steadily stay applied

for new position, for refinance of my none;
ain't no off-days for slow death, deep breath, uncock gun.

self-censorship since mother

or wife or daughters or boss

or parole officer or...

mostly stay writing nonsense

gibberish to counteract
real life’s sensible bullshit

hacking blades left behind in

re-feralized woods grow rust;

developed lands grow manmades

2016 Royal Poetry Rumble: Section Eight

[Note: This was written at parts as if it was going to be posted on a Friday, but there are no deadlines in the wild, so Friday became Monday, which unfortunately is one of the harsh realities of the first world.]

So this is the Friday of our third week of this shit, and next week will be the end of it all, but before we get to next week we have to finish this week, and that means three more head-to-head match-ups betwixt drawn names from the nine remaining poets, in our… ROYAL! POETRY! RUMBLE!

lolol yeah I know that shit’s stupid. Whatever man. We’ve powered through this far, and we will force our way across the finish line. There were some real shitty poems on Wednesday, so my enthusiasm is kinda low.

#9: Arthur Sze (represented by “Stilling to North”) vs. Laura Kasischke (repped by “After Ken Burns”)

Two return customers come back in, in Arthur Sze and Laura Kasischke. Sze’s eliminated two people, and Kasischke’s knocked out five, so between the two of them they’ve killed off a third of our original field of ballyhooed poets. And Kasischke has been the top performer, not only in how many people she’s beat, but also that “Mushrooms” poem is still the highest high spot thus far.

Sze’s poem is cool I guess. I mean it’s very obviously poetry, and I feel like it might be acting all clever and cryptic and responding to things in Arthur’s own memory banks, but I find myself not as interested as he is in what is going on here. Maybe me and Arthur should’ve done acid together in a hotel first.

Kasischke’s poem, as expected, fucks shit up pretty quickly and with earthy authority…

This river, which is life, which is wayfaring.

Yeah. I can’t say this project has made me love contemporary poetry much more than I already barely tolerated it, but if I was forced at gunpoint to worship at the ivory altar of Big Poetry, Laura Kasischke would be my hero.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: By being about compasses sort of "Stilling to North" declares that it is about to be pretty serious (compasses are serious even the ones that are little and go on your key chain and have maybe a small thermometre on them too); I also like that there is a small soapstone bear as I was admiring soapstone sculptures just today at the art gallery because I am a man of taste and learning. And there is a meandering jaguar here, and poplar branches, and the spaces between branches, so as you can see the list of things that you could definitely have a good poem with is not insignificant here but I am not sure what we have in the end here is equal to the sum of its parts maybe? "After Ken Burns" tries to go way up and out at the end (she opens [what choice does she have?] although she has not yet been born) which is a solid move but on the whole the piece does not in my view manage to transcend the damning invocation of Ken Burns who while a fine documentarian (I have only ever seen the Baseball one) is also this weird nostalgia gnome who does not put me in the way of poesy. Which is probably wrongheaded as well as unkind, because Ken Burns probably likes poems. WINNER: "Stilling to North"

KASISCHKE DOWN! KASISCHKE DOWN! (But it was a solid run she had, and even her defeat was honorable.) Out at #9 is Laura Kasischke.

#8: Emily Fragos (repped by “Nemesis”) vs. Patrick Phillips (repped by “Elegy with Oil in the Bilge”)

Fragos has appeared before but this is Patrick Phillips first time into our competition, here because he was upon the shortlist for the National Book Award for poesy. Fragos, however, comes the fuck out the gate with a bomb of a poem, and maybe my personal favorite other that “Mushrooms”. (The kvlt scholar may disagree though.) First off, her poem is about the queen of hearts as some old dudes play cards. I have written extensively (though secretively, and unseen publicly) about decks of cards doing battle, inspired by Townes Van Zandt’s “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold” song (amazing song). But the great thing about this Fragos poem is not only is it about a face card during a gambling scenario, but she has an imagined character singing in italics, which to me conjures up thoughts of it being part of a Grateful Dead song, not like recorded but live, which might have been triggered as a fantasy memory after mentioning how I should’ve done acid with Arthur Sze. But who cares what caused it? The trigger of this poem here has made me think of pleasant things, perhaps not pleasant to the world but certainly dirtgod approved, and it conjures up more memories very personal and dear to me than I care to even mention to you through the soulless copper-veined cybertronic interwebs. But this pome by this Emily Fragos makes me have feelings.

