Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Di Prima Vs. Ginsberg
Monday, December 5, 2011
Full Circle
Reach for the unattainable.
Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the unseen.
Be naive, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth (as indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you have fallen upon.
Write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance level for hot air.
Write an endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere.
Read between the lines of human discourse.
Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.
Think subjectively, write objectively.
Think long thoughts in short sentences.
Don't attend poetry workshops, but if you do, don't go to learn 'how to" but to learn "what" (What's important to write about).
Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
Resist much, obey less.
Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
Write short poems in the voice of birds. Make your lyrics truly lyrical. Birdsong is not made by machines. Give your poems wings to fly to the treetops.
The much-quoted dictum from William Carlos Williams, "No ideas but in things," is OK for prose, but it lays a dead hand on lyricism, since "things" are dead.
Don't contemplate your navel in poetry and think the rest of the world is going to think it's important.
Remember everything, forget nothing.
Work on a frontier, if you can find one.
Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat.
Associate with thinking poets. They're hard to find.
Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. "First thought, best thought" may not make for the greatest poetry. First thought may be worst thought.
What's on your mind? What do you have in mind? Open your mouth and stop mumbling.
Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
Question everything and everyone. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.
Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors, or publishers.
Come out of your closet. It's dark in there.
Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks from the doors, but don't throw away the screws.
Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.
To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be a poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both.
Wake up and pee, the world's on fire.
Have a nice day.
Friday, December 2, 2011
What "Really" Happened at UC Davis
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
a post from many moons ago
boundless transcendence
heres a link to the occupyca post:
http://occupyca.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/empty-bank-occupied-in-santa-cruz/
& heres a link to keep updated with the livestream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/radicaltimes
(ironic how an advertisement precedes the livestream, huh?)
di Prima and OccupyLA
Going back to what section A was discussing tonight...what’s currently happening at this exact moment at OccupyLA seems to be completely relevant to Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letter #65 (specifically the first half of this Letter). “Let everything private be made public!”
Those who have access to their phones, camera, etc. are keeping us connected to what is happening at OccupyLA (just as others have throughout the country). I’m currently watching the live feed of the raid. Nearly everyone there is willing to get arrested.
We discussed tonight that technology/faceless media can alienate us from each other. It seems to (at least) be uniting us tonight.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupylacivicengagement
-Monica
di Prima and /
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
La Loba
Baudelaire in Fifties America
I really like part 5, entitled "The Hour of Eternity." It places Baudelaire in the cosumerist mold (he buys a cat jeweled necklace) that he commonly explores.
The poem can be found here:
Great Baudelaire archive
-Evan Penza
Sunday, November 27, 2011
A Dialogue Between Gary Snyder and Diane di Prima
Although we have mentioned a few women that were Beat writers, overall the group was predominantly male. The Beat poets addressed many issues of society including slavery, consumerism, and even becoming more ecologically conscious. They did not write much about feminism. One of Gary Snyder’s poems, “Praise for Sick Women,” even has underlying misogyny. Diane di Prima wrote an ironic response to this poem (“The Practice of Magical Evolution”).
Gary Snyder “Praise for Sick Women”
I
The female is fertile, and discipline
(contra naturam) only confuses her
Who has, head held sideways
Arm out softly, touching,
A difficult dance to do, but not in mind.
Hand on sleeve: she holds leaf turning in sunlight on spiderweb;
Makes him flick like trout through shallows
Builds into ducks and cold marshes
Sucks out the quiet: bone rushes in
Behind the cool pupil a knot grows
Sudden roots sod him and solid him
Rain falls from skull-roof mouth is awash with small creeks
Hair grows, tongue tenses out – and she
Quick turn of the head: back glancing, one hand
Fingers smoothing the thigh, and he sees.
II
Apples will sour at your sight.
Blossoms fail the bough,
Soil turn bone-white: wet rice
Dry rice, die on the hillslope
All women are wounded
Who gather berries, dibble in mottled light,
Turn white roots from humus, crack nuts on stone
High upland with squinted eye or rest in cedar shade.
