Don't Try to Talk If You Don't Have To. You Must Admit There Is No Audience. Everything Is Done For You.

• Today's monologue: I'm.... see the Spicer below. And there were always days that necessitated Swans, too many days these days necessitate Swans.
• Shock (but there it is): The Thrasybulus Syndrome and Gaza.
• Hamas's choices. 
• Israel's choices.
• George W Bush condemned Israel for killing fourteen civilians in 2002 Gaza attack.
• Israel has just killed 1/1000th of Gaza population.
• Reminder: motherfucking Obama.
• My surfer for a barge w/folksy enhancements: on "we tortured some folk."
• We tortured some folk.
• Capitalism and slavery.
• Capitalism Whack-a-Mole: Someone playing Capitalism Whack-A-Mole moves seamlessly between three different — and mutually incompatible — frameworks of justification. Those frameworks are desert (each person should get what they produce with their labor), voluntarism (each person should get whatever they come about through voluntary, non-coercive means), and utility (the economic system should be created to maximize well-being). This Capitalism Whack-A-Mole does not need a starting point, but, in my experience, either desert or voluntarism comes first, with utility the back up when the argument turns really bad.
• Capitalism.
• Homogenization of Perceptual Experience.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• In the Marvelous Dimension.
• Suite for Emily.
• Yes, Spicer and Swans. Always with Spicer and Swans.

BEYOND WORDS

Kevin Young

       Mudd Club 4th floor gallery
       Manhattan, April 1981
      

If you bomb

the IND

or tag the 2

downtown

—gallery-bound—

dousing it in tribal

shrapnel, you're it

—the shit—

If you can lie

between the rails

—Please Stand

Clear the Closing—

or press yourselves

betw. train

& the wall

spray can rattling

like a tooth—The roof

the roof

the roof is on

fire—soon

the 6 will whistle

past, swinging

like a night stick—

Officer Pup throwing

a brick

@ that Mouse

Ignatz, in love—

#$!?!!!!—then

you'll have found

risk. A calling—

Crash, Daze, Pray

covering trains

like cave paintings,

avoiding the German

shepherds—ACHTUNG—

while the cars sit

in the yards

—what no one else in this

city owns. Making

their names

known—Dondi, Boy-

5, B-Sirius, Crazy

Legs, Coolie C—

The city clears

its throat

the subway shaking

the buildings above—

We don't need

no water let

the motherfucker

burn— Futura 2000,

Phase II, Quick

& Sex & Zephyr

& Lady Pink—

Fab 5 Freddy

(n� Braithwaite)

saying everyone's

a star. "Rapture"—

the whole planet's in

on it—Chilly Most

Being the Host Coast

to Coast—Freddy's painted

Campbell's Soup Cans that read

DADA & POP instead

of beef barley—

the UFO has landed

& a brother's

stepped out, alien, dressed

in white. Then when

there's no more cars

he goes out at night

& eats up bars—

graffiti like 3 card monte—

running, avoiding the pigs

like a black muslim

bean pie. DJ spinning

says my my.

Pay attn.—

say, ain't that

Basquiat spinning

disks behind Blondie—

SAMO   AS AN END

TO MINDWASH RELIGION—

45s stacked high

as a Dag-

wood sammich?

Hungry, this B-

boy's headed

to the top—Yes

Yes y'all

You don't stop—

blowing up.

HELEN: A REVISION

Jack Spicer

zeus: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

thersites: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

zeus: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.

thersites: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

zeus: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

thersites: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

zeus: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]

*       *       *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost

And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost

Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge

Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge

Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat

Where they say all passages to pay the debt

The lighted yet.

*       *       *

The focus sing

Is not their business. Their backs lay

By not altogether being there.

Here and there in swamps and villages.

How doth the silly crocodile

Amuse the Muse

*       *       *

And in the skyey march of flesh

That boundary line where no body is

Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms

And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there

And mud and fire

Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud

and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs

The battlefield has harms. The trees have half

Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord

From hair and mud and flesh.