in the presence of enemies
By Fran Lock
I am thus not in front of judges, but in the presence of enemies; so it would be quite useless to defend myself. Also, I have no fear of any sentence that you may pass on me, while protesting nevertheless with energy against this substitution of violence for justice, for this frees me in the future of any inhibition against repaying the law with force.
—Louis-Auguste Blanqui, from his defense speech, 1832
hope springs ridiculous on instagram. all that bitch,
please. all that piglet erudition. where hope is a cut-
price paraphrase. oh, malevolent rent-a-quotes. you
hordes, you stasi queens of shade. grief is the upper
limit of your kitsch, your skin some luscious uniform.
big fella was talking horseshit though a megaphone.
what is to become of us? the odor-neutral future. yes,
demilitarized sublime. to pick through our city. to live
inside a city, disfigured into labyrinth, cradling our
broken phones. oblivious eyes, cracked in parallel,
their staggered blink and fold. so many screens. so
many eyes. and to scavenge their blank expressions
for warmth. no one can be this hungry and be wise.
this feed is bottomless monarchy. money our deathly,
trending tallow. money, suctions that corrupt
as they console, the dark there, there, a fat mouth
being bled. i saw him, an abscessed nerve, thin
fang, milked transparent. money is his laxative.
i saw him, he is spoofed pork. he is hope, sprung
crouch in human shape. a school of fiscal eunuchs
moon the ruins of a church. receptacle for cortisone
and stale caffeine, my brain. it aches. the internet
has spoken. sectarian and bestial, we will be stop-
and-searched and search-and-seized and rounded
up. indexed, sectioned. assimilated, scattered. her
eye is an umbrella, angerlund. to live inside her
largess like a pauper lunatic. her prying touch,
impersonal as porn. every day my glitching pulse,
my panic. my myotonic capsize. on the train to
work we’re racks of swinging meat. and oh, you
row of whitened smiles, shock troops to her soft
policing. now, poet is an ugly velvet buzzword.
now, the near-insane symmetry of her face. she’s
faking. fake, gilded fiend. jackal-headed goddess
of the new conviction. useless floating lobe. poetry
is straightened like a smile is stretched. oh,
wonderland. most serviceable crocodile. poetry.
these feeble anglo glossaries. is so much lawful
motherfucking. don’t bitch, please me. all of us
connected by hot magnetic threads. politico,
that crucified mooncalf googling himself to
death. i’ve seen your world. your world is
vivisected beyond remedy. your world is
vivisected out of any recognition. someone
comes to repossess my sanctioned hemispheres.
much justice, such money: conjoined twins,
dressed in the lockjaw of identical violence.
who’s sorry now? and what do you intend to do
about it? the world weathers its long vegetable
atrocity. all our broken exits. angerlund.
panopticon, monocle without an eye, hovering.
’merica. incessant and beseeching mouth.
inevitable, absolute, replete with teeth,
predatory and ritzy. ’merica. a million vanilla
skeletons, each limb a brooch secured to the last
by a slender steel pin. history, that grim curatorial
shuffle. infinity of sifted bone. syntax, context,
liars, and spiders. most articulate emergency,
history. what is mimicked. what is cloned. ’merica.
doing porajmos two, electric boogaloo. doing
the museum as theme park. funding genocide
by william castle. angerlund is a child’s tongue
punished at a ribbon cutting. malignant
deliverance, flagon of mead. we’re lost.
in unemployment’s algorithm, opioids
and glycerines. the water rising, morphing
north. how skies are purged of birds.
how motorcades and unconcern. so
many screens, so many eyes, surfeit, debased.
desire lies only in the ear, or the frontier of our
fingertips. and by desire, some dreamier eternal.
a word might matter waking maybe recognize
a friend.
Source: Poetry (June 2020)