Mohammad, K. Silem. 2003. "Puritan". Deer Head Nation. Tougher Disguises Press. Page 63.
I'm feeling a bit fatigued, Flarfed out. All this discipline. But I have always had an exit strategy. Tomorrow I'm going to read Sharon Mesmer's "I Am Apparently Unable to Subscribe" and on Saturday I will read Tony Tost's (for me seminal) "I Am Not the Pilot". Then I'm going to leave this alone for awhile. I feel a strong urge to read Tony now, and Ben Lerner, and Kate Greenstreet, and Lisa Robertson. So I'm going to do that next week.
Anyway, this poem starts with an albino giraffe. "Under the prying eyes of [a bunch of objects, a suggestion, a person,] I am a sex machine!" Then ("read on") a stanza about pants assigned to people who happen to have the same first names as poets associated with Flarf (Drew, Katie, Gary, Jordan) that closes with a call to find Michael Jordan's pants. Silliness, really. Just loosening us up. "Mind freshening," Ginsberg might say.
until you open your eyes—
until you learn to criticize—
The mood changes now. There's a lot of invective that is NOT intended to "romanticize/the October Revolution".
It is important to pause here and consider the situation, the mood. Since the poem is obviously fucking with us, at least in part, we can't make too much of objects and themes themselves. But we may, as readers, be in some sort of "state" at this point. Perhaps a bit like that scene in Goodfellas when Joe Pesci says, "Funny how?" Everything will depend on how the mood is resolved. And it is resolved thus:
many pledge allegiance to the "blood god"
I pledge allegiance to the freaky horse
who watches over me as I sleep
As Burroughs said: Wouldn't you?
1 comment:
Put me down on the side of the ledger that says, "blood God."
Anointed with the savior's blood.
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