I interrupt this blog for a moment for some breaking news: Pickup Artists have started writing poetry.
And it’s glorious. By which I mean, of course, that it’s gloriously awful.
Yesterday, while poking around the internet in my usual manner, I ran across an amazing little discussion on MPUAForum.com, an online hangout for PUAs who have for some reason added an M to their usual acronym.
A PUA going by the name bob2 announced to his Comrades in Sarging that he was planning on starting a “a pickup poetry blog.” That is, a blog providing PUA wisdom to the Average Frustrated Chumps of the world in the form of little poems. As he explained:
In pickup, especially in natural game you need to really GET a few key ideas. Therefore poetry is the tool of choice. Whereas a post or an ebook “gestures” at ideas, poetry is tough and precise, it really gets the point across.
There was just one teeeeensy little roadblock with this plan: It would involve actually writing poems, and, as bob2 admitted plainly, he’s “no writer.”
Unwilling to let the fact that he can’t write get in the way of writing a blog, our hero asked the assembled masses for submissions.
And they delivered. They delivered some of the worst poems ever written by sentient beings.
“I love rhyming words to express feelings,” a fellow calling himself Pickup Truck announced happily. He celebrated this love of rhyme with a poem in which, er, nothing actually rhymed. These two stanzas will give you some idea of his intriguing sense of rhyme. And also what an insufferable ass he is.
I’ve been here a thousand times before and learnt it,
Her beauty is present, but her personality is transparent,
She may be hot but what if she’s also a bitch and unpleasant?
The challenge excites me, the prospect excites her,She knows tonight’s going to be different,
Her daily routine will not be the same, I stroll over,
Her heart races, she turns to jelly when I smile,
Place my hand on her shoulder and ask “hey, whats your name?”
In the first, Mr, Truck at least made vague gestures towards the notion of rhyme; the second abandoned rhyme altogether.
Also, “hey what’s your name?” What the hell kind of opener is that? Shouldn’t he be negging her a little bit, dropping in a “nice nails, are they real?” or “one of your boobs is definitely bigger than the other one” or “are you a model, like, a 1/32 scale model of a Krupp Sd.Kfz.121 Panzer II F tank?”
Actually, I’m not completely sure I understand negs myself.
A commenter called Ezo came a little bit closer to the goal of writing a poem that rhymes. But he seemed unaware that words that are spelled similarly do not always sound alike.
When you start getting the point of the Game.
Your life will not ever give you the same.
Tired of pondering words that she said.
When she just told you that youre not getting laid.
So close!
Dziah, perhaps noticing the troubles his comrades were having with rhyme and meter, went with free verse. Very free verse. Verse so free that it probably should have been repressed a little by the authorities.
I gazed at a rose,
Cast away into the eye.
Motional leaves move while still.This inhibited instant,
Reality impedes.
Trance just dismissed.The elegant red of the pedal‘s tips,
The saccharine essence.
Thorns now pierce my flesh.
Uh, pretty sure you meant “petals,” dude. Flowers have petals. Bikes have pedals. Petaluma is a city in California.
Those roses that dispute the most anguish,
Contain the most eccentric adventures.
These strange saga’s father the Magnificent.
If any of you can discern any possible meanings hiding in this word salad, let me know. I’m stumped.
Bob2 offered a couple of sample poems of his own. One even managed to work in the words “becometh” and “womanhood” — in the same line!
she becometh her womanhood
feels your calm
the easygoing King,
unapologetic, calm
Err, dude, it’s sort of cheating to rhyme “calm” with “calm,” given that they’re THE SAME WORD.
But the conclusion of his poem was so truly beautiful it brought a wettening to my pants.
she wettens, she laughs
her pupils dilate
she can hardly believe it
she’s getting ready to mate.for you are Zeus,
manhood incarnate
and she a common beauty
yours with which to masturbate.
Wait, what?
Look, fellas, I realize that most of your trips to the club end with you back at home alone, masturbating forlornly into the bathroom sink with the memory of some women you tried to hit on floating around in your head. But you’re not supposed to admit this out loud. It kind of ruins the PUA mystique.
EDIT: Removed a link to a video; I hadn’t realized that it had some awful stuff in it.
PUA poetry would be all like “From the passionate shitbird who’s a stain.”
A cap of plastic skulls for thee, and a girdle made of myrtle!
Ode to Evening – after Joseph Warton
Hail meek-ey’d maiden, clad in sober grey,
Whose soft approach the leering Alpha loves,
As bar-ward bent to kiss some smokin’ babes,
He jocund whistles at the way she moves.
When Phoebus sinks behind the gilded hills,
You lightly o’er misty pavements walk,
And what do you expect to happen then,
in dim-lit streets where Bad Men like to stalk?
The panting Douchebags, that in day’s fierce heat
live as basement-dwellers underground,
Return to trip in wanton evening-dance
in clubs and bars where HB10s are found.