Are wounded
In yurt or frame or mothers
Shopping at the outskirts in fresh clothes.
Whose sick eye bleeds the land,
Fast it! Thick throat shields from evil, you young girls
First caught with the gut-cramp
Gather punk wood and sour leaf
Keep out of our kitchen.
Your garden plots, your bright fabrics,
Clever ways to carry children
Hide
A beauty like season or tide, sea cries
Sick women
Dreaming of long-legged dancing in light
No, our Mother Eve: slung on a shoulder
Lugged off to hell.
Kali/shakti
Where’s hell then?
In the moon
In the change of the moon:
In a bark shack
Crouched from sun, five days,
Blood dripping through crusted thighs.
Diane Di Prima "The Practice of Magical Evolution"
The female is fertile,
and discipline (contra naturam) only confuses her
- Gary Snyder
i am a woman and my poems
are woman’s: easy to say
this: the female is ductile
and
(stroke after stroke)
built for masochistic
calm. The deadened nerve
is part of it:
awakened sex, dead retina
fish eyes; at hair’s root
minimal feeling
and pelvic architecture functional
assailed inside & out
(bring forth) the cunt gets wide
and relatively sloppy
bring forth men children only
female
is
ductile
woman, a veil thru which the fingering Will
twice torn
twice tor
inside & out
the flow
what rhythm add to stillness
what applause ?
Native Americans in Beat Poetry
Allen Ginsberg in his poem “America” discussed the unfairness of the government in the treatment of Indians, African Americans, and the Industrial workers: “That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.” Ginsberg addresses the issue of America allowing slavery. He points out the poor treatment of Native Americans - how America not only took their land away, but also forced them to change their lifestyles.
Diane di Prima also mentions the unfair treatment of Indians in her poetry: “who is the we, who is the they in this thing, did we or they kill the indians, not me/ my people brought here, cheap labor to exploit a continent for them” (Revolutionary Letter #36). She calls attention to America using Native Americans as slaves and how everyone is to be blamed for it. The difference in her poetry in comparison to Ginsberg’s is that she also calls for action or revolt. She is more extreme and says things like “be prepared at any time to die” (Revolutionary Letter #7).
Not only did Diane di Prima address the ill treatment of Native Americans, she was also inspired by them. Diane di Prima uses Native American ideas and culture in some of her letters: “the American Indians say that a man can own no more than he can carry away on his horse” (Revolutionary Letter #21). Native Americans in San Francisco were not only forced to do labor but also change their traditions and ways of life. Men and women were separated in different living quarters, they had to abide by a linear clock of the church bells, etc. When traditions are changed, they can be lost. By using them in her poetry, Diane di Prima helps us remember some of their traditions and beliefs.
-Jessica
Occupy Everywhere
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/25/occupy_everywhere_michael_moore_naomi_klein
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Love is a Four Letter Word
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
The Price of Admission: SF as a Theme-Park
“[T]ourists see a Potemkin Village or theme park, a San-Francisco-in-quotation-marks.” James Brook
"Corporate monoculture has wiped out any unique sense of place, turning the island-city into an artistic theme-park." Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“Whoever controls […] the images, controls the culture.” Allen Ginsberg
Throughout the quarter we have encountered various images of San Francisco: Mistress/Queen of the Pacific (Brechin), Wall Street of the West (Brook), the end of the trail (Garrison), the Last Frontier, and many others. I am interested in the imagery of San Francisco as a theme-park, and how this functions in relation to the themes we’ve been dealing with.
There are some postmodernist theories that designate theme-parks as a site of consumption. What are we consuming? In a way, we consume the artificial images or landscapes presented to us, and the contexts we are meant to view them in. Let’s take Disneyland’s “Frontierland” as an example. This is a landscape that “celebrates the trailblazers, settlers and other heroes of the Old West” (Disney website). Here, Frontierland is a constructed experience embedded within a specific context. People come and feel they are experiencing an authentic part of history, but fail to recognize the myths attached to place and past. In a way, this allows for a recycling of myths to ensure the historical narrative remains intact.
