09-15-2015, 04:54 AM
Magic Realism Cliché
Out in South America they got
going on a trend
what is partly religious
—some would say—
and burns hollow like God
and Jesus in an atheist's eardrum:
To talk about things like they
were real,
superstitious, obviously-not things,
spiritual and outmoded things:
how can these things interest us:
Give us serious works like Peter Pan,
like Barney the Purple Sore,
like Star Wars, like
horror movies,
like that Leprechaun thing?
Now everybody's doing it
that's not serious—
There is a bandwagon,
a cliché,
a gay trope,
a pop music,
a hick church,
a cautionary tale,
a push lawnmower,
a gnostic bible,
a kangaroo in Australia,
a beret on a Frenchman's head;
now that there's a tightrope walker without a net,
a magic without smoke and mirrors,
we're supposed to be interested,
like a dog without a bone?
I will bitch until I'm offended no more.
I'll know until there's no more to know.
There shall be no ghosts.
There shall be no mysteries.
The dead shall stay dead;
the arts shall be intelligent or psychological,
but never supernatural, not religious in an
unschooled way.
There shall be no flights of fancy
not mediated by the dictates of common sense
and good common sense at that.
You will not shake a rod in front of me.
In South America people there will be South American people
as there are Danes in Denmark, and no mermaids off the shores
there.
No werewolves in London; no devils taking bets and making
deals at United States crossroads.
The woman you love will not come back.
Your father will not die with meaning
if he dies not with honor;
there are no dragons in China or Japan, nor were there
when there were dinosaurs,
and the dinosaurs in your childhood dreambooks and in movies
are not what dinosaurs really looked like or were like.
Whoever says otherwise will be mocked,
or else labeled what they truly are:—Fantasy and Science Fiction authors.
That should be enough for any person.