The Iowa Writers Workshop Lacks Yuugen, by Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

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The Iowa Writers Workshop Lacks Yuugen.


The Iowa Writers Workshop lacks yuugen.
Arthur Miller, of course, lacks yuugen.
James Frey, he lacks yuugen, too.
None of these people will ever play the blues.

You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
You’ll never play the blues.


Edmund Wilson lacks yuugen.
White Man Novels lack yuugen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harold Bloom.
None of them have even been in the same room
With yuugen.


You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
And so you lose.
Your words, our bombs, you say,
And so you lose.
You’ll never play the blues.


Justin Isis, lacks the exacts beauty he wants
And he has yuugen as a result.
Thomas Ligotti has a book deal with Virgin
And he has yuugen too.


We win,
You lose.
We win,
You lose.
We have yuugen,
And you only have ‘the rules’.


So many people have stood in my way,
But I am not afraid.
I brush my teeth each day
With new, improved yuugen.


We win,
You lose.
We win,
You lose.
We have yuugen,
And you only have ‘the rules’.


So many people have stood in my way,
But I am not afraid.
I brush my teeth each day
With new, improved yuugen.

33 Ways of Winning at Life

But we shall speak no further of these matters, for the time has come to tell how these adventures, glorified in song like the gilding that makes the passing kalpas splendid, came sadly to their end. Few are the balladeers who can sing the last song of the cycle without tears, and there are even those who say to do so is a failing in the art.

It happened that, weakened from the revels of victory on Traken, and anxious at the cosmic alarum of the cloister bell, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp came to ancient Metebelis Three in search of the fabled blue crystals, by which they hoped to replenish their depleted dancing and business skills before the final reckoning with the Black Guardian. Alas, the reckoning never came. Destiny intervened with long and cruel fingernails, like those of Weng Chi'ang.

While yet foraging for crystals on the plain, vulnerable and sorrowfully unstylish, they were taken by a brutish band of the Eight-Legs' slaves, and brought before the Great One, most mighty and evil of all the Eight-Legs, whose business skills were unsurpassed in all that quadrant of reality. The judgement of the Great One was without mercy, and She rejoiced in her quivering, slimy heart that two talented opponents had thus fallen so low. By Her decree they were sent to the lowest of the larder caverns, where a loathsome agitation of menial Eight-Legs bound the two anti-life writers in a tensile silk stronger than steel, gloatingly hissing, and drooling and rubbing the while their spinnerets in semi-sexual excitement.

Fastened to opposite walls of the cheerless cave, and physically paralysed by the obscene juices with which the fangs of the Eight-Legs had injected them, they knew that their fate was fixed. When human slaves or Eight-Legs came to ensure they were yet alive enough to taunt, they demanded to know what was intended for them, but ever were greeted with laughter. "This is a larder, is it not?" hissed one nefarious arachnid, and declined to show the mercy of revealing how and when the Great One meant to dispose of them.

Low in spirits as they were, they determined to pass their last hours by composing a wonderful document under the title of '33 Ways of Winning at Life'. It was the last true classic of dadaoist literature to be bequeathed the universe, and afterwards it was declared that dadaoism had come to its decadent phase. To this day, writers of unselfconsciously experimental prose who hear the distant murmurings of yuugen and know the sparkling of the Gold of Inner Space, declare '33 Ways of Winning at Life' the most splendid treasure to be fashioned from that Gold since before the pacifying of Traken. For that we must thank the single human slave to show taste and mercy, who, though he dared not do more, smuggled the document from that cave, keeping it safe in his hovel until the Armada of the Ghost of Magibon came finally to liberate Metebelis Three from the arachnid tyranny. Chomu guards each of the 33 Ways with unyielding stubbornness and devotion, and rejoices in its duty of revealing them again, at intervals, in this humble quarter of reality.

The first of the Ways will be made known soon.

Sea and Seagulls, By Kaneko Misuzu, Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

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Sea and Seagulls

I thought that the sea was blue.
I thought that the seagulls were white.

But now that I look at them, the sea
And the wings of the seagulls, too, are both grey.

I thought that everyone knew,
But it was all lies.

Everyone knows the sky is blue.
Everyone knows the snow is white.
Everyone sees. They know.
But maybe that's a lie, too.

Princess Kaguya, by Kaneko Misuzu, Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

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Princess Kaguya

The princess born
Out of the bamboo
Went back home
To the moon

The princess went back home
To the moon,
Looked down each night
From the moon and cried.

Sad for the house she grew up in,
She cried.
Sorry for the stupid people down there, down there,
She cried.

Night after night, each the same
She cried.
The world below
It swiftly changed.

The old man and woman who loved her,
They died.
The stupid people down there, down there,
They forgot all about her.

The Mask of Evil

The Mask Of Evil

On my wall hangs a Japanese carving,
The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer.
Sympathetically I observe
The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating
What a strain it is to be evil.

Bertolt Brecht

Justin Isis - I Hunger for Flesh But This Cake Will Do

Tristan Disappointed

Each sickened moment of my life has been
A waiting lover's deathbed
To which comes always only
A ship with sails of black
That snap and rumble with the starving air
Like hollow cheeks.