How does this translate to the image of S.F. as a theme-park? How do the texts we've read support, complicate, or resist this designation?
The aim of the essay “You Are Here (So You Think)" is to examine the ways tourism “unconsciously shape[s] our ways of experiencing cities” (137). The essay claims cities like S. F. are filled with a “mixed nostalgia for the not-yet and never-was” (139). This is important to our discussion of S. F. as a mythical site. It seems to me that the overall project in Reclaiming San Francisco is an attempt to challenge, thwart, or re-write (a worlding project, so to speak) the myths that shape and sustain the ‘postcard image’ of San Francisco.
Other texts we have read also seek an alternative, less mythical view of San Francisco. One could argue this is the ambition of Grey Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco. Brechin, however, takes it a step further by arguing that S.F. myths serve the contado and, more specifically, those who stand to benefit most from the contado. This text is significant in that it deliberately and unabashedly removes the myths and constructed landscapes from the consumer. I’m not sure about you, but – as a Bay Area native – San Francisco will not (cannot) ever be the same for me after reading Brechin’s work. The S.F. image as a theme-park full of myths is no longer a possibility; that S.F. is an illusion.
Can we widen the scope of the theme-park imagery to American society?
Ferlinghetti’s poem “A Coney Island of the Mind” opens with a reference to the artwork of Francisco de Goya, most likely the “Disasters of War” series. In the poem, Ferlinghetti writes of the “suffering humanity” in the artwork. Goya’s images are “so bloody real / It is as if they really existed / And they do / Only the landscape has changed” (9). Here, the landscape is no longer war-ravaged Spain, but, rather, it has shifted to 1950’s America. The poem goes on to describe the “concrete continent,” “bland billboards,” and the “freeways fifty lanes wide” (9). This imagery suggests America has fallen to the brute powers of materialism, mechanization, and modernity. In short, there is a different, but equally devastating, kind of war taking shape in America. It is no wonder, then, that this disorienting image of America has the power to force one into "a Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul.”
In the end, the imagery of a space or site as a theme-park raises many concerns on how we absorb culture, myths, and American consumerism. If San Francisco (or America) is a theme-park, what price do we pay for admission? If we take Ginsberg’s quote from above, it seems to be a severe one; we lose the power to see beyond the constructed images, experiences, and contexts that are surreptitiously placed before us.
Links:
Here is a link to a slideshow of Goya's images of war. While a little long, the images are really powerful, especially when thinking of Ferlinghetti's image of America in this poem.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Police brutality at UC Davis
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Thoreau's Journals
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Brautigan and OWS
Love Poem on Theme by Whitman
the bride,
those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,
arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,
bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,
and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,
legs raised up crook'd to recieve, cock in the darkness driven tormented and
attacking
roused up from hole to itching head,
bodies locked shuddering naked, hot hips and bottocks screwed into each
other
and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,
moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,
hands in moisture on softened hips, throbbing contraction of bellies
till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,
and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of
passion and compassion,
and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses
of farewell -
all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened
house
where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,
nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.
More on Occupy
1st Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
As Citizens of the United States our rights are clearly outlined in our government's constitution, however, the militarized police force in this country has chosen to interpret these laws differently than originally intended. Should the people of this country not have the right to peaceable assemble for protest? Are we enemies of this country that need to be controlled through violent force? This is a time when change is upon us, history is being written before our eyes and each decision being made by the citizens and law enforcement during the occupy movement is setting a standard for how much free speech we are really allowed to have and how much power we are going to give to law enforcement over those rights. Law enforcement is content to give the citizens the right to assemble and protest as long as we stay within limits. If we are within a box that does not disrupt, call to much attention, and does not interfere with everyday interactions then it is fine but step beyond those limits and they attempt to shut it down. How long will the occupy movement really last? I don't know but I have a feeling that with the attempt to shut down and impose more limits on the movement that originally inspired cites all over the country to protest, there will be many rapid changes within the upcoming weeks.
Law Enforcement Oath of Honor
On my honor,
I will never betray my badge,
my integrity, my character,
or the public trust.
I will always have the courage
To hold myself and others
accountable for our actions.
