Seven Subversive instasonnets

Sabotage

Captain Nemo the SciFi Stirnerite

lurks beneath our waves of text like

a semantic barracuda. If God

won’t be dead till we kill grammar

as Nietzsche said then Chomsky must be

at least the Pope (Papa not dada)--

scarcely the “brainless luddism” to which

we all aspire. Scorpions ate our

subtext--you can see light thru the

wormholes in our subversive submarine--

das Boot ist der Book & we’re not

coming up for air while we can still swim

amidst alternative readings like guerillas

lost in the maquis of misinterpretation.

Old Mole Undermines the Lawn of Rhetoric

adjusts his Vincent Price style granny shades

grins at Water Rat his Leonardo

or roommate as we used to say in the

1950s: The problem with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

dear Ratty he confides myopically is

(and Old Mole is master of “is”)

when you’ve red one you’ve red ‘em all.

Muskrat we call them in America

swooning at their naked tails their

overdose of phermones. Sweet skunk.

When Atlantis rises in 2012 you’ll

see the labyrinth of our affections

writ large upon earth like pages

tatoo’d on the backs of gazelles.

Alphabet Soup

Tolstoy worried does the world need

my so-called masterpieces or would

borshch be more appropriate? Rumi

called his own poetry tripe: unpleasant to prepare

but a nice stew for honored guests.

The message as in fairy tales a

dollop of sour cream or dash of

brandy in the gravy: not really

nutritious per se but savoring of

subtextural subversion. The conquest of bread

means dunking it--soaking up

emanations with it--sodden with

revolutionary futurity but still

most definitely, dear Alice, “Jam Today.”

Luddite Steganography

De Nerval demanded we seize back the

secret of the hieroglyphs from those

sinister Illuminati who subvert

every text with their fetishism for

alienated significances--& therefore

ended up hung with the girdle of Cleopatra

by Freemasonic thugs from a gaslamp.

During the Paris Commune hot air balloons

escaped the Siege over Prussian lines

with messages for the outside world

& carrier pigeons ported coded notes

back to the City in the first-ever use

of micro-daguerrotype. The initial step

would be total destruction of the Internet.

Anarchy Comix

Popeye was a Populist--a one-man

maritime IWW--the Billy Budd of

proletarian subconsciousness--POW

& screw the ideology. I yam

what I yam & thass all I yam

or as Nietzsche said Become more

like yourself--eat cher spinach.

Drink your Tiger Tea like Krazy Kat

a potent strain of nip that turns

timid Kat into Kop bashing hero

or heroine depending on your p.o.v.

Shirk work with Major Hoople

& escape the trivial quotidianity of Kapital with Little Nemo.

The Mexican Ambassador Drunk in Dublin

Give me rain & I’ll churn out visionary

politics that would pass for radical

in 1911 as Don Juan told Casteneda

rain that opens (veil upon veil) into the Nagual

a Mexico of colonial baroccocco & Magonismo

chocolate & mushrooms a la Leonora Carrington

or B. Travern or Antonin Artaud

an Ireland where Beuys Scouts

camp at Tuatha De Danaan mounds

in soft weather--pre-Celtic Atlantis

damp in the way pearls are damp

Jim Larkin the Limerick Soviet Douanier Rousseau jungle scenes: anarcho-supernaturalism

an anti-ideology for rainy minds.

Phalanstery (for Chapman, Kansas)

L. Frank Baum was a Swedenborgian

what’s the matter with Kansas

why can’t we have a Swedenborgian Militia

something to fend off FEMA & the

National Guard next time a tornado

flattens grain elevators like Tarot trump cards

in what we like to call Prairie Restoration with a vengeance. This could be our

next bohemia--a landscape too

boring for redevelopment--antithesis

of all highway tourist hells or

utopian traces of commodity. OZ

is Blake for infants. Perhaps

disaster will be our new revolution.

-- Peter Lamborn Wilson

July-August ’08