If
It all
Sounds familiar, it
Is.
Conceptual writing
Obstinately makes no
Claims
On originality.
On the contrary,
It
Employs intentionally
Self and ego
Effacing
Tactics using
Uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility,
Appropriation,
Plagiarism, fraud,
Theft, theatrical screams,
Blond
Wigs, red
Nails, red headbands,
Papier-
Mâché cows,
Blue skies, plaster
Buildings
And falsification
As its precepts;
Information
Management, word
Processing, databasing and
Extreme
Process as
Its methodologies; and
Boredom,
Valuelessness, and
Nutritionlessness as its
Ethos.
It starts
With an itch,
You
See, so
You scratch. Psoriasis?
Decolonialism
As a
Poetics of dominant/
Submissive
Sex and
The transcendence of
Categories?
Friends, there
Are no “safe
Words”
In this
Event. Neither are
There
Any italics.
Another poet teams
Up
With a
Scientist to create
An
Example of
Living poetry by
Infusing
A chemical
Alphabet into a
Sequence
Of DNA,
Which is then
Implanted
Into a
Bacterium. Thousands of
Research
Dollars later,
They are in
The
Process of
Creating an organism
Embedded
With this
Poem, strong enough
To
Survive a
Nuclear holocaust, thereby
Creating
A poem
Which will outlast
Humanity
And perhaps
Even the lifespan
Of
The planet
Earth. I get
Up
And pour
My tea. I
Smell
The lilies.
I didn’t go
To
Acupuncture this
Morning because the
210
Was closed
Due to a
Traffic
Fatality. According
To the Highway
Patrol
A parent
Had to be
Restrained
From running
Across the freeway
To
See if
His child was
Dead.
Was it?
I escaped up
The
Fruit Street
Onramp along with
Dozens
Of other
Outlaws. The I
That
Follows is
Another I: making
My
Face look
Interested in what
Is
Said in
Meetings, giving tips,
Losing
My wallet,
Pedal pushing like
An
Idiot while
Watching television on
The
Exercise cycle
At the gym.
The
I that
Follows is not:
Can
I be
Sure the scream
Is
Fake? The
Cow has little
Metal
Staring eyes.
With the rise
Of
Appropriation-based
Literary practices, the
Familiar
Or quotidian
Is made unfamiliar
Or
Strange when
Left semantically intact.
No
Need to
Blast apart syntax.
The
New Sentence?
The Old Sentence,
Reframed,
Is enough.
Like so many
Screaming
Grasshoppers. When
I started, I
Believed
That by
Working out what
Was
Behind the
Question marks I
Would
Resolve the
Meaning of the
Question
Mark I
Had become, but
I
Hadn’t even
Got as far
As
The dot
Under it. It
Turns
Out I
Am listening from
The
Wrong direction.
I reach for
A
Weapon, any
Weapon. I burst
Into
The study
With a shriek.
The
Point needn’t
Even be sharp,
I
Think, as
I lunge through
The
Dark. Nothing
Has been able
To
Fill, or
Even cover, the
Gaping
Pit. We
Still turn back
To
It from
Our daily occupations,
And
The vertigo
That grips us
At
The edge
Is always the
Same.
Do we
Really need another
“Creative”
Poem about
The way the
Sunlight
Is hitting
Your writing table?
No.
Let me
Tell you about
The
Way the
Sunlight is hitting
My
Writing table.
The sunlight is
Hitting
My writing
Table in stripes.
[Note: Sources: Luis H. Francia, “Meditations #1” and Eileen R Tabios, “A Poetics of Everything, Everything, Everything” in Pinoy Poetics; Marcos López, “The Caracas Manifesto”, in Marcos López: Sub-realismo criollo; The Oxford Universal Dictionary; Kenneth Goldsmith, “Conceptual Poetics” and “Uncreative Writing” on PoetryFoundation.org blog; David Albahari, Götz and Meyer; Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names, as quoted in Michael Kigel, “Translator’s Notes” to Salomon Malka’s Emmanuel Levinas: His Life and Legacy. Photo: “The mad cow”]