French Republic (FR): Just now, Poe\u2019s raven threw itself blackly
\ngainst the window.
\nIts wings curdled the grey, noon light.<\/p>\n
Kingdom of Portugal (KP): A grim sign!
\nPsychopaths love their slaughters
\nas much as actors love death scenes.<\/p>\n
FR: That\u2019s War<\/em>: German Federation (GF): A Treaty will prevent our navies Great Britain (GB): Uttered like a plutonic Plato Kingdom of Italy (IT): Our Embassy furnishes today\u2019s luncheon\u2014 Kingdom of Spain (KS): And we supply mescal from Mexico.<\/p>\n GB: The worm at the bottle\u2019s bottom IT: Italy commends Berlin\u2019s imperious architecture\u2014 United States (US): While we tipple this tongue-dazzling limoncello, GB: But you Yanks bring a shotgun perspective, US: Your keen lenses must yet be foggy IT: Now arrives the situation of coffee GF: What do we stymie here? KP: How awful that Spanish priests KS: There\u2019s always Hypocrisy Kingdom of Belgium (KB): Sun-incinerated Portugal KP: Belgium should speak sotto voce KB: Better that than nickel-and-dime Finance<\/em>, KP: Yes, we don\u2019t have a colony like The Congo, KB: Africa requires a lining of missionaries\u2019 footprints, Japanese Empire (JE): As observers, we observe, US: The sinister litters of Europe IT: Dante is our guide here. FR: On the sea bottoms, black bodies writhe\u2014 JE: (Aside): Is Whiteness<\/em> itself a dishonest Complexion<\/em>, GB: I shouldn\u2019t understand American Charity<\/em>, IT: This is the era of Satan. KP: Poisonous winds propel the Belgian vessels.<\/p>\n US: Consumptive scrambling for scraps of Africa\u2014 GF: Abandon such Poetry<\/em>! GB: The Yank rhetoric is, really, KB: Must Britain be morbidly global?<\/p>\n GB: True Diplomacy<\/em> rejects such bellicose diction.<\/p>\n GF: We seek a midway between all-out (Total<\/em>) War <\/p>\n [Guelph (Ontario) 29 novembre<\/em> mmxv I.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Wind twangs through rigging, sifts through hair, The ocean groans like a train. the roots and routes of rain.)<\/p>\n I can smell the bow slinging brine (Vast, silvery explosions of churn Cap\u2019n must exercise Caution<\/em>, II.<\/strong><\/p>\n As Samuel Cunard\u2019s granddaughter\u2014 But though I cross often from U.K. though never pausing in Halifax*<\/a>, Nova Scotia, \u201cDecadent,\u201d I\u2019m no welcome descendant.<\/p>\n III.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The scandal is: I\u2019ve been, I am, My grandee clan protests my \u201cincisive filth.\u201d My Abundance<\/em> is Henry\u2014 His lily-white \u201cconcubine\u201d Exasperatingly sensual, (Treason<\/em> of Love<\/em> is Loneliness<\/em>. My peers cruise the ros\u00e9 Mediterranean, but I love it when I suddenly feel Aye, I feel like Lady Chatterley, We white women are asked to accept Why should I back my clan\u2019s Krugerrand Apartheid<\/em>?<\/p>\n I am<\/em> a sullen traitor IV.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>High up now, a star smashes down. I\u2019ve known the salons of Paris\u2014 I thank heaven for a dark man Now I traverse the pewter slew, as Henry\u2019s \u201cHarlem bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n Lo! The see-through \u201cdusk of dawn\u201d!<\/p>\n [Edmonton (Alberta) 28 septembre<\/em> mmxii] By Julien Benda (1928)<\/strong><\/p>\n You cite the pure-white statues of criminals\u2014 But tethered to every throne If you\u2019re honest intellectuals, Factual Shakespeare and sincere Spengler is Dantean: Peel off masks! Peel away camouflage!<\/p>\n Historians, Time<\/em> persecutes us, Too often, you stroke your own tongues, The result? [Funchal (Madeira) 18 d\u00e9cembre<\/em> mmxv]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Shanghai is smoggy crematoria, Thus, I stir up The People I love seeing the slain bosses set forth II.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Through winter shadows, overlapping cool\u2014 through labyrinths of white some of us wearing horses\u2014<\/p>\n we move like startled wings:<\/p>\n To tack over iced rivers\u2014 to rescue the carcass of Nanking\u2026.