To their big wood the amorous rakes refer,
Light skim their sweaty hands o’er flinching thighs
And as they harrass, neg and NLP,
Stout bouncers meet to wrest them from their prey.
The swine that artless whines on yonder blog,
his gibbering sheep and lengthening diatribes,
complain how Feminazis blocked his cock,
and indignant, hurls his shallow jibes.
Now every passion wakes; despairing HATE
And pining Envy, ever-restless Pride;
Unholy creeps post in the comment section,
Where Anger and mad Ambition’s storms reside.
O modest virgins, oft should you appear
an easy target on the late night train,
List’ning to every wildly-warbling throat
That trills with cat-calls, threats and harsh disdain.
Train Of Manospherian Thought, Derailed: A haiku.
Women are all c**ts
Whores and sluts, bitches and twats
… DON’T DARE CALL US CREEPS!
Re: good artists being more progressive, I think it might also have to do with being able to receive criticism without getting defensive; if you can listen to someone say “your book isn’t very good because you did this, this, and this wrong”, and accept that they’re correct and do those thing differently in the future, then you can probably also handle being told that your worldview is wrong because you’re not examining your privilege, or not taking all the facts into account, and change your views accordingly. Whereas people who respond to artistic criticism with “no, you’re wrong, you just don’t understand my genius!” will probably likewise respond to differing political/social opinions with “you’re wrong! You’re an oversensitive SJW harpy! Misandry!”
Based on my interactions with other creative types, I’ve found this to be true. Someone who just wants to write without worrying about being “politically correct” often turns out to be someone who also just wants to write without worrying about being cliche, or worrying about plot holes, or worrying about believable characters.
In other words, some people just want a free pass.
http://i977.photobucket.com/albums/ae251/swebb1/writingishard-supernatural-chuck_zps545977fd.gif
But how can we KNOW the PUA/manosphere isn’t secretly a huge surrealist poem about Greek letters trying to use random clumps of English letters to seduce the numbers 8 through 10 (even though they seem to hate all numbers)???
On a more serious side, the de la Cruz and Atwood poems people quoted reminded me of this recent piece “Women in the Arts” that has some pointed things to say about misogyny in… well, Western artists/writers in general. Here’s the last few lines (warning for mention of sexual assault):
“The nearest warm
bodice that’s available
when Byrons and
other such shits
find themselves between
poems or – “sleepwalking”
in the servants’ wing –
all of a sudden between
a pair of some body’s
legs and raping
the benefits.”
(Jason Guriel, from the book Satisfying Clicking Sound, 35-36, published 2014).
(And he’s pretty awesome, too – he has funny poems about speed bumps and bendable straws in the same book.)
Sure it’s not a typo, and he really meant “reaping the benefits?”
I’d filk up Sonnet 130 (My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun … ) but I’m just too tired.
Twas Alpha ‘mongst the slimy bros,
And gyring rambling panty raid,
All whimsy was the negging slow,
And the HB10’s lingerie…
Beware the Alpha Cock, my son!
The panties it’ll wet, the snatch it’ll snatch!
Beware the Rationalization Hamster, and the females you catch!
This person goes by the name “bob2”.
Perhaps a fan of certain movies I could name, but, y’know, won’t. Out of respect. So just this link, then.
Respect, of course, for the movies. Wouldn’t want them sullied with connection to this, ahem, “poet”.
This really makes the bile rise.
Just… *standing ovation for everyone*
Ahem. With apologies to A.E. Housman:
“Rooshie, this is stupid stuff;
You choke your chicken fast enough.
There won’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
If you would wash your hair with beer.
But oh, good lord, the verse you write —
I’d call it an insult to blight!
Moping melancholy mad;
Go wipe your ass and shower, lad!”
Oh I would totally read that.
friday jones: I think that was a deliberate pun. Fair for Lord Byron? I’m not sure. He himself reported having affairs with servants and there’d at least be a large power imbalance. Generally he seemed to have a lot of consensual, if strange, sexual adventures, and he went interesting places – without ever writing a book on how to “bang” a country (I was just reading the latest post about Roosh V. and… ugh.)
LBT: Jabberwocky!!! That is perfect.
You misunderstand that last stanza. He doesn’t mean he’ll masturbate *to* her memory, he means as he says: he’ll masturbate *with* her body. That is, he’ll use her as a tool for his pleasure solely, with no regard for hers, and discard her when he’s done. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “He masturbated with my vagina” or something similar? It’s the same idea.
You can confirm that he’s not talking about going home alone by the fact that his “female” is “getting ready to mate” in the stanza before.
Shades of Tom Lehrer’s “Folk Song Army:”
Oh the tune don’t have to be pretty
And it don’t matter if you get a couple of extra syllables into a line.