to Maria Inmaculada Barrios Die in thought every morning and you will not be afraid to die. —The Hagakure Guide Give me, lord, an angry death. A death as offensive as those I’ve offended. A death that stands for the rains of Santiago de Compostela, a death that kills all who have offended me. Give me, lord, a death from the elements, one that stuns and petrifies. Wastes snot and tears pleading for mercy and wishing death on anyone…
“I’m in no hurry, I’m not choking, I’m not destroyed, I’m not buried, I’m not surrounded, I’m not destroyed, I’m breathing.” [Christophe Tarkos] May-June 1886. La Vogue magazine publishes Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations. The poem “Démocratie” [written after the suppression of the Paris Commune] details the stifling colonialism, the unreasonable demands of capitalist conditions [the ice-cold laws of traders], & the slaughter of the revolts that logically follow. June 1872. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels report on how the Pope, the French right [including the neoliberals] & the German police are all busy hunting down the “spectre of…
Galina Rymbu | Life in Space (Translated by Joan Brooks) To be political, poetry does not have to turn into advertising, advocate for parties or platforms. Poetry becomes political when it represents the world as having a nature that is not “natural,” but rather negotiated, an Indra’s net that is political, social, and economic; made up of contingencies, and having to do with power—mainly of people over people—which is buttressed by ideology first and coercion second. A poetry that represents the world as political is political. It is also secular. A poetry that represents the world as immutable is…
Miyó Vestrini | Grenade in Mouth Those who write are not even of a race. Nor a caste. Nor a class. Nor are they one. They ruin the point of living, like women in a world of science. Behind thick lenses, the court is never dull. They have all privileges: from philosophy up to anger, passing through conjugal relations, and the length of the paragraphs. Between the rights of man it is figured that the writer should write largely for himself first, then for the others, with a purpose well or poorly defined: to flood the window displays,…
THE TRIP I’ll tell you how I know what I am: they say that I was conceived without sin my cries were answered with other cries people went on vacation and left me gave away my New Year’s clothes disowned the shame when I was absent I had no mourners for my trespasses threw breadcrumbs at watery graves placated my own desires held the ground between myself and the penumbra bought a dog and let it out paid César Vallejo to love me passed without glory or pain beneath the Mirabeau Bridge I don’t have a single friend…
Since the 17th of November, from the smallest rural village to the largest city, we have risen up against this deeply violent, unjust and unbearable society. We will not let this continue! We rebel against the excessive cost of living, precariousness and misery. We want our loved ones, our families and our children, to live in dignity. 26 billionaires own as much as half of humanity; this is unacceptable. Let’s share the wealth and not the misery! Let’s finish with social inequalities! We demand the immediate increase of wages, social assistance, allowances and pensions, the unconditional right to housing and…
Anna Mendelssohn Anna Mendelssohn, also known as Grace Lake, who has died aged 61 of a brain tumour, was principally a poet, and a poet like no other, but was also a painter, musician, actor and, earlier in her life, a political activist. She came from what she described as “a very strict working-class socialistic Jewish background” in Stockport, Cheshire. But what impelled her throughout her life was a 1960s spirit of radical revolt. At first it was political but, after a great turning point in her life, it was artistic. She was educated at Stockport high school and…
XII (from NEXT WINTER) for Luis Camilo I get up I do not get up They hate me I tie my tubes I hit a motorcyclist with malice aforethought I surrender to the Oedipus complex I wander I carefully study the differences between dysrhythmia – psychosis – schizophrenia – neurosis – depression – syndrome – panic and I’m pissed left alone in the house when everyone is asleep I buy a magazine that costs six dollars they steal my best friend’s purse they grab me I push him I murder him I remember the umbrella of Amsterdam and the…
Our Death / Abject 2 (after Baudelaire) Great love, that will crush the human world, I wish we could do something to help each other. But today we are separated by so many tedious enemies. They smile at us all day long and ask us about our fever. What is there to say? That “fever”, in the way they pronounce it, isn’t much more than a weird reflection of their smile, which in itself is a symbol of their sense of rightness within the so-called world. But that we feel that the five characters that make up the word…
BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics)) 