No apologies.  Sometimes Rant is sanity-saving.

LANGUAGES FOR THE HORRID AND ABSURD
(out of Eliot Weinberger by C.K. Williams)

"I heard about Hashim, a fat, painfully shy 15-year-old, who liked to
sit for hours by the river with his birdcage, and who was shot by the
4th Infantry Division in a raid on his village. Asked about the details
of the boy's death, the division commander said: That person was
probably in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I was the little fat boy who sat in the Bronx Botanical Gardens
with a book, stuttering like an automatic weapon,
but who learned to use words like weapons.
You taught me language; and my profit on't is,
I know how to curse, O division commander
whose children I wish incinerated in your house
in some shitville like Elyria, Ohio,
to avenge the honor and the name of shy fat boys
who have lived through time to curse your seed.
Let God forgive you for what you are doing,
I, not God, damn your body and your soul.

"I heard Lieutenant-General Jay Garner say: We ought to look in a mirror
and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say:
Damn, we're Americans."

Did the military censors edit what you were really saying?
"Lets whip out our 20-inch shlongerinos and wave 'em around,
we're ready to knock up a herd of heifers cuz we have
the same gene-pool and brains as a goddamn steer."

If Schwarzenegger is right, if Iraq's economy is as bad as California's,
then we are all in trouble.

Bush the Elder weeps to hear his son criticized.
Dubya is a cured man, after all, a man of God
who was counseled by the Rev. Billy Graham
to give up the bottle and cocaine snorted through $100 bills,
and find his way to the forgiving power of Jesus.
This is curious, since I know someone whose sister,
now in long-term recovery, used to get high with Dubya
when they were both in Houston.
When asked if he has gone on the road back,
she just laughs enigmatically.  I am terrified.

"I heard an Iraqi man say: I swear I saw dogs eating the body of a woman."

Old saying from my childhood: A Jew may not eat a pig but a pig may eat
a Jew.

"I heard Colonel Gary Brandl say: The enemy has got a face. He's called
Satan. He's in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him."

Send over Mel Gibson.  He has seen the face of Satan.
Satan does not look like Saddam or Osama.
Satan is a woman.
Anyone with shit for brains should know this,
so I would expect Col. Brandl to get it.

"I heard that Saddam Hussein, in solitary confinement, was spending his time
writing poetry, reading the Koran, eating cookies and muffins, and taking
care of some bushes and shrubs. I heard that he had placed a circle of white
stones around a small plum tree."

Saddam will never go to trial.  He will live out his days calmly,
stuffing his face
on RingDings, Twinkies, and Devil Dogs.
I would like someone to smuggle out his poetry so I can read it.
Power ruined him.  Maybe the lack of it will prove at least in part
salvific.

Who can forget Williams' description of Mayan scribes, fingernails
torn out, and of how formerly great cities languish in a jungle, forgotten.
The world turns to Macchu Picchu, an abandoned nothing filled with
mummified children clutching mummified dogs and cats, frozen toys,
time shut down while whoever conquered them, who bashed in their skulls
or ripped out their fingernails first, also has gone on to some form of
reward.
Did their gods smile when killers killed babies, sacrificed teenage
girls on an altar of Commandment?
Like the soldier asked, does Jesus really want him to go around shooting
Iraqis because some false priest
says it's okay if you don't enjoy it?
That makes it sound just like screwing: it's okay if you don't enjoy it.
It's for the purposes of de-creation.
Personally, I would like to kill whoever said that.
I might enjoy it a great deal: I'm willing to take that chance.

How sick we are, how in need of penitential fire that we rain upon others.

At least now I'm starting to figure out why Carolyn Wright insisted in
read Works on Paper.

Ken/2-2-05

--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538