brutal, baby

brutal, baby this thing, this life is pretty brutal nothing’s certain, you know nothing that’s totally terrible and nothing that’s joyful as fuck nothing… uncertainty, baby is the rule so get your love on drip get it where you can wait a while till you can get your little sip … I heard there was this scientist up in Ottawa who tried to teach an octopus how to read —  he thought he could get it to communicate like how people do… well, no surprise, this ’pus went crazy, (well crazy for an octopus anyway, whatever that means) and used its newly developed cognitive ability to bust out of its own tank and set the lab on fire, nearly killing the scientist …later on they said it had developed a sort of telepathy, and the damn doctor knew about it and said nothing—it was like a sort of mind control ability trained into its highly complex distributed nervous system, all based on reinforcement and scheduled operant conditioning, you know, like stimulus-response B.F. Skinner-type shit, except like way more powerful—anyway, this is how it figured out how to get the lab’s artificial intelligence system to activate the Bunsen burners and blow the whole shit up… yeah, I know brutal, baby life is brutal even the cephalopods want to set it all aflame This poem is a little strange—it’s basically a rumination on the uncertainty of life punctuated by an absurd science fiction premise. Often when I’m free writing I’ll pull in references from a variety of media that I’m consuming at any given time. Whether it’s books, magazines, records, tv shows—you name it. It’s like cooking. Whatever ingredients you have on hand, you throw them in and see what happens. What must have happened here is I started a poem on how brutal and unpredictable life could be (you know, standard Franco Amati fare), and then I began reading this really retro science fiction story published in a very old issue of Galaxy Magazine. See, a while back I bought a stack of old back issues of random speculative fiction mags that are no longer in print. I sift through them from time to time. Sometimes for ideas. Sometimes to get a feel for how far we’ve come as genre writers. Anyway, it would take me forever to dig up the actual issue among my stacks of books and other useless shit. I’ll add an addendum later with the actual reference. But suffice it to say, I do remember this was a very pulpy story about a maniacal developmental psychologist who was trying to increase the intelligence of babies. And what ended up happening was one of the babies somehow became more than just intelligent—they gained some sort of telepathic-telekinesis or something. And then they began destroying the lab and getting revenge on the wicked scientist. So in this poem baby got substituted with octopus (because they’re way cuter, right?). What follows is the question of what would happen if you’re trying to expand the cognition of an already fairly intelligent animal. Octopi are already pretty smart. We just underestimate their intelligence because they look so different than us. And they live underwater, which necessitates a very different sort of cleverness than what we might express. Anyway, in my brutally twisted version, the Octopus goes all Stranger Things on papa scientist and chaos ensues within what would otherwise be a fairly standard Garbage Notes poem on the precariousness of life. We never know what’s going to happen when we try something. Whether we’re intentionally mucking around in places we shouldn’t or whether we’re playing it safe, going about our daily lives. You’re never immune to chaos. But if you’re good, you might just have a decent shot at writing about it. Franco Amati 2024 If you enjoyed this piece, a paid subscription would be the best way to show your support. But if you aren’t ready for that sort of commitment yet, you can always send me a one-time donation on my Ko-fi page. Garbage Notes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Garbage Notes. © 2024 Franco Amati 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104