February 4, 2010 Edition of Toylit on Sale Now!

For those of you who wanted to see what the final drafts of the news poems would look like, this is it. This edition has the finesse and polish that was lacking in the previous edition: squandered opportunities are taken, shortcuts eliminated, rough lines rewritten... if you want to see what the News Poems look like in a final-draft version, this is it. Unlike the re-launch edition of Toylit, this will stay on sale longer. Since it is not a first edition, I took $5 off the cover price.

This is more or less a clean book of poetry so if that's what you were waiting to buy, it's on sale now. Unlike the prior edition, this one doesn't have an ISBN # and the next edition with an ISBN# won't come out until the end of this month. The Feb 4, 2010 Edition of Toylit. Click below to buy.



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$5 for 2.3.10 Toylit v3.01 Download

We know that the sketch can sometimes be more interesting than the finished painting--if only for the unrealized possibilities. Toylit is sketched daily as are its revisions. As of about 5pm PST, I'm going to work on the 2.4.10 edition of Toylit and will discontinue the 2.3.10 edition at around 20 circulation. Own sketches of poems and address them as living products of the author's performance (the poet's life is performance art). Sure, you'll have a chance to own your own copy of Toylit with these titles in them later, but you won't have a chance to own a printed edition with this draft: typos and all.

If you want an electronic copy, that's fine too, but I find it unlikely it will ever be a collector's item. Still, if you want to read the much better versions of Global Village and Haitian Fright Song, now you can do so for $5.

What's important to note is that Toylit is produced daily, in my spare time, which means I prioritize the deadline over the production quality. It is an evolving testament, which I think, makes it more compelling. We are embodied in time and while poetry can transcend time to a certain extent, it's still germinated in a temporal space.



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Clans and Clerics[Today's News Poem, Feb 4, 2010]

Clans and Clerics, Feb 4, 2010
By Khakjaan Wessington

"… I still will tell you that I believe the situation in Afghanistan is serious. I do not say now that I think it's deteriorating. I said that last summer and I believe that that was correct. I feel differently now... This is all in the minds of the participants. And I mean, the Afghan people are the most important, but the insurgents are another one. You're just convincing people..."

-General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan

America was lost in increments
We measure using friendships made and lost.
For every clique's a pending coup.
The business-types—who love in dollars, cents—
Feign pals until the checks are signed and crossed.
No wonder when the revolution's due

It wins: who writes the history of calls,
Of contracts signed? Of relatives, of chums
We made at school or work or in the street?
With gun on back, a young jihadi crawls
Through snow to kill—you think he cares of bums
Like you? We learn to win with each defeat.

In snow he thinks of what his father wants
Who wants whatever's best for everyone
He knows; but first comes flesh before the rest.
And if he lives it won't be you—his aunt's
Consideration makes him drop the gun—
Who stops the fighting, beats their army's best:

Instead it's work, the need to pay his way.
The world's old hippies ought to get the need
To distance self from indiscretions youth
Demands. What once was black and white is gray
Like hair, with age. With kids we need to feed,
We learn that love dispenses with the truth

As once we saw: and thus the revolution's made
A coup, like here, to keep their families all paid.



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Write Anti-News for Toylit

Anti-News is still an evolving concept, but Toylit has a fairly unified aesthetic. I welcome submissions, but require a query and abstract with 24 hour notice. Violators of this guide will have their e-mail addresses migrated to the spamfilter (memoryhole3.0). Compositions must be literary in nature: non-fiction and essays will be considered on a case by case basis, but don't abuse this or I'll just make it by invite only. Compositions must respond to existing news; it can occur, it can recur, but it must be 'news.' Authors retain all rights, with Toylit acquiring non-exclusive serial rights.

Toylit will also pay you, but I'm not going to make any firm guide as income will be derived primarily from print editions. I ENCOURAGE inspired, but flawed submissions, as the author will have an opportunity to edit a composition before the print edition goes out: especially as writing literature on a clock is difficult.

Eventually, I will figure out how to track submissions. At that point I will implement a blind-read policy. Until that time comes, I will probably find out who submitted what to me--and hence, will be a (more) biased editor.



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Toylit v3.01; February 3, 2010 Edition

"This limited edition, Feb 3, 2010 print edition of Toylit includes edits made on February 3, 2010. Of note are the revisions to Haitian Fright Song and Global Village. After a run of a few hundred (or less, market forces depending), it will be discontinued, rendering all print editions collector's items. This is your one chance to purchase Feb 3, 2010's edit of Toylit."

