Sometimes you just want to read some Jack Spicer but no bookstores have decent poetry sections anymore, so you Google “Jack Spicer” and then spend half an hour reading about the /b/ “You got Jacked” meme instead, and then you hate yourself. 

Regardless, here’s a great Spicer poem, which I discovered in 2008 while copyediting a review of My Vocabulary Did This to Me (what a great title, ahhh!):

A Poem for Dada Day at the Place, April 1, 1955

Darling,
The difference between Dada and barbarism
Is the difference between an abortion and a wet dream.
An abortion
Is a conscious sacrifice of the past, the painting of a mustache
On Mona Lisa, the surrender
Of real children.
The other, darling, is a sacrifice
Of nobody’s children, is barbarism, is an Eskimo
Running amok in a museum, is Bohemia
Renouncing cities it had never conquered.
An ugly Vandal pissing on a statue is not Phidias
Pissing on a statue. Barbarism
Is something less than a gesture.
Destroy your own gods if you want Dada:
Give up your vices, burn your jukebox,
Draw mustaches on music, paint a real mother
On every non-objective canvas. Befoul only
Those things that belong to you.
“Beauty is so rare a thing,” Pound said,
“So few drink at my fountain.”
You only have the right to piss in the fountain
If you are beautiful.