Η Ανθολογία της Beat Poetry

[Nascentes morimur]

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Ένα αποχαιρετιστήριο πράγμα καθώς ανάσαινε
κατέβαινε στο χολ με εσώρουχα
με μπογιατισμένο πρόσωπο σαν παλιάτσος
μια βόμβα από την Κολωνία
Στη δεξιά του τσέπη
μια εποχή στην Κόλαση, στην αριστερή
λουρίδες ηλιοβασιλέματος σαν ίνες φλαμουριάς
εξαντλούσαν τα μπράτσα του.

Και τον βρήκαν το πρωί κρεμασμένο
στης εξόδου κινδύνου το παράθυρο
πρόσωπο παγωμένο και σβησμένο
σαν ηλεκτρική λάμπα

Και τα σπουργίτια ήταν κάτω στα θάμνα
και γνώριμα τα σπουργίτια
δεν τραγουδούν βγάζουν ήχο και βγάζουν ήχο
και…. οι άνθρωποι
όχι τα σπουργίτια
τον κατεβάσαν από τη σκάλα
σαν άχρηστη κουκουβάγια.

Μουσική : Λάκης Παπαδόπουλος
Ποίηση : Τσαρλς Μπουκόφσκυ Μετάφραση : Αλέξης Τραϊανός

 

[Nascentes morimur]

In the end, the plague touched us all. It was not confined to the Oran of Camus. No. It turned up again in America, breeding in-a-compost of greed and uselessness and murder, in those places where statesmen and generals stash the bodies of the forever young. The plague ran in the blood of men in sharkskin suits, who ran for President promising life and delivering death. The infected young men machine-gunned babies in Asian ditches; they marshalled metal death through the mighty clouds, up above God's green earth, released it in silent streams, and moved on, while the hospitals exploded and green fields were churned to mud.
And here at home, something died. The bacillus moved among us, slaying that old America where the immigrants lit a million dreams in the shadows of the bridges, killing the great brawling country of barnstormers and wobblies and home-run hitters, the place of Betty Grable and Carl Furillo and heavyweight champions of the world. And through the fog of the plague, most art withered into journalism. Painters lift the easel to scrawl their innocence on walls and manifestos. Symphonies died on crowded roads. Novels served as furnished rooms for ideology.
And as the evidence piled up, as the rock was pushed back to reveal the worms, many retreated into that past that never was, the place of balcony dreams in Loew's Met, fair women and honorable men, where we browned ourselves in the Creamsicle summers, only faintly hearing the young men march to the troopships, while Jo Stafford gladly promised her fidelity. Poor America. Tossed on a pilgrim tide. Land where the poets died.
Except for Dylan.
He had remained, in front of us, or writing from the north country, and remained true. He was not the only one, of course; he is not the only one now. But of all the poets, Dylan is the one who has most clearly taken the rolled sea and put it in a glass.
Early on, he warned us, he gave many of us voice, he told us about the hard rain that was going to fall, and how it would carry plague. In the teargas in 1968 Chicago, they hurled Dylan at the walls of the great hotels, where the infected drew the blinds, and their butlers ordered up the bayonets. Most of them are gone now. Dylan remains.
So forget the clenched young scholars who analyze his rhymes into dust. Remember that he gave us voice, When our innocence died forever, Bob Dylan made that moment into art. The wonder is that he survived.
That is no small thing. We live in the smoky landscape now, as the exhausted troops seek the roads home. The signposts have been smashed; the maps are blurred. There is no politician anywhere who can move anyone to hope; the plague recedes, but it is not dead, and the statesmen are as irrelevant as the tarnished statues in the public parks. We live with a callous on the heart. Only the artists can remove it. Only the artists can help the poor land again to feel.
And here is Dylan, bringing feeling back home. In this album, he is as personal and as universal as Yeats or Blake; speaking for himself, risking that dangerous opening of the veins, he speaks for us all. The words, the music, the tones of voice speak of regret, melancholy, a sense of inevitable farewell, mixed with sly humor, some rage, and a sense of simple joy. They are the poems of a survivor. The warning voice of the innocent boy is no longer here, because Dylan has chosen not to remain a boy. It is not his voice that has grown richer, stronger, more certain; it is Dylan himself. And his poetry, his troubadour's traveling art, seems to me to be more meaningful than ever. I thought, listening to these songs, of the words of Yeats, walker of the roads of Ireland: "We make out of the quarrel with others rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
Dylan is now looking at the quarrel of the self. The crowds have moved back off the stage of history; we are left with the solitary human, a single hair on the skin of the earth. Dylan speaks now for that single hair.