Haitian Fright Song was rewritten to completely keep the theme-rhythm of Mingus' fabulous Haitian Fight Song. The original was probably the worst of the original Toylit News poems, but the revision is one of the best. The other contender for that is the sly revision of "Global Village,' which is a far more cunning poem than what was posted here.

Click below to buy a copy today.



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After the Philosopher's Stone [Today's News Poem, Feb 3, 2010]

After the Philosopher's Stone
By Khakjaan Wessington

“...Western experts suggested the civilian space programme provided cover for Iran’s development of long-range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear pay-load. ”
-Timesonline, February 3, 2010

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one “

-J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, upon witnessing the Trinity nuclear test, July 16, 1945

The ultimate superlative is 'bomb,'
Because a nuke is absolute.
And like the word it stands aplomb
Among creations: techne's golden fruit.

Just like the rarest cultivars, to care
And rear a fearsome edible
Requires a gaze that fears no glare:
No thought too wicked nor incredible

For tasks like these, it takes a will of stone—
Of mercury—to shed taboo.
A superman ought not atone
For crafting kryptonite. He'll later rue

The rationalizations used to mint the rock,
And more, regret that he established doomsday's clock.



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Grasping for an All-Encompassing Anti-News Postulate

Here's a slogan I believe: 'slogans are stupid.' Slogans stifle thought and create false dualisms. They ignore outright the possibility of alternatives not mentioned in the slogan: ie: slogans are shit (I pledge allegiance to that one too). News also creates false dualisms and in so doing, funnels thought into narrow theses that ignore that most current events are RECURRING events.

News is narrative, but what does this mean? Narrative: a story, a glue with which disparate data points are welded together. A manufacture. A report about a scientific paper isn't the same as the scientific paper itself. The medium is the message, so with Google at our side, does that mean a footnote can become a headline? It appears so. I had no clue how easy it was to enter the news-stream. So it is possible to attack the headlines and to become the news.

I believe in eloquence, if not always revision. I believe eloquence is more powerful than base speech—not only in persuasive capacities, but also in expanding thought. Is it not astonishing to one reading this page that he or she already knows most, if not all the words printed here, and yet these words inspire thoughts one had not considered previously? To me, that's one of the many wonders of language. News is the opposite of eloquent; it is reductionist in nature. It seeks to shrink ideas. It presumes a 'state of nature' from its readers. It assumes the reader is ignorant, swayed by irrational prejudice and believes in the false completeness of a dualistic dialectic.

Quantity has a quality all its own as we know, which is why news is capable of infiltrating our subconscious and altering our conditioned responses. Journalists only drive the narrative, because they are expert testimony: paid witnesses. How well does that work in our court-system? They have the heft of the news organization--the news brand--to replicate their bad memes and drive discourse in negative directions. And instead of facing this army of idiots directly, the literary writers flee to the academy. They're such cowards. They write for lit magazines—they're afraid of their best writing getting stolen; of not getting paid for it. That's a fair worry. It's not easy to think up something original with the letters we all know. Still, they have targeted exclusivity and sought sinecure at the expense of relevance: removed themselves from natural selection. Instead of participating within history, the standard literary conceit is to transcend history. This is a valid form of expression, but when it becomes the predominant ethos, there's a problem. Why is it Maureen Dowd gets to pretend to be some sort of literary type? She thinks she's such a fucking word-pixie. She can't stand up, head-to-head against a real author of prose, never mind poetry. The answer therefore is to alter the target of literary efforts. Is the poet some type of manatee, fleeing corporate speedboats? I think the poet is more like a submarine that can transform into a suborbital bomber and back again. Why hide? If poetry can do all these things poets claim it can do, then it should be able to easily defeat the hacks of the world.

Most news stories have few facts and are heavy with narrative. Furthermore, idiotic statements are easy to rebut with other idiotic statements, thus creating a cycle of retaliation between extreme ideological poles. In the name of 'dialectic' the argument is framed by the arguers. One could almost argue that too much time around the legal system has made the common mode of public discourse, nihilistic. Since extremists speak mostly to their opposing pole, this creates discourse filled with slogans, which as I've said before, stifle genuine thought. The best antidote then is careful speech that cannot be easily rebutted. I have chosen to do this with verse, because as I said before, I hate slogans. Poems do far more work with the same number of syllables and poetry—when it's written right—advances dialogue, rather than restricts it.

So what is anti-news? Well, simply put, it's anti-narrator. A bad narrator omits facts and jerks the reader along. A news organization assumes the reader has the memory of a goldfish, or has never read a newspaper before. Even a tv show assumes the viewer is familiar with prior episodes--and if she isn't--that the viewer could easily catch up on netflix. Could you imagine if Voltaire assumed that nobody had read anything before him? “Hmm, better write down to their level first.” It's not done, except in news. Even textbooks assume a kid passed the prior grade.

The whole point behind anti-news is therefore more than a culture-jamming enterprise. The news doesn't occur--it recurs. News is a narrator that presents false dualisms and relies more heavily on speculation based around a news item analyzed in isolation, rather than synthesizing disparate bits of knowledge into a more complete narrative. The journalist is a notary, someone who witnesses and confirms an event (or data) that requires eye-witness testimony. She or he only thinks s/he's a writer, when in fact a journalist is as much a writer as a court reporter. The journalist seeks to step into history, but is she qualified? Who really writes history? Scholars. Artists. Writers. No hacks allowed, except insofar as being the cite in a greater thesis. Attacking the news at it comes out immediately injects alternative points of view into the discourse--at the moment when it can still be effective. And furthermore, the author who writes the first definitive poem or story on a subjectmatter is remembered--not the journalist who witnessed or confirmed the event. The literary minded ought go head-to-head with the hacks of the world and enter the cycle of history now: not after you've died.



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All the Old Cat Ladies [Today's News Poem, Feb 2, 2010]

All the Old Cat Ladies

By Khakjaan Wessington

“When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar "charged out" and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat's judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.”

-telegraph.co.uk 7:42PM GMT 01 Feb 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html

Amidst the tubes and wheeled beds
Is life. A tank of oxygen
Can anchor balloons—greens and reds,
A halo 'round the aged's pen.

With death on every side of us,
Inside us, bits we've dripped in stride
While edging near the terminus:
We fear to face the mortal slide.

She lived before, amongst the cats.
They tolerated human stench,
And oily garbage crowned with gnats,
Because she was their serving wench.

And now amongst the humans lives
A cat who serves—like them—the end
Of cages. Aging's worse than knives
They say: it wounds before it sends.

A school of dignified release
Where pupils watch with catlike eyes,
And sense when illness comes to cease
The woman with a house of flies.



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Deficits and Treasure [Today's News Poem, Feb 1, 2010]

Deficits and Treasure

By Khakjaan Wessington

“The budget plan, which would take effect when fiscal year 2011 begins on October 1, projects a record fiscal deficit of $1.56 trillion this year but predicts the red ink will subside to $1.27 trillion in 2011 and half that in 2012.”

-Reuters, Feb 1, 2010, 11:06am EST

The Aeolipile, a brazier bearing double spouts,
Was iron, brass—from base components nonetheless—
Yet treasure. Forth through craft came value's early sprouts;

With paint worth more than gold, with books worth more than gems.
The guilds and foreigners kept secrets they'd not fess,
Thus trade became the way that profit came to stem

Beyond the limits local markets used to bear—
Demand, supply, material and state constraints—
With earnings, came the study we call laissez-faire.

With maths and science, facts and theories—press as well—
Economies could trade without a gold restraint.
So value now is separate from specie's spell.

A deficit is bridged with press—already done
To save the banks. Deposits made can grow by ten
Their lendable reserves. They speculate: it's spun

As finding value—true sometimes, but why can't you
Or I receive financial terms like that? It's when
The deficit accrues and banks receive the screw,

They scream inflation stands to cut their margins down:
They get the loot, while costs go up in every town.




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A Type of Manifesto

Anti-News-Meme Munitions

By Khakjaan Wessington

While journalism's oft ephemeral
True verse remains perennial.
Our dialogue is often fixed,
With dualisms. Trite discussion's mixed

With prejudice and fearful ways of thought:
Debate, it's ruled, can trade. It's bought
For millions, yielding billions—yet
The perfumed lie depends on truth (in debt).

Attack then writers, poets--those who feel
The whims of liars, hacks; trained seals
That skew as handler deems them to--
And fight for those constituents they woo.

The narrative's munition now: just read
The facts the spies would have you cede—
Not burnt, just buried; referenced
On microfiche, truth deferenced

To assholes who distort the facts to sway
The narrative for grabs today.
It's not what's writ, but how it's done:
For verse and prose unspin the lies once spun.




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Act of Government [Today's News Poem, Jan 31, 2010]

Act of Government

By Khakjaan Wessington

“In Oklahoma, Gov. Brad Henry requested a federal disaster declaration for the state, where more than 164,000 homes and businesses were without power on Friday night.
The storm has also been blamed for the death of a 70-year-old Oklahoma woman in a propane explosion.”

-New York Times, Jan 31, 2010

The artist paints the pheromone,
While science claims to lead the way.
So onward marches clans of drones,
Who pray for meaning in this fray

Of tricks—call God! You'll later blame
That guy, then call your governor.
We voted in these guys—a shame
They're clowns, but we're such slow learners.




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America the Ambiguous

America the Ambiguous

By Khakjaan Wessington

Oh beautiful for gracious spies,
For amber waves of porn;
For bomb and famine tragedies
That only wake our scorn:

America! America,
What God cares just for thee?
Though good sometimes, our many crimes
Shall bring calamity.



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Anti-News-Meme Munitions

Toylit: anti-news-slogans, canned and ready for deployment on any blog. So long as you attribute the poem to its author (Khakjaan Wessington by default, unless the composition specifies otherwise), you may copy and paste Toylit wherever you feel it is relevant. Discourse will not improve until dissent makes itself relevant.

Serve with your favorite blog. Culture jam goes well with toast, coffee, and the morning newspaper. Fry hot links of Toylit and shit all over your favorite news organization.



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Guilty Until Proven Guilty [Today's News Poem, Jan 30, 2010]

Guilty Until Proven Guilty

By Khakjaan Wessington

“... the Justice Department on Friday began considering sites for the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other top Al Qaeda operatives away from the shadow of the toppled World Trade Center.

The alternative locations include an Air National Guard base and a federal penitentiary near Manhattan, both considered safe and secure facilities.”

-LA Times


When types of values clash, the goals that vie
Against another seldom merge: to try
A man
Who seeks to die a martyr—
Beyond the rage of mobs—
When 'Justice' cannot barter
With juries lacking jobs;

To orchestrate a trial of grudges:
It looks the same as Imam-judges.
Our own
Hypocrisy: a mirror
Where enemies appear
To speak in tones much clearer
Than courtroom atmospheres.



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Toylit Scoop! Editor Khakjaan Wessington Called Russia's Military Return in 2006

Siloviki Security Vision for Russia

This is only the beginning.

Beware of Toylit Imitators: Part 2

So I have been checking this site's ranking on Google and I encountered ANOTHER group of degenerates--this time from LA--that ripped-off Toylit in 2005. I found the creatively blighted dolts on wiki of all places. Yes, the meme was in the air, but I snatched it first and made it my own. AND the true Toylit got its street-cred via restroom distribution in SF back in 2003. Paper always trumps the internet chumps and don't you forget it.

Actually I just checked my file cabinet. Toylit started in 2002.



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What Men Want [Today's News Poem, Jan 29, 2010]

What Men Want

By Khakjaan Wessington

"My honest belief was that if I didn't do something they would continue to die."
-Scott Roeder

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60S4UB20100129

The ancient women, wise with feral ways,
Passed matrilineal traditions down
From ape to human—knowing men could slay,
With lust, their daughters. Deaths wore bridal gowns

Before connubial beds became their graves
So brewing remedies these mothers saved
All humankind. Resentful, men thought slaves
Were made of them. He mastered war and raved

Against his mother—burning her to ash.
Denounced as midwife: now we call her witch.
Their wives and daughters—mothers died—the clash
Of sexes won. Thus Woman, made a 'bitch,'

To breed and grieve perhaps before the next.
The men would prise the fruit, more sons, from wombs
That rarely lasted forty years. But text
Reflected changing norms. In time, this grooms

A kinder sort of man who seeks a peer—
If only theoretically. Rights,
If slowly, catch the rhetoric—so dear
To many—bringing new and awful blights.

I think I know this killer's thoughts, this guy
Who shot that Kansas doc. He felt betrayed
By fellow man: resolved to make him die
And eased his guilt with Bible quotes. Unswayed,

The jury found enough to lock him up.
A shame, because a woman now, receives
In joy or rage a life from carnal tup
That soon awaits abortionist's coarse sieves;

Because she knows she really wants what men
Desire. To lust and grow and kill and feel—
Not nothing—just flushing. She wants what men
Desire: to fuck and kill and never heal;

To harvest death for medicines and soups
Or trashed in plastic bags in cans on stoops.



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Rates for the Union [Today's News Poem]

Rates for the Union

By Khakjaan Wessington

“We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August ”

-President Obama, State of the Union Speech, Jan 27, 2010

“The principal foundations that all states have, new ones as well as old or mixed, are good laws and good arms. And because there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws... Mercenary and auxilary arms are useless and dangerous; and if one keeps his state founded on mercenary arms, one will never be firm or secure; for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; bold among friends, among enemies cowardly; no fear of God, no faith with men; ruin is postponed only as long as attack is postponed; and in peace you are despoiled by them, in war by the enemy.”

-Machiavelli, Chapter XII, The Prince


A poet knows another one,
Despite attempts to hide the creed.
This State of Union speech was spun,
To duck again the cost of greed.

Obama said the combat troops.
The mercenaries? Nothing said.
Omitting truth: the easy dupe.
With 'victory,' an army fled

Before, look up every major war.
The Prince's time was just the same.
The wealthy mercenaries maim
Their host: buying access, rotting core

And faithful laws within the state.
The CIA depends on mercs
To redefine, prevaricate,
Subvert the law. That clan: berserk

With the expedience of bribes.
And power dizzy in their heights,
They hide their trail—their worst of gibes—
And do it too with rifle sights.

A hidden war away from news,
The 'troop withdraw' a cunning ruse.



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Dearest Readers

If you approve of Toylit's mission, please go to propeller.com , digg , reddit , and delicious to promote us. Culture jamming is a team effort. Yes, they demand accounts. We must all make sacrifices comrade. If you cannot make such a commitment, but wish to prove you're no kulak, then subscribe to toylit's rss feed.




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Work Will Set You Free [Today's News Poem]

Work Will Set You Free

By Khakjaan Wessington

“Unemployment reached highest level on record in 2009...”
-The International Labor Organization, Jan 27, 2010

“...You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.”

-What Work Is, Philip Levine

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. “
-John Adams


The world is full of people born of guilt.
Disposable or dark or both—they're made
To serve their patrons. Yearning freedom kills
The urge to die. The surest way to thwart:
Implant the hope that slavery's a lie,
That clay can change to flesh. To work in hope
That those we spawn might live as we desire.

They stole the sign at Auschwitz. Lies expire,
Becoming truth with age—and then just lost.
The maxims--never uttered sincerely--
We know that work will never set us free.




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Beware of Imitators

Once upon a time (2003), Toylit was distributed through the restrooms of San Francisco. Apparently it was inspirational, because some twatty degenerate who lived in the lower Haight around the time Toylit was distributed, decided to name his league of bitch-scribbles 'Toylit.' So in case you're an old-time reader, surprised at the presence of low-quality purveyors of toylitries on the web, rest assured that the trisomy 21 addled freak has nothing to do with fine literature for the (m)asses.



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Ernst and Röhm [Today's News Poem]

Ernst and Röhm

By Khakjaan Wessington

“...reverse the overall erosion in middle class security...”
-President Obama, The New York Times, Jan 25, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26obama.html

A specter haunting President Obama haunts
The textbooks, episodes of History Channel.
In film the Fuhrer dies by it—it saved a gaunt
And saintly Private Ryan. Secretly, panels
Of Koch executives gloat as Teabag pawns fight
For vassalage. 'Aren't Ernst and Röhm the tax people,'
I've heard them ask. Security from thought—to spite
Their loneliness, they seek control of courts, steeples.
Oh Hannah Arendt dance with me, don't dance too deep—
A squad of goons are coming into town: beep beep!




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Global Village [Today's News Poem]

Global Village

By Khakjaan Wessington

The television is haunted
With saints and demons.
We worship personalities
And then networks
And then simply brands.

They say television is insidious,
That it destroys minds,
Families and so forth.
What nonsense!
Who has time to drive to church anymore?
Pizza is delivered.
So is religion.

Who says television kills?
Who calls it the idiot machine?
I say it saves. Jay Leno saved
NBC millions and millions are saved
By his monologues. I don't know how
But they still tune-in.

The North Star was once a brand.
Just because sailors used it in metaphor
Doesn't mean it didn't guide a ship northward.

Conan O'Brien has all the fun I want to have,
So I don't watch his show.
Jay Leno should have fun,
But loves comedy as accountants love.
They laugh at our sins.
They are our sins.
They've made sin irrelevant.

--

The edit to this poem, in full metered verse, can only be read in the print edition, on sale here:




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Haitian Fright Song [Today's News Poem]

Haitian Fright Song

By Khakjaan Wessington

The Haitian Fight Song
Is curious, because of whom they might fight.
The French,
The Americans,
But mostly themselves
And their denuded dirt.

They were liberated into poverty
As the White Man unburdened himself
Of the people,
While keeping the plantations
And conspiring against voodoo.

A man interviewed said that only the Haitians screamed
During the aftershocks. He said he wanted to emulate
The foreigners. It's not easy to divorce one's self from one's
Animal instincts. To be reptilian where others are mammalian.
To be pitiless in work and to pitilessly extract work.
To fight man and soil
And child and woman
And most of all to fight the self.
To be better than human
To be inhuman.
To dry the ducts of pity
So that when our turn comes
And we are smothered with rubble
And we are trapped beneath our own excrement
Nobody will save us.
Not even ourselves.
And nobody should save us.
I didn't save anyone.
They shouldn't save me.

--

The edit to this poem, in full metered verse, can only be read in the print edition, on sale here:




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The Oracles of the Supreme Court [Today's News Poem]

The Oracles of the Supreme Court

By Khakjaan Wessington

Re: Citizens United v FEC, Jan 2010

I wish to pray as wealthy people do,
In silks and gold: a prayer shawl—a suit
To consecrate and make me worthy. God
Rewards those offering the sacred graphs
Whilst burning cigarette incense. The law
Of margins—uncontested—wins again,
While under oath The Chosen testify
For Heaven's Mandate: live on tv now.



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On Zombies

By Khakjaan Wessington

Re: 3.31.06, 8:50pm: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/31/DDG6TI0A8N1.DTL

The pundits miss the main reason why zombies are ascendant; after the werewolves of the 80s, and the vampires of the 90s: it is not because of genre fears of disease, or betrayal by loved ones- zombies play on the fears of human mass extinction. Vampires and werewolves live among us- feed upon us. To drive the human species extinct works against their interest. They are perhaps interested in creating perpetual thralls of humans, yes, but not the annihilation of the breed.

Zombies are the anthropomorphization of death- and yes, this seems tautological to the literal-minded- but need I remind those very same literalists that death cannot be expressed literally? One can depict a state of death, but not the pure distilled phenomena of death. While it seems obvious to point out that 'undead' is now a culturally tautological term, it is an error to mistake the monster zombie for the monstrosity of zombie-ism. Death is usually defined as post-life. Unlife is a distinctly different state from death, as a rock, or a hydrogen atom was never alive. So un-deadness is then a way to personify deadness.

The zombie is the conformist and only the living are non-conformist. Zombies depict action without meaning. Undeath without life. They serve solely to spread the contagion of death, just as the conformist seeks to force others to conform. By contrast the werewolf and the vampire are iconoclasts. They live secretly in civilization and their special properties are a constant source of trouble and excitement- the very things that give life meaning. So though zombies and vampires are both undead, only one exists without the ego we call the 'self.' If there is an internal cognitive life for a zombie, it is unknown to the outside world and seems to do nothing to aid the zombie's fulfillment of a 'satisfying' afterlife.

Zombies are a manifestation of the fear of total annihilation and the meaninglessness that such eradication of the species brings to enlightenment values of secular humanism and 'progress.' This is the most terrifying consequence of the zombie: if zombies exist, then the Creator does not. Or worse, the properties of the Creator are malicious and more akin to Descartes' evil genius. In this regard, the zombie is a post-nuclear age monster that perhaps owes more to Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" than it does to the rather civilized monsters of the pre-industrial age. The most terrifying possibility of course, is that the Creator as we know it, lost to a gambit by some malicious entity; and that the force that was protecting our souls is gone. The existence of zombies suggests a breakdown of the natural order of things and that doom is imminent.

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