Hullo there,
You have stumbled upon another crime of rhyme and meter. For better, and worse.
This poem has been heavily edited from the book version.
Many of the poems collected in UNFU CKTHE WORLD are sharp indictments of our culture, the culture that conquered the world. Most of us warmly call it civilization. I call it empire. It is based on supremacy and wherever you find food under lock and key, you will find us. This means almost everywhere on the planet, which is an existential problem. There’s nowhere left to run, no Planet B.
A culture based on supremacy means the battle field is omnipresent. The foe is everything. Separation and individuation are seated at the throne. Reason is set ablaze. Absolutes wash the color out of our minds. Fear roams, silence stalks. The sacred is transformed into a game.
The prime directive is domination. The result is recurrent collapse. The legacy is a death’s omnibus.
I have spent a lifetime struggling with the dissonance of our ways. I see clearly now, and I will not go silently into the night. It does not have to be this way. Other worlds are possible. Today.
Fondly and fiercely,
—C
PS, If all of this is confusing, the turd references especially, you might want to start here:
Until There’s Nothing
To home come the ills Roosting, cawing In the midst of the unwinding All of us burning, falling Now come the calls from drum beat lips To mount warheads and sharpen tips Weaponize freedom and identity Willfully spread madness and fallacy Lore and lexicon that fosters the fight Feasts for righteous and calculated might Yet victory after victory Our demons return from history We spite the pieces, coddle the whole A cursed tapestry, a Greek tragedy Our minds born from the womb of war Our only knowledge, dominion’s carnage A denied ache, a blind desire Craving a rite of passage To transcend our binds For whether forests or seas Jews or bumblebees Navaho, Buffalo Passenger Pigeon Combustion engine Polar bears or Palestine— Annihilation is divine The means we use are physical But the ends we seek are spiritual Metaphorical But there will be no miracle Our future predictable This curse is cyclical The answer isn’t silence and neither is violence The circle will not break in war’s wake
The Bonus Round
I’m making a habit of sharing things that bring me joy along with work of others that informs and inspires and shakes me. They come in threes because I said so. At least until I contradict myself, which is often.
#Über Alles
Watch American Experience’s Nazi Town, USA. Reflect on current events.
Hitler adored America for specific reasons, and we’re in big trouble.
pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/n…
#A White Guy Worth Listening to
A lot of my writing points towards this. I try to personalize the message by using my stories as the conveyance. Daniel pulls no punches and refuses to deal in cultural fantasy.
#Trifecta
My dearest friends watch game shows. I do not like game shows. But I love my friends enough to tolerate watching them watch game shows for brief periods of time. I recorded the pinnacle moment of the experience.
(Watch the contestants in the small window on the lower left.)
—FIN—