<\/p>\n III.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>No longer rats amid rubble\u2014 and now we inch toward incomparable Light<\/em><\/p>\n despite cannibalism of our horses\u2014 or elucidation of Shit (Nothing is as occult as Eternity<\/em>.)<\/p>\n J\u2019avance<\/em>\u2014 IV.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The mountain snow equals a sugar\u2019d threshold\u2014 I\u2019m no devotee of Doubt<\/em>\u2014 tolerate gunfight gore\u2014 be a bull thundering like a locomotive.<\/p>\n No other way to propitiate Soldiery<\/em>!<\/p>\n V.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>We\u2019ve weathered Sorrow<\/em> after Sorrow<\/em>: Our victories are aching stories. (Kai-Shek\u2019s hogs must be electrocuted: VI.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>After my troops have taken grass for bed, What has our foe wrought?<\/p>\n Blown-up Kindergartens<\/em> and fire-charred infants\u2014 Sight gored horses strewn across the plain.<\/p>\n The New China\u2014 the fathomless otherness [Miami Beach (Florida) 21 & 22 f\u00e9vrier<\/em> mmxvi] \u201cNegroes [suffer] from Nothingness<\/em>.\u201d I.<\/strong><\/p>\n To see ugliness in Sade, vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em> the ceaselessly droning, Latin quarters\u2014 black-heart, black-shirt government Frost is bleak, Eliot frosty\u2014 That\u2019s what Mussolini and Hitler symbolize.<\/p>\n So, Italians, agitated, shake swords at Selassie,<\/p>\n and now phalanxes go into abbatoirs\u2014 The sky over Ethiopia is burnt-cork blaze the dry-grass huts Skin goes to boiling; it sloughs off the bones.<\/p>\n Deer-coloured Abyssinians\u2014 launching spears contra<\/em> machine-guns.<\/p>\n Partial Blame<\/em> for these pogroms? & Eliot, though he\u2019s inapprehensible\u2014 Ol\u2019 Possum, obscenely smirking (No, I don\u2019t count Liberia as sovereign.)<\/p>\n This clan of poets backs tacitly the Ku Klux Klan, I could give up Shakespeare. Indifferent to killing, II.<\/strong><\/p>\n Oh, the cruelty of the modern poets\u2014 Well, joint by joint, Caucasian Decay<\/em>, Devolution<\/em>, Decadence<\/em>, all became instruction manuals<\/p>\n for surplus police stations, and Poetry<\/em> gone to Odium<\/em> and Ordure<\/em>,<\/p>\n with Sadean governors and according fresh maiming, III.<\/strong><\/p>\n Plunge into the dark abyss of the Occidental classroom, Here\u2019s where scribblers, in training for Music<\/em>, IV.<\/strong><\/p>\n I recall 1929\u2014 to make a big splash, Economic History<\/em> is Ado<\/em> and fuss<\/em>\u2014 Indeed, Victoria mothered an Empire of Rippers\u2014 No wonder the theologians can\u2019t explain I am sure of this:<\/p>\n Musso and Adolf will die for there\u2019s no other hiding place for their ilk\u2014 Besides, they believe they will mirror if not Caesar\u2019s conquests.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [Ottawa (Ontario) 15 janvier<\/em> mmxvii Notes<\/p>\n *<\/a> Pidgin English. Repressed Transcript of The Berlin Conference (1884-85)<\/strong>
\nEndlessly contagious and expansive.<\/p>\n
\npinking the ramshackle sea;
\nforestall soldiers and emperors
\nsuffering that choking-on-dust sensation that\u2019s dying.<\/p>\n
\nOr a Platonist Pluto.<\/p>\n
\nlimoncello and lemon-flavoured salmon\u2014
\nplus pewter creamers from Naples
\nand a Capri of silver spoons
\nfor the coffee service later\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nresembles an engorged maggot.<\/p>\n
\na comfy cocktail
\nof Baroque and Georgian and Gothic\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nwe mustn\u2019t ignore the simultaneous business
\nof preventing the flowers of Africa
\nfrom becoming broken petals,
\ndue to the instinctive Mischief<\/em> of empires.<\/p>\n
\na gunboat vision,
\nto every single Policy<\/em>.