If you see her,
Say hello.
She might be in Tangiers...*

So begins one of these poems, as light as a slide on ice, and as dangerous. Dylan doesn't fall in. Instead, he tells us the essentials; a woman once lived, gone off, vanished into the wild places of the earth, still loved.

If you're makin' love to her,
Kiss her for the kid.
Who always has respected her,
for doin' what she did...*

It is a simple love song, of course, which is the proper territory of poets, but is about love filled with honor, and a kind of dignity, the generosity that so few people can summon when another has become a parenthesis in a life. That song, and some of the other love poems in this collection, seem to me absolutely right, in this moment at the end of wars, as all of us, old, young, middle-aged, men and women, are searching for some simple things to believe in. Dylan here tips his hat to Rimbaud and Verlaine, knowing all about the seasons in hell, but he insists on his right to speak of love, that human emotion that still exists, in Faulkner's phrase, in spite of, not because.
And yes, there is humor here too, a small grin pasted over the hurt, delivered almost casually, as if the poet could control the chaos of feeling with a few simply chosen words:

Life is sad
Life is a bust.
All ya can do.
Is do what you must.
You do what you must do,
And ya do it will.
I'll do it for you,
Ah, honey baby, can't ya tell?**

A simple song. Not Dante's Inferno, and not intended to be. But a song which conjures up the American road, all the busted dreams of open places, boxcars, the Big Dipper pricking the velvet night. And it made me think of Ginsberg and Corso and Ferlinghetti, and most of all, Kerouac, racing Deam Mariarty across the country in the Fifties, embracing wind and night, passing Huck Finn on the riverbanks, bouncing against the Coast, and heading back again, with Kerouac dreaming his songs of the railroad earth. Music drove them; they always knew they were near New York when they picked up Symphony Sid on the radio. In San Francisco they declared a Renaissance and read poetry to jazz, trying to make Mallarme's dream flourish in the soil of America. They failed, as artist generally do, but in some ways Dylan has kept their promise.
Now he has moved past them, driving harder into self. Listen to "Idiot Wind." It is a hard, cold-blooded poem about the survivor's anger, as personal as anything ever committed to a record. And yet is can also stand as the anthem for all who feel invaded, handled, bottled, packaged; all who spent themselves in combat with the plague; all who ever walked into the knives of humiliation or hatred. The idiot wind trivialized lives into gossip, celebrates fad and fashion, glorifies the dismal glitter of celebrity. Its products live on the covers of magazines, in all of television, if the poisoned air and dead grey lakes. But most of all, it blows through the human heart. Dylan knows that such a wind is the deadliest enemy of art. And when the artists die, we all die with them.
Or listen to the long narrative poem called "Lily, Rosemary And The Jack of Hearts." It should not be reduced to notes, or taken out of context; it should be experienced in full. The compression of story is masterful, but its real wonder is in the spaces, in what the artist left out of his painting. To me, that has always been the key to Dylan's art. To state things plainly is the function of journalism; but Dylan sings a more fugitive song: allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the grand privilege of creating along with him. His song becomes our song because we live in those spaces. If we listen, if we work at it, we fill up the mystery, we expand and inhabit the work of art. It is the most democratic form of creation.
Totalitarian art tells us what to feel. Dylan's art feels, and invites us to join him.
That quality is in all the work in this collection, the long, major works, the casual drawings and etchings. There are some who attack Dylan because he will not rewrite "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Gates of Eden." They are fools because they are cheating themselves of a shot at wonder. Every artist owns a vision of the world, and he shouts his protest when he sees evil mangling that vision. But he must also tell us the vision. Now we are getting Dylan's vision, rich and loamy, against which the world moved so darkly. To enter that envisioned world, is like plunging deep into a mountain pool, where the rocks are clear and smooth at the bottom.
So forget the Dylan whose image was eaten at by the mongers of the idiot wind. Don't mistake him for Isaiah, or a magazine cover, or a leader of guitar armies. He is only a troubadour, blood brother of Villon, a son of Provence, and he has survived the plague. Look: he has just walked into the courtyard, padding across the flagstones, strumming a guitar. The words are about "flowers on the hillside bloomin' crazy/Crickets talkin' back and forth in rhyme..." A girl, red-haired and melancholy, begins to smile. Listen: the poet sings to all of us:
But I'll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass,
In the ones I love.
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go.***
Pete Hamill, New York, 1974

https://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-b28_Hamilltext.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill

Life is sad
Life is a bust.
All ya can do.
Is do what you must.
You do what you must do,
And ya do it will.
I'll do it for you,
Ah, honey baby, can't ya tell?

 

[Nascentes morimur]

“Left to themselves people
grow their hair.
Left to themselves they
take off their shoes.
Left to themselves they make love
sleep easily
share blankets, dope & children

they are not lazy or afraid
they plant seeds, they smile, they
speak to one another. The word
coming into its own: touch of love
on the brain, the ear.

We return with the sea, the tides
We return as often as leaves, as numerous
as grass, gentle, insistent, we remember
the way,
our babes toddle barefoot thru the cities of the universe.”

Diane di Prima,
REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Aubade​

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin.

Spoiler: Aubade | Summary

Summary​

Larkin wakes in the early hours of the morning after working all day and getting "half-drunk at night." He stares into the darkness and contemplates death and his own mortality. He does not know how or when he will die but he knows that death is inevitable. Each passing day brings him closer to death. The idea is so terrifying that he struggles to think about anything else. Religion is no consolation but neither is the absence of religion. Larkin is not helped by the idea that there is no afterlife. The idea of death lurks at the edge of his vision. He sits in his house and the light begins to break through the window as dawn arrives. The day begins again and with it comes work, telephone calls, and the postman. They are as inevitable as death.

Analysis​

The title of "Aubade" is a French word for a type of poem that is typically written to praise the dawn. Larkin uses this ironically. The usual celebratory tone of an aubade is turned into a harrowing exploration of mortality. The dawn featured in the poem is inevitable and horrifying. Larkin wakes in the dark hours before dawn and his world is defined by the "soundless dark." He feels his own inevitable mortality approaching and each passing day brings him one day closer to death. The arrival of the dawn is not something to be celebrated but something to be feared because it will only bring Larkin closer to the day of his death. The poem transforms the idea of dawn from the celebratory, life-bringing image typically portrayed in the aubade form and makes it darker, cynical, and fearful.

Larkin cannot find solace in religion or a lack of religion. He uses the third verse to explore these concepts. Religion was created "to pretend we never die" and so is a lie that offers no real help or comfort. The lack of religion is equally unhelpful. Larkin reflects on other people's words that are signified by the use of italics. People have explained to him how no rational person could fear dying because there will be no afterlife and thus nothing to harm or cause pain. This does nothing to address Larkin's fear of simply ceasing to exist. He cannot shape that thought and it stays with him at all times. The idea of comfort or relief from this fear is absurd. Humans are united by the inevitability of their own death and Larkin obsesses over his mortality for this very reason.

The final line of the poem describes the way in which postmen move from house to house each morning like doctors. The image calls to mind the somewhat outdated idea of doctors who make house calls. These doctors are not only healers but specters of death. They visit the dead and the dying to take an inventory of the health of the people inside the house. The presence of the doctor suggests that there is a malaise in the house and reminds the inhabitants of the possibility of death. The postman now assumes this role. Each daily visit reminds Larkin that the days are passing by and dragging him closer to death. Each letter brought to the house is a ticking clock that counts down the days to Larkin's death.

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Consummation Of Grief
By Charles Bukowski.

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses
down the avenues of the dead.

