Monday, May 2, 2011

He Has No Expertise in the Matter of Civilian Corpses, nor of Friendly Fire, nor Beheadings, nor Revenge, nor Suicide




Nation of motherfucking crackers. You have to ask yourself, why would Barack Hussein Obama, secret Muslim plant intent on imposing an American caliphate under Sharia law, kill Osama bin Laden now, and the only possible answer is Osama must have been near death anyway, wanted to go out both as a martyr while advancing the political career of his top sleeper agent Obama. Pint to the first of you who finds a pig - or libertarian or pwoggle - earnestly advancing this theory.

Here, what this guy says. What bin Laden's death changes: nothing, and for the heartsickeningly and bloodthirsty worse. His death means we never have to examine what motivated him in the first place ever again, just like his life.












THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN (NOTHING)

Marvin Bell
1. About the Dead Man and Nothing

The dead man knows nothing.
He is powerless to stop the battles, he has no way to reattach the arms and legs.
He cannot stuff the fallen soldier's insides back inside.
He has no expertise in the matter of civilian corpses, nor of friendly fire, nor 
     beheadings, nor revenge, nor suicide.
He does not know the depth of depth charges, or the exact pressure that detonates 
     a land mine.
The dead man has given his all so that now, if he once knew, he knows nothing.
He is emptied, he is the resonant cavity of which he spoke when it was music he was 
     thinking of.
Let him be now the leftover button of his work shirt.
Permit him his fading mirror, his sputtering circuits, his secrets, his tears, his 
     noonday duels with the sun.
Let him ride the roads in the bucket of an earth mover, can it hurt?
Let him stand under the icicles, can he catch cold?
For the dead man is stagnant without knowledge, and he cannot survive the demise of 
     philosophy or art. 
To the dead man they were not spectacles, but survival skills.
To the dead man, the world was but a birthmark that befell original space.
To say that the dead man knows nothing is to see him at the beginning, who can it hurt?
Before all this, he was nothing.


2. More About the Dead Man and Nothing

Don't bet he won't be born.
Before all this, this that is so much, he was not himself.
He was the free heat of space and then the salt of the earth.
He was the ring around the moon, foretelling.
The dead man had no station when he came to be, just a strange nakedness in the light.
He did not know what he was to do, this was before clocks.
So he decided to stab the dirt, to tumble in happiness and writhe in pain, and to 
     flap his way into space.
To go home.
It was a swell idea for the dead man, and he pinned it to his chest.
Give him that, that he crystallized a plan, that he made from smoke something to 
     him as real as quartz, ivory, or the hoof of a gelding.
The dead man had the whole world to transform or perfect or outlive.
He wrote the book of nothing and no-time that entombed all time and all that took 
     place in time.
The dead man could not be hammered by analysis.
Let him horn in on your fury, whatever it was, and it will abate.
The energy that became form will disperse, never again to be what we were.
Look out the window to see him, no, the other one.


9 comments:

  1. I think Ian Welsh about sums it up:

    http://www.ianwelsh.net/osamas-death-changes-almost-nothing/

    (Oh, and yes, white type on a dark background is very hard on the eyes.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I know (and I was told the maroon wasn't easy either), but blue it must be.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can we have out civil liberties back now?

    Can we get out of Afghanistan now?

    Thought not.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sheeyit, soon - as in within hours - we'll be hearing how OBL's death will cause retaliatory acts of terrorism, our vigilance need be higher than ever, and that our remaining civil liberties are a direct threat to our lives.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Really don't care to hammer the poem with analysis or anything else, but in your view did Marvin mean the other window or some other dead man? The title itself is deliberately misleading, isn't it? Those damn parentheses--is he de-emphasizing nothing or squishing that nothingness in there where it don't belong? Like in the e-minor fugue, a double-subject not quite knowable.

    Intentionally or intuitively, you're a fascinating composer, BDR.

    The Shostakovich pieces (compassion themselves)--but also, the terrible fugues of cold war. And to your last point, what could be colder (and more incendiary) than burial at sea?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pigs'll be upset coz they won't have the chance to torture his body—dead OR alive. Count on it.

    I'm interested to see (tho' we never will) what intel the Seals retrieved from the compound.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great, now I have to go back to playing Where's Waldo.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Frances: Death to the Either/Or! And I think the guy saw his own reflection.

    Jim: I'm going to post a link to this tomorrow, but it's to your point, I think.

    Randal: two, three weeks, an inside librarian package might appear on your stoop out of nowhere.

    ReplyDelete