In London
& the Duggan Inquest shows that
the police can shoot you & lie
& lie & fake the evidence & fool
some people still
Darrel (or Karla)
you left your parents’ house
you really did need to
your parents can’t afford your room any longer
& next they’ll cut your Housing Benefit
So you’ll’ve nowhere to live at all
– har har hardy-har har!
snort the Bullingdon Boys
& all their little hangerson
In Sainsburys
oh white lights of infinite choice
– we still live within
this state of illusion
On the way home
the moon inside her armature of light
cuts a silver window through cloud
Baraka
. . . Build the new world out of reality, and new vision
we come to find out what there is of the world
to understand what there is here in the world!
to visualize change, and force it.
we worship revolution1
Amiri Baraka, “When We’ll Worship Jesus”, emailed to UKPoetry ListServ, Fri, 10 Jan 2014 by Anthony John on hearing news on the ListServ of Baraka’s death
Just written
You don’t accept improvisation – just do it, tenderly & in wonder.
The practice of outside
outside
where the vagrants live
all the cold & pain
we hit against
each other
Jarvis
He had to get to Harlow before dark.2
In Hertfordshire the loneliest certainties are
trod into pavements of the patient dust.
Simon Jarvis, The Unconditional: A lyric (Barque Press, 2005), p 17
Spicer
Things fit together. We knew that – it is the principle of magic. Two inconsequential things can combine together to become a consequence. This is true of poems too. A poem is never to be judged by itself alone. A poem is never by itself alone.
Jack Spicer, “Admonitions” (“Dear Robin, . . .”), The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, edited Robin Blaser (Black Sparrow Press, 1975), p 61
Brecht
Fröhlich vom Fleisch zu essen, das saftige Lendenstück
Und mit dem Roggenbrot, dem ausgebackenen, duftenden
Den Käse vom großen Laib und aus dem Krug3
Das kalte Bier zu trinken . . .
Brecht, “Fröhlich vom Fleisch zu essen”, from http://www.fleischwirtschaft.de/dokumentation/kunstkultur/pages/2.html on fleischwirtschaft.de
1 Another embalmed head cult here, so watch out. Anything needing or demanding worship is self-evidently a demonic or delusory fetish. On poetry, revolution and psychotic delusion, read Sean Bonney, Notes on Militant Poetics, http://www.mediafire.com/view/ez1idi117qns675/Bonney%20 %20Notes%20on%20Militant%20Poetics%20%28imposed%29.pdf. I think he records symptoms rather than any remedy. There isn’t – carry on adjusting & attacking as we adapt to it & it to us. Cutting through it all in desperation merely detaches heads and fetishises the consequences.
2 This line I admire most of the poem, when the inherent & self-regarding London-Cambridge axis admits (though of course in suspension) another path for movement than its own mock-epyllionary oscillations.
3 Grossness is all
