In the House of the Hangman 1045

“More and more fearful as I write. It is understandable. Every word, twisted in the hands of the spirits — this twist of the hand is their characteristic gesture — becomes a spear turned against the speaker. Most especially a remark like this. And so ad infinitum. The only consolation would be: it happens whether you like it or no. And what you like is of infinitesimally little help. More than consolation is: You too have weapons.” What I have is the meltwater constantly round my feet. “Oh fuck, I forgot my blankie!” This poem helps me KNOW how complicit I am as an American, but I had no idea when I started it what it would mean, this poem. It means being witness to the most oblivious form of imperialism that is possible. Most of the poem is obsessed with no one seemingly fucking caring about the three children our tax dollars kill every single fucking day of our disgusting fucking lives! The soil, in other words, is not simply a natural resource, but also a memory bank of sorts — an evolving record of accretion, erosion, contamination, and manipulation that bears witness to processes occurring on timescales as radically different as continental drift and human inhabitation. “Mr. & Mrs. T. Bloody Mary mix above the Sierras and near the most toxic concentration basin, a former buffalo wallow. My soil: alluvial, the fertile where my mother birthed. The cab driver saying I should have more children and me wanting seriously to be fifteen people all at once.” “Whatever militates against our dreamier pleasures I have become the same meaning utopia’s crude petroleum jolts, coded rubber heat singing things that turn blind eyes to waste, erasing worlds being serial resolves my fate in theory I think.” Oblique sermon in the strip mall: man dressed up as pizza, arms restrained beneath soft beige polyester, such lust. A machine is never closed, that’s why it’s always coupling with fluxes, opening connexions and producing effects. “Hush, mommy. You’ll wake up the spiders.” “Spiders? Those are just chicken eggs, baby.” “No mommy,” she whispers as she holds it out to me. “These are spiders eggs. All spinnely and slippety. You hear them, mommy?” The refinery is burning. In a dream last night I was at a multicultural nudist camp in which great numbers of people sat at picnic tables in screened cabanas built on docks in a chlorinated lake. The people of various races, ages, and bodies were often eating, naked, in the heat in the cabana, or walking, or floating on rafts, and I was riding in a golf cart among them looking for the concession line. Today I ate fruit & yogurt & then went to Pompeii. And the fish dived down to the bottom of the waters, and the vulture flew away. Your magic’s no good on me cause I’m made of magic, Time, juju and mojo and koolaid and crushed ice, el-ec-triss-uh-tee fe-liss-uh-tee, Raincoats! Time’s condom is ripping, Time’s myelin sheathe is shredding, spreading, Time’s retina sags and reports a lot of shit that isn’t there, plastic fleshrain falls into the pits melted into Time’s plastic. This phagocytic configuration is constructed through a relentless forging of a new distribution network by which the public may encounter art and expect to have a positive experience, as well as by the artist’s radical usurpation of protocol. Wholly on a par with Komar and Melamid’s Most Wanted art project (though not requiring quotation into the high-art establishment for validity), Kinkade accomplished his feat by going to the public to find out what constitutes a worthwhile art experience rather than dictating one to them. Kinkade invites us to join him in “letting our light shine to illuminate a world of beauty and grace.”

[Note: Sources: Franz Kafka, last words in DIARIES, 1910-1923, via Mitch Taylor, Facebook, 7 Aug 012; J H Prynne, “On the Matter of Thermal Packing”, in Poems; Daphne, Mark Scroggins’ daughter, as quoted in a Facebook comment, 7 Aug 012; CA Conrad, as quoted in Steven Karl, “Snapshot: CA Conrad”, at Coldfront, 27 Aug 012; Nicola Twilley, “Soil Archive”, at Edible Geography, 7 Aug 012; Hoa Nguyen, As Long as Trees Last, and Rob Halpern, Music for Porn, as quoted in “The Boston Globe Reviews New Books from Rob Halpern and Hoa Nguyen”, at Harriet, 7 Aug 012; Janette Kim Larson, “Broken Men Were Her Specialty”, at Splinter Generation; Terence Blake, “MACHINE vs MECHANISM: a diachronic observation on Deleuze’s machinic universe”, at Agent Swarm, 7 Aug 012; Jenny Lawson, “Toddlers and Psychotics”, at The Bloggess, 7 Aug 012; JBR (re the 5 - 7 Aug 012 Chevron refinery fire in Richmond CA); Anne Boyer, “Nudes”, at EAGLE THEMED FASHION / FOURIERIST PSYCHOLOGY / PATAPHYSICAL CITIZENRY, 7 Aug 012; Julia Cohen, “Lemons are Light Bulbs Press”, at $650 Apartment for $650, 7 Aug 012; Lars Iyer, “The Catastrophe”, at Spurious, 7 Aug 012 (“W. reminds me of the story in the Koran. When the first human being was born, a fish came up out of the water, and a vulture came down from the sky. 'The danger has come', they said in unison. The catastrophe! And the fish dived down to the bottom of the waters, and the vulture flew away into the sky.”); Joyelle McSweeney, “THE BOMB OF AMHERST (Tied to Time’s vine. Wants an EXIT.)”, at Everyday Genius, 7 Aug 012; Doug Harvey, “Cottage Industry”, in Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth (ed. Jeffrey Vallance)]

Comments

[Enrique]

Please assist.We moved years ago and now I can not find my son's Baptismal Certificate. He needs it for his Religious Education Classes that have alraedy started. His name is Brandon Menke, his Date of Birth is: 01-27-01. He was Baptised in the summer of 2001 at SMGH. I hope you can email me a copy of his Certificate or fax it to me at 718-722-6248. Thank you in advance for your assistance.Respectfully,Maritza Menke