I can hear you loud and clear, Alison!
Attacking this fiction called 'America' strikes me always as an indomitable
task. It is the magnetic attraction that strikes down one poem after
another. The poems Whitman and Ginsberg (who invoked, "America", with an
ironic, humorous, yet cutting twist, not of Whitman), those poems always
seem to clobber the successive generations (since the fifties) who invoke
'her name.'
But this, your work, strikes me a clean and resonant combination of both.
Refreshing to make the mix on this day here in which the opportunists are
competing to make the most out of what has been the worst five year series
of travesties that, I suspect, any country could manage after such tragedy
to human life. T.V. Knobs and remote control devices are radioactive to the
touch. I have kept away from the box all day. Well, I peeked a few times.
Ghrrrrrrr.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> I
>
> o the ice pick sings
> its hot orange
> in the vendetta tree
> such tales for telling
> through these numb fingers
> one by one
>
> rubies such as never seen
> in the caught months
> of a fatal spring
> sad & toxic
>
>
> II
>
> my dear america
> the uranium sun
> coals on your many tongues
> unjust and bleeding
>
> all these broken songs
> out of the trap
> beads weapons money
> turn & snap
>
> which skull split
> in the berth of which paroxysmal
> vision of which
> oily hell
>
> a whale of a time
> america you clamp your arrogant jaw
> down again that
> beautiful machine
> breaks breaks again breaks
>
>
> September 11, 2006
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