And this Patrick Phillips poem is one of steering a shitty motorboat through some memories, and it also has dirtgod appeal, though not to the extent of “Nemesis”. But this match-up certainly gives me hope that not all contemporary poets are complete assholes.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I think "Nemesis" is a poem that builds to one thing that is supposed to be haunting, and I am totally willing to be haunted pretty much whenever, but I am somewhat unhaunted at present if I may be blunt about how haunted I am from this. "Elegy with Oil in the Bilge" is tough and sad and fvkkn *real* and I like how many times it says "water" and I think this poem might actually be a kind of minor triumph (over everything). WINNER: "Elegy with Oil in the Bilge"

Eliminated at #8 Emily Fragos.

#7: Gregory Pardlo (repped by “Epistemology of the Phone Booth”) vs. Joy Harjo (repped by “Deer Dancer”)

I remember reading about Gregory Pardlo when he won the Pulitzer for poetry last year, and he seemed real as fuck. He is actually reading at a local book festival this spring, one in which I recently (since we started this thing) searched their horribly laid out website to see if any of these poets were coming to my town. Only Pardlo is, and I will probably try to check him out, because real as fuck poets (if this is true) don’t get supported by Big Poetry all the time, so it’s important to fill the arenas and justify Big Poetry allowing flecks of plebian blood to pollute their cocktail parties.

And Joy Harjo has been in this thing, and eliminated a couple people already I think. So between the first pairs of poems and this potential match-up, my Friday expedition into this project has gained back some confidence after Wednesday’s doldrums.

I… I… I don’t even know where to begin with this Gregory Pardlo poem. Not only is it an amazing fucking piece of poetry, where the act of phone sex teasing is somehow made beautiful but twisted still, but it displays such a deep, working knowledge of phone booths that I can’t help but affirmed in my last year thoughts that Pardlo is real as fuck. You do not say things like:

Clack’d the splendid tongue 

and bloom!

unless you are real as fuck, and understand the inner-workings of dropping coins into pay phone, and being excited about sexually-related voices on the other side, and weave all these knowings together but not just saying it with words but tweaking that shit, backflip off the top rope, spin kick to the fucking brain. This is fucking great, and I honestly don’t see how Joy Harjo stands a chance.

Like, I want to quote other shit from this poem but it’s best to just leave it as is and you should definitely click the readable link above even if you haven’t made a habit of doing such through this whole thing.

I will tell you though, this Joy Harjo poem is pretty damn great too.  

The bar of broken survivors, the club of the shotgun, knife wound, of 

poison by culture. We who were taught not to stare drank our beer.

And the whole thing is nothing but beautiful in dirtgods and dirtgoddesses ways, and this poem would be almost any other poem we’ve had in this godforsaken competition, but really the way Pardlo turns degenerate nonsense into such beautiful words, that’s what poetry is supposed to be. Which is not to say that what Harjo does here is not what poetry should be either, it’s just that he fucking nails it, with force, and all she does is nail it (which is nearly impossible it seems when you evaluate what we’ve gone through thus far).

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: Is "Epistemology of the Phone Booth" like a belated beatnik holy bum kind of situation? I like beatnik holy bums and their poems often very much so to categorize this poem thus (maybe wrongly, who am I, what do I know) is not to diminish it but in this case I am unmoved by its moment. "Deer Dancer" is a lurid scene set aloft on the viewless wings of poesy and then he's like "I wasn't there" and you are like lol ok then what the hekk just happened here in this poem and while you are dealing with that he is like "I imagined her like this, not a stained red dress with tape on her heels but the deer who entered our dream in white dawn, breathed mist into pine trees, her fawn a blessing of meat, the ancestors who never left" and it is like haha we just got poesied half to death is what happened here. WINNER: "Deer Dancer"

NOOOOOOOOO! But this is how it goes with Royal Poetry Rumbles. Out at #7 is Gregory Pardlo.

We are down to our final six: Bobby C. Rogers and Frank Bidart (neither of whom has even been drawn into the fray as of yet), Patrick Phillips (who has eliminated one person, only just now), Robin Coste Lewis (eliminated two), and Arthur Sze and Joy Harjo (knocked out three apiece).