George Carlin was a legend, a visionary,
an incisive social critic, a staple of my college library.
Ever brazen, he spoke of how mass media suppressed language:
Shit, what dogs do in parks;
piss, what hooligans do in parking lots;
fuck, how we all arrived here;
c*nt, don’t ever say this if you’re not British; seriously, what’s wrong with you;
cocksucker, thank you for your service;
motherfuckers, only Samuel L. Jackson does this full justice;
and tits, what kind of world do we live in
where a mother’s nourishment of an infant is profane.
Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee who was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His writing and photography have appeared in many literary journals, including Dogzplot, Stoneboat, The High Window, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Steep Street Journal, Beautiful Losers, New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, The Offbeat, Oddball Magazine, The Perch Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, Chicago Literati, Bull Men’s Fiction, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, Lumpen, The Rat’s Ass Review, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Euphemism, Jenny Magazine, Vending Machine Press and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Like Bartleby, he would prefer not to.