 

[parafernalia]

ΥΠΕΡΑΣΠΙΖΟΜΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΑΝΑΡΧΙΑ​

Μη με σταματάς. Ονειρεύομαι.
Ζήσαμε σκυμμένοι αιώνες αδικίας.
Αιώνες μοναξιάς.
Τώρα μη. Μη με σταματάς.
Τώρα κι εδώ για πάντα και παντού.
Ονειρεύομαι ελευθερία.
Μέσα απ′ του καθένα
την πανέμορφη ιδιαιτερότητα
ν′ αποκαταστήσουμε
του Σύμπαντος την Αρμονία.
Ας παίξουμε. Η γνώση είναι χαρά.
Δεν είναι επιστράτευση απ′ τα σχολεία
Ονειρεύομαι γιατί αγαπώ.
Μεγάλα όνειρα στον ουρανό.
Εργάτες με δικά τους εργοστάσια
συμβάλουν στην παγκόσμια σοκολατοποιία.
Ονειρεύομαι γιατί ΞΕΡΩ και ΜΠΟΡΩ.
Οι τράπεζες γεννάνε τους «ληστές».
Οι φυλακές τους «τρομοκράτες»
Η μοναξιά τους «απροσάρμοστους».
Το προϊόν την «ανάγκη»
Τα σύνορα τους στρατούς
Όλα η ιδιοχτησία.
Βία γεννάει η Βία.
Μη ρωτάς. Μη με σταματάς.
Είναι τώρα ν′ αποκαταστήσουμε
του ηθικού δικαίου την υπέρτατη πράξη.
Να κάνουμε ποίημα τη Ζωή.
Και τη Ζωή πράξη.
Είναι ένα όνειρο που μπορώ μπορώ μπορώ
Σ′ ΑΓΑΠΩ
και δεν με σταματάς δεν ονειρεύομαι. Ζω.
Απλώνω τα χέρια
στον Ερωτά στην αλληλεγγύη
στην Ελευθερία.
Όσες φορές χρειαστεί κι απ′ την αρχή.
Υπερασπίζομαι την ΑΝΑΡΧΙΑ.

Κατερίνα Γώγου

 

[Nascentes morimur]

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.

Aldous Huxley, Island

---------------------------------------------

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Spoiler: Lyrics

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

 

[Nascentes morimur]

“Everything must change
Nothing remains the same
Everyone must change
No one and nothing remains the same
Young becomes old
Oh oh, mysteries do unfold
'Cause that's the way of time
Nothing and no one remains the same
There is so little in life you can be sure of
Except the rain comes from the clouds
Sunlight from the sky
And hummingbirds do fly
Young becomes old
And mysteries do unfold
That's the way of time
Nothing, no one remains unchanged
There are so little things, so few things in life you can be sure of
Except rain comes from the clouds
Sunlight from the sky
And hummingbirds do fly
Everything must change
Everything, everything must change”

Written by Bernard Ighner

Spoiler: Nina Simone - Everything Must Change

 

[parafernalia]

5/4

Τέσσερις εκατοντάδες ζευγάρια έκαναν πέντε βήματα γύρω από το γυαλισμένο πάτωμα. Η Λένινα και ο Χένρι έγιναν σύντομα οι πρώτοι τετρακόσιοι. Τα σαξόφωνα έκλαιγαν σαν μελωδικές γάτες κάτω από το φεγγάρι, γκρίνιαζαν στους δίσκους άλτο και τενόρων σαν να ήταν πάνω τους ένας μικρός θάνατος.

Εμπλουτισμένο με πλημμυρίδα αρμονικών, το τρεμάμενο ρεφρέν τους τοποθετεί σε κορύφωση, όλο και πιο δυνατά – ώσπου επιτέλους, με ένα κύμα του χεριού του, ο μαέστρος άφησε την τελευταία θρυμματιστική νότα της αιθερικής μουσικής και εξαφάνισε τους δεκαέξι απλώς ανθρώπινους φυσητήρες.

Βροντή σε Λα μείζονα.

Και μετά, μέσα σε όλα εκτός από τη σιωπή, σε όλα εκτός από το σκοτάδι, ακολούθησε μια σταδιακή εκκένωση, ένα diminuendo που γλιστρούσε σταδιακά, μέσα από τόνους τετάρτων, κάτω, σε μια αχνά ψιθυριστή κυρίαρχη συγχορδία που παρέμενε όσο τα 5/4 εξακολουθούσαν να πάλλονται φορτίζοντας τα σκοτεινά δευτερόλεπτα με μια έντονη προσδοκία έρωτα.

(from the Brave New World (1932), Aldous Huxley)

 

[Nascentes morimur]

When I become Death, Death is the seed from which I grow…

Itzama, spirit of early mist and showers.
Ixtaub, goddess of ropes and snares.
Ixchel, the spider web, catcher of morning dew.
Zooheekock, virgin fire patroness of infants.
Adziz, the master of cold.
Kockupocket, who works in fire.
Ixtahdoom, she who spits out precious stones.
Ixchunchan, the dangerous one.
Ah Pook, the destroyer.