\nConsequently, we note the irreparable disappearance
\nof Red Indian tribes from your Great Plains.<\/p>\n
\nwith blood spatter,
\nif you don\u2019t recall your massacres of brown Indians
\nat Lucknow.<\/p>\n
\nplus plum-coloured Amaro,
\nto help your parley reach the dove-cooing heaven of Peace<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nDeadly rats biting little black girls;
\nupside-down burials of African chiefs;
\nthe suitcase materialization
\nof Caucasian carpetbaggers,
\ndelivering Africans slumping corpses,
\nor squads of assassins forcing babes
\nto choke on their own kicked in teeth.<\/p>\n
\ntorched the Mayans\u2019 papyrus scriptures!<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>in Portuguese Poesy<\/em>:
\nConsider Cam\u00f5es\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nlikes green wine, Cam\u00f5es\u2019 leaves\u2014
\nhis leaves like peeled off toilet tissue.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>for your Poetry<\/em> is paper currency,
\nwhat you rip out of Brazil.<\/p>\n
\nthe ghastly customs of (Portuguese) Poverty<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nwhere every child sports a necklace of leeches,
\nand maggots snuggle in assholes and eyeholes\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nof men as fearless of becoming crocodile material
\nas moths are of diving kamikaze<\/em> into candles.<\/p>\n
\nfrom our Asian purview,
\nthat Europe looks exactly like vultures,
\nwith flesh raining from open beaks.<\/p>\n
\npractice honed Dishonesty<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nEurope\u2019s Afric colonies to date mirror
\nhellish stewing in sulphur and flame,
\nrivulets of fire, a torrential blaze.<\/p>\n
\nall gashed flesh and splintered bones,
\nA macabre porridge.<\/p>\n
\na perfidious Complex<\/em>?<\/p>\n
\nfor it always shields cynical genocides.<\/p>\n
\nAll our maps reek of Death<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nall this ominous chewing\u2014
\nhas an aura of Lust<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nProhibit it!
\nEurope mustn\u2019t be a cathedral spewing fly larvae.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBunkum, hokum, gobbledygook\u201d!<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>and nothing-doing Peace<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\n& Detroit (Michigan) 29 & 30 novembre<\/em> mmxv]
\n<\/p>\nApropos Nancy Cunard (ca. 1929) <\/h3>\n
\nthwacks through canvas capping lifeboats.
\nSmoke, dark and silver, smacks against iron stars,
\nsmirches a half-ass moon.<\/p>\n
\n(All roots are sea routes\u2014 <\/p>\n
\nas the liner jackknifes currents,
\nthis sable Atlantic whose ballast is lumps\u2014
\nclumps\u2014
\nof ice that seem to swoop up at us outta fog.<\/p>\n
\nat the stern.)<\/p>\n
\nif we\u2019re not to be spiked by broken glaciers,
\ndowncast in murk,
\nslid down to sea-bottom silt,
\nlike doomed, damned Titanic<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nheiress to a shipping-line fortune,
\nit\u2019d be a right, ironic headline,
\nwere I to plunge to th\u2019ass of th\u2019Ethiopian Ocean.<\/p>\n
\n(oh, the Grief <\/em>that is England\u2019s shoreline)
\nto U.S. and back,<\/p>\n
\nwhence Grampy Sammy hailed,
\nout that damp, clammy climate,<\/p>\n
\nengorged with Blackness<\/em>\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nBut our Wealth<\/em> is an embalming miasma.<\/p>\n
\nHank\u2014Crowder\u2014
\nNegro<\/em> saxophonist,
\njazzman,
\nwhose laughter burps claps of Joy<\/em>!<\/p>\n
\n(as you may denominate me)\u2014
\nI find nothing iffy about us.<\/p>\n
\nHank is built like a god.
\nA voluntary \u201cNegress,\u201d
\nI feel guiltless, faultless Joy<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nPorn<\/em> is Comedy<\/em> of Selfishness<\/em>.)<\/p>\n
\nsnap every amber horizon,<\/p>\n
\na moth\u2019s uneven fluttering,
\nand Hank spills me belly down in silk,
\nthen kindly parts my spindly gams,
\nand feeds his \u201cebony aristocrat\u201d
\ninto my \u201civory guillotine,\u201d
\nand so we enter a bluesy, earthy Zion.<\/p>\n
\nwhen Hank\u2019s fingers scurry over me,
\nand I yield instinctively,
\nwhile he, black groom, snorts,
\ntrampling down his white bride.<\/p>\n
\nspindly, cinematic boys,
\nas wan as light.
