Is belief in
the sentiment of love & of
revolution
a contradiction between
singular & universal:
must one sacrifice the other
or
is the distinction no more than
a mistaken understanding?
To what extent
are the things that we say & do
beyond our control?
Even though
the choice to say “No”
is always present,
radical freedom
co-exists with
profound dependency upon others*,
how can biological compulsion
override the tide of cause & effect:
how can the immaterial
change the course of material consequence?
& do these simple questions
really matter,
because
ultimately
we are forced to exist.
* Simone de Beauvoir – Pyrrhus and Cinéas
Poetry
Ni patrie, Ni Patron
I am a person
dislocated
from my creative capacity;
alienated
from my species-being;
labouring only to survive
& increase the size of someone else’s
already obscene amount of wealth.
I need to break,
need to escape
from the endless imposition
of regulation upon my body;
remorselessly repetitive demands
always controlling
quantifying
valuing my life
according to the demands
of profit.
Time is alive & so am I,
& we both deserve our freedom.
I don’t want to trade my daylight
just to create surplus value,
I want to waste time on my own terms;
I want to waste my time
with you…
So when the moment arrives I’ll be there;
burning cars
joining riots
& joyfully destroying
what should always have been ours,
before the perversions of power &
history
stole it from us.
Then as the old world dies & the new one is born,
I will scream:
“Ni patrie, Ni Patron!”
Fight
Collective suicide; walk hand-in-hand
with the death-drive
toward to the end-times.
This is this it.
Only some receive what they deserve &
the rest of us must suffer the
consequences.
This is it.
Nothing left now but to rebel
or lay down and die…
so decide, will you fight or not?
This is it.
Dare to demand the impossible
that was always possible
& still it.
This is it:
we have nothing left to lose.
The Damned
Consider that colour is given to us
in plentitude
from games played by light &,
that the liquidity of water is
a feature of a particular performance
between specific particles
bonding with each other
& yet
no individual actor has
the property of ‘being wet’.
What does that mean to you?
If it means nothing,
congratulations:
you can thrive in this world, but
if you strove to find any semblance
of pattern
or symbol,
you’re fucked.
“It is not how the world is that is mystical, but that it is”*
Wet leaves swim in the breeze;
everything is as it is, yet
nothing is ever how it seems:
As green falls to greet deep substance,
far above the breathing trees,
birds oscillate through waves unseen;
insects teem, mammals dream
& Gaia abounds with
collective recollections echoing
through space & time.
Ceaseless interaction,
constant inconstancy & change;
the finitude that births infinity;
all that is beyond me, just as
there is an outer limit to all things,
beyond which others limits persist:
the world consists of what
does & does not exist.
* Ludwig Wittgenstein
Words for Ghosts 