Hiroshima, 1945, August 6, sixteen minutes past 8 AM.

Who really gave that order?

Answer: Control.

Answer: The Ugly American.

Answer: The instrument of Control.

Question: If Control’s control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control… needs time.

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?

Answer: Yes.

Why does Control need humans, as you call them?

Answer: Wait… wait! Time, a landing field. Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.

And what does Death need time for?

Answer: The answer is sooo simple. Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sake.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stupid vulgar greedy ugly American death-sucker.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stupid vulgar greedy ugly American death-sucker… Like this.

We have a new type of rule now. Not one man rule, or rule of aristocracy, or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who’ve reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

Watch William S. Burroughs’ Ah Pook is Here as an Animated Film, with Music By John Cale

The work of William S. Burroughs can be by turns hilarious, opaque and profane – filled with images of drugs, insects and other oddities. Though it might be fascinating, if difficult, on the page, his work really comes alive when read aloud, preferably in Burroughs’s signature deadpan drawl.

www.openculture.com

 

[Nascentes morimur]

Είδα τις κόρες του Κάδμου να τρώνε ξύλο στην Ομόνοια
Και να ωρύονται μεθυσμένες μιλώντας ξένες γλώσσες
Είδα τον Άγγελο, ξέπνοο, μαχαιρωμένο στο πεζοδρόμιο
Είδα την Αγαύη, μισόγυμνη στην άκρη μιας ταράτσας να απειλεί ότι θα πέσει
Είδα το σαλόνι της βασιλικής οικογένειας παρατημένο στα σκουπίδια
στη βροχή
Είδα τις Βάκχες να τραγουδάνε στο αστυνομικό τμήμα
Είδα τον Πενθέα να προσεύχεται πάνω από τον οικογενειακό τάφο φορώντας το μαύρο
φόρεμα της μητέρας του
Είδα τον Κάδμο να αυτοκτονεί με το στρατιωτικό του περίστροφο
Είδα τη λεοπάρδαλη στη ντουλάπα να την αποτελειώνει ο σκώρος
Είδα γυναίκες εκπορνευμένες να γυαλίζουν τα ασημικά με την αναπνοή τους
Είδα τον Τειρεσία, ντυμένο με γυναικεία ρούχα, να απαγγέλλει Νίτσε
Με την τσιριχτή του φωνή στην κρεαταγορά
Αλίμονο, αλίμονο! Αυτόν τον τόσο ωραίο κόσμο, τον γκρέμισες με μία απότομη κίνηση του χεριού σου! Και τώρα πέφτει, σωριάζεται...
Είδα τα σκυλιά να κλαίνε με τα ανθρώπινα δάκρυα των ζώων
Στην Εθνική οδό
Και κάποια στιγμή, επιτέλους,
Είδα τον Διόνυσο, τον μικρό τσιγγάνο θεό, να γελάει
πάνω στην κορυφή των σκουπιδιών
να λέει και να ξαναλέει χτυπώντας μια άδεια κονσέρβα:
– Είμαι ο Διόνυσος. Ήρθα... Ήρθα... Είμαι εδώ... Έχεις ένα ευρώ;

Έτσι γλιστράει η τραγωδία κάτω από τα καθίσματα του κοίλου
Σαν ένα φίδι που σέρνεται ανάμεσα στα πόδια των θεατών
Tο μέγα γεγονός που συναντιέται με τα πούλμαν του κόσμου
Η έξοδος από την πόλη …
Η προσδοκία της διαφήμισης
H συνάντηση με το ιερό…
Ο τόπος που μπορείς να δεχτείς μια ακραία πράξη σήμερα
μόνο και μόνο επειδή συμβαίνει εκεί
στο μεγάλο Θέατρο
Κι εσύ
Ο καταναλωτής του καταπληκτικού και τρομερού που δεν ξέρεις που να παρκάρεις το αυτοκίνητο σου και τις ανάγκες σου
Με την τεράστια αμηχανία
ενός καθήκοντος του να πρέπει να είσαι παρών
Και η σκηνοθεσία να συναντιέται σε μετωπική σύγκρουση σαν τροχαίο ατύχημα, καθώς το αίμα ρέει κόκκινο μέσα από τις άδειες τρύπες των πληγών της Τραγωδίας,
με εμπορικές συναλλαγές,
την ενοικίαση του Ιερού χώρου
εισιτήρια, την επιτυχία, πρωταγωνιστές, κοινωνικά μηνύματα
φτηνή προξενήτρα της επικαιρότητας

εταιρίες που περιμένουν να βγάλουν λεφτά
όπως κάνει το Χόλυγουντ με τον Batman.


