Diagonally, by love and hate
in equal parts
propelled, the mob returns
like a chorus
the cops keep getting
hit with, in the head
brick and bottle tra la la
of fuck you, pig and die, pig, die
the mob, torn together
by each temporizing, tangled
moment in its series
returning along the old animal tracks
of total science to mark with metaphoric
shit and piss the places where the earth
parts ways with each reason for enduring:
its also-rans, its would-have-beens
crashing into the shatterproof
curves of the cell wall, behind which
the makers of measure and rule
shelter in disordered nomenclature,
recounting in pantomime
our unfortunate tenure
as minor villains among the plant life.
Just then, you feel the scare quotes
C-clamp your skull, interatomic
emoticons spazzing out intransitively
in the middle distance where demoralized
shifters replace all sense of the past
with continuously updated commentary
from the compliantly defiant crowds
who compare their purchases
with the bland openness of experience.
They will never be a real mob
now that nature has been democratized
by these marvelous poisons
our rounded-up truants
leave dusted upon the rocks and trees.
As for the rest of us, we learn
something important about ourselves
watching from the loading dock
as the mushroom cloud
announces the end of another season –
e.g., that each riot really is
an assemblage of other riots
washed up on the boulevards,
from whose faded corpses
one dresses and arms one’s comrades
the total inadequacy of which
as equipment for the task at hand
traces out in negative
the seat perilous of the party historical
the poetry of the future
whose sweet new sounds
will fill with meaning slowly
while the seas rise.
Can software destroy hardware?
Can a class, acting strictly as
a class, abolish all classes
as the answer to a badly phrased
question might by sheer force of obviousness
cause the questioner to rise
blankly and walk into the ocean,
while the black flags cut from the robes
of executed magistrates
wave non-semaphorically,
where hope ends and history starts.
Jasper Bernes
http://communeeditions.com/we-are-nothing-and-so-can-you-jasper-bernes