book reviewers always praise books as ‘life-affirming’ because the more humans there are on earth the better

by Tao Lin

i click a link on the internet
i watch a video
a bullfighter in spain
pushes a sword into a bull’s shoulder
the entire sword goes down into the bull
like a toothpick into a plum

and the bull keeps moving and bucking
and as it moves around
the sword cuts up its insides
and i want to see the bull’s eyes
but the video is quicktime
and the size of a baby’s forehead cut in half
and i turn my head
to a different angle
so that i might see the bull’s eyes
but this is on a computer screen
and two-dimensional
and now the bullfighter is cutting off the bull’s ears
from behind, and the bull is on the ground, and shivering
as if it were cold, and just wanted a blanket, and a bed
and i deleted this line
and i deleted this line, too, in revisions
and i deleted this line that was talking about god
and this line was also talking about god and it said something about the universe and I deleted it
and this line kept talking about semantics and i deleted it