Though god might be called conceptual, not perplexing, but
a citizen reader cannot help what is left out, what goes unsaid, yet
gestured at, what cannot be known, what might be derived from
the fraction offered, and who has redacted what (only
blocks) and why not say that the reader is inherently aware when she
is her own words, and despite this, indeed, because of it, cannot help
but be felt in a position of power (more so even than the general),
insofar as we receive only 10 to 25 words made conscious. The
gesturing hand cannot disappear in context, cannot vanish into
the usual stream of language, but is thrust forward.
*****
A powerful (stateless) abstraction, war cannot be “won,”
in the conventional sense: terminus. 2013, Obama address National
Defense and how we can continue a perpetual wartime footing.”
Then began Operation Inherent Resolve, which was expected to last
at least three years of public liberty, perhaps because it would
develop the germ of other parent of debts and taxes, and armies,
debts and taxes, bringing dominion. But on and on. And
on and on.
*****
Middle of the summer, bitten by flies and fleas / Sittin’
a crowded apartment, about a-hundred-and-ten, went outside,
middle night / All was match in hand, wanted to fight, So burn baby
burn / Nowhere to be, no one to see, no turn / called President
Johnson / secretary said he wasn’t there / tried Mr. Humphrey /
couldn’t anywhere / went into courtroom, no money, no lawyer face
/ Wouldn’t plead my case / So burn/ Wanted job, needed some
scratch / wanted be somebody / just a match / Couldn’t get oil from
Rockefeller’s wells / Diamonds from mine / If I can’t enjoy the
dream, won’t be water but fire next time / Walkin’ around west side
now, lookin’ mean mad / Down inside my heart, feeling sorry / Got
a knife and razor blade, everybody I know’s tough / But when I tried
burn my way out the ghetto, I burned my own self up…
*****
Everything moving all the time. Falling is an art in space and time;
bomb is to obliterate them. In steps any moment is possible and only
way to do it is to do it. Falling is one ways of moving; but regardless
of vest or plane, movement is expressive. Thoughts about space,
ways to use it – Einstein’s there are no fixed points in space. Still,
little thinking involved, but work, images, the body… everything is
there. Anything can feed the operative, depending on the way seeing
or listening is done, which can provoke
imagining. Always the same source – movement; source can be small
or large, birds, insects, bats, &c. Time no longer imagines bodies,
but images frozen within soft boundaries. Legs and arms can be
a revelation of the back, the spine’s extensions. It is upon length
and breadth and span of body sustained in muscular action
that detonation invokes its image;
it’s not expressing anything, just presenting people
moving.
*****
The blast has own continuity that need not be dependent upon rise
or fall of sound, or pitch and cry of words. Its force of feeling lies
in physical image, fleeting or static; and emotions, constantly being
propelled by some new face in the sky, some new rocket arc, some
new sound in the ear, but they are same emotions. You don’t
separate human being from actions they do or actions engulfing
them, but see what it’s like to break actions up in different ways, to
allow passion—and it is passion—to appear for each person in their
own way. Ecstasy in bombing comes from the possible gift of
freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing the bare energy
can give the body. What is meant is not license, but freedom. To
what end this eternal daily struggle? Because inside of that is
possibility of ecstasy. The bomb is constant transformation of life
itself.
Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash
