After the revolution by Luke Buckham

Remember days of staring at white walls
waiting for something black to happen.
Remember a silver tangle in the dark
and the mouth that opened under it.
Remember the couch overturned
and kicking at it as if it were
the framework of the world.

Now even the birds sound discordant
and the air jagged, filtered wrongly
around their wings, seems to be pushing
its way into my mouth; I cannot draw it
peacefully into my body of guns and tobacco.
The plants are wearing men and muscles.
Ferns have little machines in each green shiver.
And you have to go sleepless for days just to make a painting
come out of the over-stretched air.

But the mustached podium man and his guards
have been dispatched into a graveless void
and it feels good to have them swimming under us,
hitting demons that we unleashed with silver saucepans,
their pants lined with egg whites.
We'll be free for a few weeks like years,
and let the presses roll.

my grandpa Carl is 98 years old
and he paints pictures of kittens on his bedroom walls
all the cats he's ever lived with
who have died

he has outlived them all
and his children my parents won't allow him to have
a new cat
so he paints the infancies of remembered felines
on the plain white wallpaper

his skin is as white as the whites of his eyes
but his hair is whiter
his paintbrush moves much faster than his heart

To the Keene Sentinel:

Here's a cause that I believe can, and should, unite liberals, conservatives, free-thinkers, democratic socialists, libertarians, anarchists, born-again Christians, Catholics, universalists, Unitarians, Buddhists, and many other people who are often at odds with each other: taking back Sunday.

I realize that some businesses still take Sunday off, or close early, or set aside some other day for rest and, hopefully, quiet contemplation. But I believe that this reduced observance is really inadequate (also, the majority of businesses now stay open, often keeping the same hours as any other day) and fails to honor the concept of the Sabbath, which is a deeply wise and benevolent concept, and one we could all benefit from. The tradition of taking Sunday off is rooted in the once-popular myth that even the creator of the universe is not eternally active, and regularly takes time off from work, even loving, splendid work, to fart around. This is a concept we, as a society, have largely lost, yet there seems to be little protest about it, even from the devout.

Most Americans work far too much, largely to create, and buy, things that make our lives harder and more complicated. We are rushed, tense, and numbed by this voluntary overwork. And because of this mad rush to produce at all costs, we are known throughout much of the world as unreflective, boring working stiffs. In many ways our drudgery closely resembles that of the old Soviet Union at its most mind-numbingly materialistic depths.

Let's all take the day off on Sunday, and relax. If enough of us refuse to work, and refuse to buy anything on that sacred occasion, we'll have our day of rest back, and all of us will be happier for it, except workaholics, who, after all, will have no law preventing them from staying open and going broke on Sunday while the rest of us play; or from working feverishly at home. For those of us who don't attend services dedicated to worshipping the God Who Rests, there are plenty of other ways to spend our time; we can even out-rest the faithful by lying in bed all day drinking beer, or languidly etching pornographic drawings on old cocktail napkins while listening to slow, lazy, sensual jazz on the stereo.

(By the way, in certain areas of the Deep South, the day of rest is often more closely observed. I hope we Yankees aren't too snobbish to follow suit.)

As for Seventh-Day Adventists, who take the myth of that sacred rest more literally than the rest of us, well, they're free to take Saturday back, with the help of Orthodox Jews, whose sabbath begins 18 minutes before sundown on Friday and continues until 42 minutes after sunset on Saturday. In fact, I hope they succeed spectacularly and make many converts, so that we can all have a national two-day weekend of quiet streets, closed shops, and fresh, unhurried air.

--LUKE BUCKHAM

BIG BLOGGER IS WATCHING YOU by Luke Buckham

If you look at the navigation bar at the top of this blog, you'll see a little flag (next to it is the word 'FLAG' followed by a question mark). If you move your cursor onto it, you will see a banner reading:

"Notify Blogger about objectionable content.
What does this mean?"

If you click on 'what does this mean', here's some of what you'll find:

"The Flag button is not censorship and it cannot be manipulated by angry mobs. Political dissent? Incendiary opinions? Just plain crazy? Bring it on.

This feature is called "Flag As Objectionable" and it's accessible via the Blogger Navbar. The "Flag?" button allows the blogging community to easily note questionable content, which in turn helps us take action when needed. So we're relying on you, the users, to be our eyes on the web, and to let us know of potential issues that are important to you."

So, it's not censorship, you see. But, if you read further:

"The "Flag?" button is a means by which readers of Blog*Spot can help inform us about potentially questionable content, so we can prevent others from encountering such material by setting particular blogs as "unlisted." This means the blog won't be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the web — we prefer to keep in mind that one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that."

You see, blogger wants to protect us all from anything we might deem offensive. Rather than placing that heavy responsibility on the reader, they offer to take care of it for us, so that we can surf the internet without encountering anything that bothers us (or, potentially, anything that challenges us).

Am I the only one infuriated by this childishness? Apparently not: my friend Bill Gnade over at Contratimes has written a denunciatory article about this device which you can read at http://contratimes.blogspot.com/2006/11/red-flag-cowardice-you-better-watch.html

Let's examine this: "The Flag button is not censorship and it cannot be manipulated by angry mobs."

I am curious as to what, exactly, would prevent an angry mob from utilizing this feature, since it is open to anyone who stumbles across this site. Furthermore, it seems that whoever runs blogger does not understand what censorship is. Here's a quick dictionary definition:

"Censorship is the editing, removing, or otherwise changing speech and other forms of human expression. In some cases, it is exercised by governing bodies but it is always and continuously carried out by the mass media."

Note the emphasis there. You see, blogger wants us to think them as cool, fearless promoters of untrammeled free speech...while simultaneously and methodically helping to squelch that same free speech, by reducing its availability, and reserving the right to remove it completely. I don't see how they can possibly duck this contradiction.

There's more: "When the community has voted and hate speech is identified on Blog*Spot, Google may exercise its right to place a Content Warning page in front of the blog and set it to "unlisted."

Ah, "Hate Speech", one of the catchphrases of our sickly age.

Let me tell you a little story that I believe is intimately related to this subject.

I have often attended open mics in this area and elsewhere. Once, a virulently anti-semitic man got up on stage at one of them and told all of us that the Jews were responsible for, basically, turning this world into a sewer. The audience rapidly became visibly uncomfortable, and someone called the police, who showed up and forcibly removed the man from the coffee shop.

Now, I found this man's views just as despicable and laughably stupid as anyone else in the room did. But I also know that he felt like a martyr when the police came to take him away, and that, on some level, he felt that his cause had been legitimatized. How do I know this? Well, not long after this incident, a good Jewish friend of mine happened to run into him at a local bar. He told the man that he had been present at the open mic, and after striking up a conversation with the anti-semite, identified himself as a Jew. The anti-semitic poet (not a very good poet, either--racial paranoia doesn't tend to produce brilliance) proceeded to explain his "views" to my friend, who listened patiently. The man seemed calmed by his patience and tolerance, and my friend tells me that he seemed a bit softened, even a bit wobbly, when they shook hands and parted.

You see, this ties in with my anti-war stance, with my view that peace is usually more effective than punishment. If my friend had attacked the man and broke a glass over his head, who could say that he would not be justified in doing so? Or if he had, with wit and sarcasm, told this guy to go to hell, whom among us could condemn him for doing so? I wouldn't. And yet, his patience and tolerance proved to be more effective, in my opinion; an attack would have, once again, made this man feel (albeit irrationally) justified, whereas my friend's awe-inspiring forebearance showed him something more profound than violence or rebuke ever could: a superior Jew; a man utterly unflappable and unafraid in the face of hatred, and willing to try to understand his attacker. This should have been allowed to happen at the coffee shop; instead, the cold, impersonal force of law took the place of confidence and scrutiny.

You see, what blogger's 'flag' feature accomplishes is no more than what calling the cops on an anti-semite accomplishes. If there is really a legitimate reason to censor free speech, surely it would be in the case of something like racial hatred. Yet, had the cops not been called, the man would have been surrounded by people who disagreed with him, some of whom could have kept their cool and showed his argument to be foolish. It is better, in my view, to allow a bigot to continue to expose their ignorance in public, and allow them to be dealt with in a truly democratic way, rather than calling the authorities. Of course, for that, we need an enlightened populace, one comfortable in their own skin, worldly and knowledgable, and ready to show up prejudice in a shrewd, calm manner. The way to encourage the growth of such a populace is not to give them as many ways as possible of repressing each other from a distance, as opposed to dealing with each other face-to-face.

Manworld is not Manworld or a world

I said, in a lost essay: 1) nobody needs
anything that they fight for.
2) The fighting itself has become the only thing.
3) Dominance is as miserable for the dominant
as for the dominated. 4) Just ask someone
with a penis how they feel about being so
"powerful".

We threw lemonade at each other
and then we threw beer. We wanted to sting
each other's eyes. The girls ran
out of the room to let us kill each other.
I grabbed a stool and pressed its legs
against your throat while you slammed
a heavy beerglass against my hipbone
over and over and over and the girls cried
wearily in their bedrooms.
We tried to rip off each other's genitals
but our pants were on backwards.

Then we saw each other's faces
(as if the smoke had set the house on fire)
and begged each other to stop, which we did.
We held each other on the porch and cried
while the girls emerged from their bedrooms
and laughed at our sentimentalities,
we were so wobbly with one another.

I beg everyone to destroy themselves
and everything they love before it's too late.

Short gender war poem

We all (even the wifeless among us)
cling to a female comforter.
We can't help it (shadows stroke
the wall on which they're cast)
and everything male is in parenthesis.

Let's all hold hands and sing about peace and love

by Luke Buckham

Shithead's afraid (fear is filled with shithead)
that we won't live through:
next week's widely advertised
far-off glistening weekend.
The idiots, the idiots, and the idiots,
and also the idiots, not to mention the idiots,
in addition to the idiots,
incorrectly have correctly raped us
incorrectly. Rape and baseball rape
and potato chips rape, and also rape.
With their orifices they create new orifices,
holes in proletariat space-time,
and with their beautiful knives. Now we wait
and hope for them to be silent as feces
in a far-off Martian forest. Stony, odorless.

Shit from nobody. And the seas silent,
a sleeping skin,
and rich men filing their nails
with files made from the bones
of the poor, who are stupid and have good bones
and do not deserve to be rich.
Their bones are also made
into televisions and spy cameras
by highly metaphysical asians.
Stomach intestine testicle screens.
Buddha TV. The sexless gooks spray airplane glue
into their mouths and throw elephant meat
from high city windows.

Eat shit from a broken shard of mirror
while crouching behind a heap of automobiles
that just fell out of the television sky.
There is! A comfort here! As a radio,
half-crushed in the smoke:
plays songs by singers employed:
by those who make guns most of the time;
when they're not making popular songs;
for the youth of death to sing along to;
as they drive roads of frozen nigger blood
into their own endless lightweight
craniums. Niggers destroying niggers,
using niggers. Niggers eating nigger-meat
out of crucified cracker hands.

Labyrinthine fistula of puffed clam-tunnels
fighting with each other's tongue-bodies,
acidic in each other's entrances,
licking yellow milk from a dusty cushion
as the cushion watches television
with aluminum in her wifely spine.
And an army of faggots, faggots
eating shit from broken mirrors,
marching over heterosexual hillsides,
bathing each other's anuses
with crushed infants,
faggots faggots faggots!

Trees getting married to each other
by evangelists with clam-meat eye-sockets
of no visible color, and faggots.
Cunt bitches popularizing bombs with their hips.
Cunt bitches popularizing the warfare of the sleepless
with their sleep, selling clams
to the sleepless with their sleep,
selling sleeplessness to the sleepy
with yams buried and rotting
in their important vaginas.
Bitches are responsible!
Bitches are selling miniskirt clams
to everybody!

Fear is destroyed by beer.
Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.Fear is destroyed by beer.

Cracker carries a six-pack.
Cracker carries a six-pack.
Cracker carries a six-pack.
Crackers walk past crackers constantly.
Crackers contrast the terrorists
on each other's T-shirts.
Cracker knows what's best for everybody.
Everybody knows what's best for cracker.
And each can holds the blood, with bubbles.
Cracker rules the world, until asian.
Cracker rules the world, until asian.
The whole world is Pearl Harbor tomorrow.
The six-pack is the white-man's burden.
The six-pack is the white-man's burden.
His eyes are nipple erasers, his head
is the body of a dead baby sucking at the air.