\nBut I prefer \u201cunpardonable Carnality<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nto my class and colour and church.<\/p>\n
\nThe vessel smacks through squalling, brawling wet\u2014
\nsalty perfume all about.<\/p>\n
\nthe saloons of Paris (Texas),
\nthe swishy whores of London,
\nthe irritatingly greedy capitalists of London (Ontario)\u2014
\nall as heartless as a helmet.<\/p>\n
\nwho proves my true patrimony:
\nRutting<\/em>!<\/p>\n
\nawaiting the moon-purging sun,
\nand to leave the curvaceous ocean
\nand cleave unto a different bucking<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nTo All Historians (or \u201cThe Bastille Concerto\u201d*<\/a>) <\/h3>\n
\nruffle-collared gangsters\u2014
\nCaucasoid murderers\u2014
\nConquistadors, quislings, clerks, kings\u2014
\nas untroubled, as untroubling\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nis a coffle of slaves.<\/p>\n
\nstrip Elizabeth I of her Modesty<\/em>,
\nher spurious Virginity<\/em>,
\nher hymen that\u2019s a cannibal\u2019s \u201ccherry on top,\u201d
\nher purple robes daubing floors mauve with blood\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nJustifications for tides of tears and blood.<\/p>\n
\nfor you refuse to reveal
\nhow the Queen\u2019s velvet robes
\nwere purchased by the toddler\u2019s gang-rape,
\nor how \u201cLiberal\u201d Constitutions
\ncome across shit-stained
\nand blood-smeared
\nand smell like garbage.<\/p>\n
\nor refuse to witness Carnage
\n<\/em>and face up to it.<\/p>\n
\nMusso, Huey Long, Adolf.<\/p>\nMao Approaches Nanking <\/h3>\n
\nblack-smoke factory smelters,
\nand bellies sprawling fetuses
\n(frozen, tragic fossils)\u2014
\nso blood curves against sidewalks\u2026.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>so their blades strike landlords\u2014
\nand bankers\u2014
\nwith fiery result.<\/p>\n
\nlike mackerel slanting from fish-hooks. <\/em><\/p>\n
\nrippling frostiness of mountain snow\u2014<\/p>\n
\nor winter rainstorms\u2014<\/p>\n
\nthose crackling fissures\u2014<\/p>\n
\nwe\u2019re guerilla nomads\u2014
\npace<\/em> The Long March on short rations\u2014<\/p>\n
\nwhenever necessary<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>(Theory<\/em>)\u2014
\nwhenever mandatory.<\/p>\n
\na somber hombre, an umber hombre\u2014
\na Chinese bronze, khaki-clad Buddha\u2014
\nas intrusive and as intensive
\nas a tidal wave.<\/p>\n
\nafter the deserts of dust-gilded flies.<\/p>\n
\nand no chainsaw dictator\u2014
\nno ghastly civil servant\u2014
\nbut will besiege and sack Beijing\u2014<\/p>\n
\nromantic Carnage<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n
\nDeserts, hunger, icy plights, thirst, scorpions,
\nrounds of dread Encirclement<\/em>, fire, bullets,
\nand leave our far-flung dead
\ndecorating hysterical maps.<\/p>\n
\nWe win only as we succumb to bleeding\u2014
\nand only as the enemy is finally tiring of bleeding\u2014
\nand flits toward asylum (Formosa).<\/p>\n
\nThe meddler must be cut down like Himmler!)<\/p>\n
\nor chewed daisies by the roots,
\nor slogged through furious sunlight,
\nor died, drowned in dozens, in avalanches,
\nor reached, at last, shadow-embalmed,
\nthe groaning sea,
\nwe are now the pacific governors\u2026.<\/p>\n
\natrocities for the gullet,
\nplus the insane whoopee of machine-gun.<\/p>\n
\nthe People\u2019s Republic\u2014
\nis founded upon<\/p>\n
\nof the endless, useless dead.<\/p>\n
\n <\/em>
\n<\/p>\nDu Bois Protests Italy\u2019s Assault on Ethiopia (1935)<\/h3>\n
\n\u2014Gertrude Stein<\/p>\n
\nto feel ugliness in Eliot,
\nto hear ugliness in Pound,<\/p>\n
\nThe Vatican, The Sorbonne\u2014
