from Jack Spicer in Glasgow
Your shadow
Precedes the door lock
No key short of an 11² cyclotron beam
Will break. This is/was 1931 (Berkeley)
The safety cover (later, 1933) disguises
The inaudible power. Take Hiroshima
Before the God awful flash. Take the bodies
Take the soul crushed. Sentimentality:
A language without force or fact is weightless
In the direct face, unaccountable, of horror
We, who chew our gum faster, velcro our feet
To the shifting floor; the boards suddenly warped
The sophisticated hardware, varnished abstraction
Something invented in a house on a hill in Berkeley
Yet the sun shines over the Golden Gate
While the local Japanese are extracted
What should one drink under such conditions?
The smell of dead oyster shells on the beach
We who join Œus¹ selectively
The white light flashing, ask who and why
What burns, shrieks, shrivels, blisters, drowns.
Stephen Vincent
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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