I will always uphold the Constitution,
the community,
And the agency I serve,
so help me God.
Developed by the
International Association of Chiefs of Police
Committee on Police Ethics
2000
Before Police Officers take upon themselves
the “Law Enforcement Oath of Honor,” it is
vital that they understand what it truly means.
An oath is a solemn pledge someone
voluntarily makes when they sincerely intend
to do what they say. The key words in the
“Law Enforcement Oath of Honor” are
defined thusly:
HONOR means giving one’s word as a bond and guarantee.
BETRAY is defined as breaking faith and proving false.
The BADGE is a visible symbol of the power of your office.
INTEGRITY is firm adherence to principles, both in our
private and public life.
CHARACTER means the qualities and standards of
behavior that distinguish and individual.
The PUBLIC TRUST is a duty imposed in faith to those we
are sworn to serve.
COURAGE is having the “heart”, the mental, and the moral
strength to venture, persevere, withstand, and overcome
danger, difficulty, and fear.
ACCOUNTABILITY means that we are answerable and
responsible for our actions.
COMMUNITY is the municipality, neighborhoods, and citizens we serve.
-Loren
Saturday, November 12, 2011
99 Problems...
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/11/jay-zs-company-stands-to-profit-from-occupy-wall-street-movement/
Diddy was right. Mo' money, mo' problems. |
Friday, November 11, 2011
Thou Shalt Not Kill
I was rereading through Reclaiming San Francisco the other night when I came upon a passage about Kenneth Rexroth. In Nancy J. Peters' 'The Beat Generation and San Francisco's Culture of Dissent' she mentions the poet and anarchist Kenneth Rexroth, who moved to San Francisco in 1927, 'delighted to find a literary scene so underdeveloped and noncommercial - an inviting tabula rasa' (pg. 202). Peters goes on to describe Rexroth as one of the early cultivators of the San Francisco poetry scene, stating that he 'introduced translations of Asian poetry to American readers' like an early Gary Snyder, and also 'insisted that poetry should have moral significance', both ideas common threads throughout the poets and writers of the West coast.
Peters also mentions briefly Rexroth's poem 'Thou Shalt Not Kill', a work that influenced Allen Ginsberg. I looked up this poem, and its apparent both in the pattern of Rexroth's writing and his mention of Moloch at one point that this is a clear influence of Ginsberg, and should be mentioned along with Whitman. Within the poem, an elegy of sorts for Dylan Thomas - a devoted anti-war poet, even through World War II which earned him some animosity - Rexroth condemns both the military-industrial complex (jungles of Africa/marshes of Asia...Billion dollar corporations devoted to service) and society (nightclubs of America, hyena with polished face and bow tie, et al) for the death of countless poets, artists, philosophers and others, who he mentions throughout parts II and III. Within part II, he repeats at each stanza 'timor mortis conturbat me', which I looked up and found it means 'the fear of death consumes me', a reference to William Dunbar's 'Lament for the Makers', a 16th century ode to dead poets.
I have included 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' in full. Poems are always meant to be read aloud, but if whoever reads this does not want to read the entire piece out loud, I strongly suggest at least doing so with part IV, to fully get the feeling of this work.
Thou Shalt Not Kill
A memorial for Dylan Thomas
by Kenneth Rexroth
I
They are murdering all the young men.
For half a century now, every day,
They have hunted them down and killed them.
They are killing them now.
At this minute, all over the world,
They are killing the young men.
They know ten thousand ways to kill them.
Every year they invent new ones.
In the jungles of Africa,
In the marshes of Asia,
In the deserts of Asia,
in the slave pens of Siberia,
In the slums of Europe,
In the nightclubs of America,
The murderers are at work.
They are stoning Stephen,
They are casting him forth from every city in the world.
Under the Welcome sign,
Under the Rotary emblem,
On the highway in the suburbs,
His body lies under the hurling stones.
He was full of faith and power.
He did great wonders among the people.
They could not stand against his wisdom.
They could not bear the spirit with which he spoke.
He cried out in the name
Of the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness.
They were cut to the heart.