\nis to understand how arose<\/p>\n
\nin a white-marble state.<\/p>\n
\na fool gabbling Kitchen Dutch,*
\n<\/a>prematurely ejaculating whimpers
\nabout \u201cthe world\u2019s end\u201d\u2014
\ni.e. the extinction of Albion<\/em>\u2019s axiomatic, albescent Supremacy<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nwhere scythes (half mandibles)
\nswing with the pendulum gravity
\nof Poe-louche<\/em>, Poe-designed, horizontal guillotines.<\/p>\n
\nbecause Musso\u2019s bomblets\u2014
\ncluster-clouds of poison gas\u2014
\nas radioactive as God\u2019s visage\u2014<\/p>\n
\nand incinerate sleeping numbers\u2014
\ncharred characters\u2014
\nall human characteristics erased.<\/p>\n
\ntawny, chestnut-tint Abyssinians\u2014
\ndie, but fight,
\nas indignant as pepper,<\/p>\n
\nPound! Yeats? Pound!<\/p>\n
\nan obscure War Criminal,
\ncamouflaged as an affable banker,<\/p>\n
\nas History<\/em> advances its obituary
\nfor the final, free, African state.<\/p>\n
\nhopelessly lisping Christian irrelevancies,
\nor lustfully barking anthems.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve given up on Pound.
\nI give away Eliot.<\/p>\n
\nthey license indifferent killing,
\ncroon unintelligible Eliot\u2019s asinine Grief<\/em>,
\nhis fear that Spengler is Socrates.<\/p>\n
\nto edit History<\/em>,
\nblack-up or white-out consitutions,
\npaper over dark-dark hearts,
\nitalicize the globe as Europe\u2019s property,
\nand, in all, act as chaste as corpses!<\/p>\n
\nthis is how the current monsters
\ngot pieced together:
\nall those elegies decrying<\/p>\n
\nthe downward trajectory of post-Darwin,
\nanimalistic Theology<\/em>,
\nthe tantrums of anthems\u2014<\/p>\n
\nJudas legislatures,
\narsonist parliaments,
\nthe actual wreckage of Versailles
\nand the castration of the League of Nations,<\/p>\n
\nconstructing Machiavellian prison-camps,
\nRasputin palaces,<\/p>\n
\nnew Mayhem<\/em>,
\nto Africa.<\/p>\n
\nwhere chalk eclipses Blackness<\/em>,
\nsquawking,
\nand Reason<\/em> vanishes
\ninto either foggy Erasure
\n<\/em>or swirls of smudged figures,
\nsquealing.<\/p>\n
\nget torn up,
\ntrying to score Deutschland
\n<\/em>Dixieland.<\/p>\n
\nthe routine swarm of bankers
\nleaping out Manhattan skyscrapers\u2014<\/p>\n
\nbellyflops, ruddy\u2014
\nafter turning investment portfolios
\ninto sieves of red ink.<\/p>\n
\nAdolf versus Dreyfuss\u2014
\nthe 20th<\/sup> century bled into by the 19th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n
\nimperialists, promiscuous capitalists\u2014
\npermitting child labour as a form of sex-work.<\/p>\n
\nVersailles or Ethiopia:
\nThey are still investigating Golgotha\u2014
\nand the unanswerable torching of Alexandria\u2019s Library.<\/p>\n
\nto get swallowed up
\nin the glittering enigma
\nof Napol\u00e9on\u2019s sarcophagus\u2014<\/p>\n
\nnor for their Lilliputian legislators\u2014
\nnot even in opaque smoke.<\/p>\n
\nNapol\u00e9on\u2019s baroque failure\u2014<\/p>\n
\n& Whitehorse (Yukon Territory) 18 janvier<\/em> mmxvii]<\/p>\n
\n*<\/a> In Haligonian cemeteries, the Titanic<\/em> graves\u2014
\nso miniscule\u2014
\nmultitudinous marbles\u2014
\nstill are laid out like store-shelf items\u2014
\nlots of dainties for earthworms\u2019 palates.
\n*<\/a> Cf. X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nFrench Republic (FR): Just now, Poe\u2019s raven threw itself blackly
\ngainst the window.
\nIts wings curdled the grey, noon light.\/
\nKingdom of Portugal (KP): A grim sign!
\nPsychopaths love their slaughters
\nas much as actors love death scenes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/2144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}