They gnashed against him with their teeth.
They cried out with a loud voice.
They stopped their ears.
They ran on him with one accord.
They cast him out of the city and stoned him.
The witnesses laid down their clothes
At the feet of a man whose name was your name -
You.
You are the murderer.
You are killing the young men.
You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron.
When you demanded he divulge
The hidden treasures of the spirit,
He showed you the poor.
You set your heart against him.
You seized him and bound him with rage.
You roasted him on a slow fire.
His fat dripped and spurted in the flame.
The smell was sweet to your nose.
He cried out,
“I am cooked on this side,
Turn me over and eat,
You,
Eat of my flesh.”
You are murdering the young men.
You are shooting Sebastian with arrows.
He kept the faithful steadfast under persecution.
First you shot him with arrows.
Then you beat him with rods.
Then you threw him in a sewer.
You fear nothing more than courage.
You who turn away your eyes
At the bravery of the young men.
You,
The hyena with polished face and bow tie,
In the office of a billion dollar
Corporation devoted to service;
The vulture dripping with carrion,
Carefully and carelessly robed in imported tweeds,
Lecturing on the Age of Abundance;
The jackal in double-breasted gabardine,
Barking by remote control,
In the United Nations;
The vampire bat seated at the couch head,
Notebook in hand, toying with his decerebrator;
The autonomous, ambulatory cancer,
the Superego in a thousand uniforms;
You, the finger man of behemoth,
the murderer of the young men.
II
What happened to Robinson,
Who used to stagger down Eighth Street,
Dizzy with solitary gin?
Where is Masters, who crouched in
His law office for ruinous decades?
Where is Leonard who thought he was
A locomotive? And Lindsay,
Wise as a dove, innocent
As a serpent, where is he?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
What became of Jim Oppenheim?
Lola Ridge alone in an
Icy furnished room? Orrick Johns,
Hopping into the surf on his
One leg? Elinor Wylie
Who leaped like Kierkegaard?
Sara Teasdale, where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is George Sterling, that tame fawn?
Phelps Putnam who stole away?
Jack Wheelwright who couldn’t cross the bridge?
Donald Evans with his cane and
Monocle, where is he?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
John Gould Fletcher who could not
Unbreak his powerful heart?
Bodenheim butchered in stinking
Squalor? Edna Millay who took
Her last straight whiskey? Genevieve
Who loved so much; where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Harry who didn’t care at all?
Hart who went back to the sea?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is Sol Funaroff?
What happened to Potamkin?
Isidor Schneider? Claude McKay?
Countee Cullen? Clarence Weinstock?
Who animates their corpses today?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is Ezra, that noisy man?
Where is Larsson whose poems were prayers?
Where is Charles Snider, that gentle
Bitter boy? Carnevali,
What became of him?
Carol who was so beautiful, where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
III
Was their end noble and tragic,
Like the mask of a tyrant?
Like Agamemnon’s secret golden face?
Indeed it was not. Up all night
In the fo’c’sle, bemused and beaten,
Bleeding at the rectum, in his
Pocket a review by the one
Colleague he respected, “If he
Really means what these poems
Pretend to say, he has only
One way out -.” Into the
Hot acrid Caribbean sun,
Into the acrid, transparent,
Smokey sea. Or another, lice in his
Armpits and crotch, garbage littered
On the floor, gray greasy rags on
The bed. “I killed them because they
Were dirty, stinking Communists.
I should get a medal.” Again,
Another, Simenon foretold
His end at a glance. “I dare you
To pull the trigger.” She shut her eyes
And spilled gin over her dress.
The pistol wobbled in his hand.
It took them hours to die.
Another threw herself downstairs,
And broke her back. It took her years.
Two put their heads under water
In the bath and filled their lungs.
Another threw himself under
The traffic of a crowded bridge.
Another, drunk, jumped from a
Balcony and broke her neck.
Another soaked herself in
Gasoline and ran blazing
Into the street and lived on
In custody. One made love
Only once with a beggar woman.
He died years later of syphilis
Of the brain and spine. Fifteen
Years of pain and poverty,
While his mind leaked away.
One tried three times in twenty years
To drown himself. The last time
He succeeded. One turned on the gas
When she had no more food, no more
Money, and only half a lung.
One went up to Harlem, took on
thirty men, came home and
Cut her throat. One sat up all night
Talking to H.L. Mencken and
Drowned himself in the morning.
How many stopped writing at thirty?
How many went to work for Time?
How many died of prefrontal
Lobotomies in the Communist Party?
How many are lost in the back wards
Of provincial madhouses?
How many on the advice of
Their psychoanalysts, decided
A business career was best after all?
How many are hopeless alcoholics?
René Crevel!
Jacques Rigaud!
Antonin Artaud!
Mayakofsky!
Essenin!
Robert Desnos!
Saint Pol Roux!
Max Jacob!
All over the world
The same disembodied hand
Strikes us down.
Here is a mountain of death.
A hill of heads like the Khans piled up.
The first-born of a century
Slaughtered by Herod.
Three generations of infants
Stuffed down the maw of Moloch.
IV
He is dead.
The bird of Rhiannon.
He is dead.
In the winter of the heart.
He is Dead.
In the canyons of death,
They found him dumb at last,
In the blizzard of lies.
He never spoke again.
He died.
He is Dead.
In their antiseptic hands,
He is dead.
The little spellbinder of Cader Idris.
He is dead.
The sparrow of Cardiff.
He is dead.
The canary of Swansea.
Who killed him?
Who killed the bright-headed bird?
You did, you son of a bitch.
You drowned him in your cocktail brain.
He fell down and died in your synthetic heart.
You killed him,
Oppenheimer the Million-Killer,
You killed him,
einstein the Gray Eminence.
You killed him,
Havanahavana, with your Nobel Prize.
You killed him, General,
Through the proper channels.
You strangled him, Le Mouton,
With your mains étendues.
He confessed in open court to a pince-nezed skull.
You shot him in the back of the head
As he stumbled in the last cellar.
You killed him,
Benign Lady on the postage stamp.
He was found dead at a Liberal Weekly luncheon.
He was found dead on the cutting room floor.
He was found dead at a Time policy conference.
Henry Luce killed him with a telegram to the Pope.
Mademoiselle strangled him with a padded brassiere.
Old Possum sprinkled him with a tea ball.
After the wolves were done, the vaticides
Crawled off with his bowels to their classrooms and quarterlies.
When the news came over the radio
You personally rose up shouting, “Give us Barabbas!”
In your lonely crowd you swept over him.
Your custom-built brogans and your ballet slippers
Pummeled him to death in the gritty street.
You hit him with an album of Hindemith.
You stabbed him with stainless steel by Isamu Noguchi.
He is dead.
He is Dead.
Like Ignacio the bullfighter,
At four o’clock int he afternoon.
At precisely four o’clock.
I too do not want to hear it.
I too do not want to know it.
I want to run into the street,
Shouting, “Remember Vanzetti!”
I want to pour gasoline down your chimneys.
I want to blow up your galleries.
I want to burn down your editorial offices.
I want to slit the bellies of your frigid women.
I want to sink your sailboats and launches.
I want to strangle your children at their finger paintings.
I want to poison your Afghans and poodles.
He is dead, the little drunken cherub.
He is dead,
The effulgent tub thumper.
He is Dead.
The ever living birds are not singing
To the heads of Bran.
The sea birds are still
Over the Bardsey of Ten Thousand Saints.
The underground men are not singing
On their way to work.
There is a smell of blood
In the smell of the turf smoke.
They have struck him down,
The son of David ap Gwilym.
They have murdered him,
The Baby of Taliessin.
There he lies dead,
By the Iceberg of the United Nations.
There he lies sandbagged,
At the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
The Gulf Stream smells of his blood
As it breaks on the sand of Iona
And the blue rocks of Canarvon.
And all the birds of the deep sea rise up
Over the luxury liners and scream,
“You killed him! You killed him,
In your God damned Brooks Brothers suit,
You son of a bitch.”
-Karl