Κι όταν επιστρέφεις
αντιλαμβάνεσαι ότι το Ιερό δεν ήταν εκεί
ήταν δίπλα σου
Εκεί που η μυρωδιά του αίματος είναι ανυπόφορη
στο σφαγείο
Εκεί που σκοτώνεις και ξανά – σκοτώνεις τα όνειρα σου
Την ανυπόφορη ζωή σου
Εκεί που δεν κουράστηκες να βλέπεις πρόσωπα με τσεκούρια και μπαλτάδες να σουβλίζουν αρνιά το Πάσχα καθώς προσεύχεσαι στον από μηχανής θεό σου
Εκεί που ανακατεύονται όλα τα κρέατα στη μηχανή του κιμά
μαζί με τα γούνινα άκρα των κουνελιών που διακοσμούν τα ψυγεία
Την μηχανή της καθημερινότητας σου
εκεί που συνέχεια συνδιαλέγεσαι με το δίκαιο
με τους νόμους
με τις απαγορεύσεις
Εκεί που
τα δελτία ειδήσεων, οι πρωινές εκπομπές ,
σου επιτρέπουν να βιώνεις την αθανασία των ηλεκτρικών συσκευών
Τώρα μια μεγάλη σιωπηλή αρχαία σκηνή
συναντιέται
με το αμετάκλητο γεγονός που είναι η ζωή σου
το σκηνικό της ζωής σου
Εσύ που χρειάζεσαι μόνο σκοτεινά δωμάτια για να ασελγήσεις

Γιατί είσαι εκεί
με ένα φτηνό εισιτήριο
είσαι εκεί
και μπορείς να χειροκροτείς σπουδαίους φόνους και αιμομιξίες και πάθη σκηνοθετημένα
Εσύ
το μέγα πλήθος
αναμένεις
Στο αρχαίο θέατρο
στο ζεστό αρχαίο μάρμαρο του καλοκαιριού
Αναμένεις
μέσα στον πετρωμένο χρόνο της ακαμψίας
στην κερκίδα
Την λήθη
Την συγγνώμη
Την κάθαρση

αναμένεις την ΕΞΟΔΟ ΣΟΥ
ΜΑΖΙ ΜΕ ΤΟΥΣ ΑΛΛΟΥΣ

Είδα την επίδραση της Τραγωδίας πάνω στην πραγματικότητα και βούτηξα στη θάλασσα για να σωθώ…

Θα ήθελα να σωθώ από την Τραγωδία​

της Ά.Μπρούσκου​

 

[Nascentes morimur]

“To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed. The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You, the people, have the power to make this life. Free and beautiful. To make this life a wonderful adventure. Let us use that power - let us all unite!”
- Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940)

The story behind Paolo Nutini's Iron Sky speech

The inspirational speech about freedom that appears in the Caustic Love track is picked from an unlikely source…

www.radiox.co.uk

 

[parafernalia]

ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΑΓΕΝΝΗΤΟ ΜΩΡΟ ΜΟΥ

Μικρό μου
σαν έρθεις
θα βρεις
εδώ μια ποιήτρια
όχι ακριβώς αυτό που
θα μπορούσες να διαλέξεις.

Δεν υπόσχομαι
πως ποτέ δεν θα πεινάσεις
ή, πως δεν θα στενοχωρηθείς
σ’ αυτήν την ξεκοιλιασμένη
διαλυμένη
υδρόγειο

μα μπορώ να σου δείξω
μικρό μου
αρκετά πράγματα για ν’ αγαπήσεις
και να ραγίσει η καρδιά σου
για πάντα.

Diane di Prima

 

[Nascentes morimur]

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/i5i3bl

A Short History of America

Robert Crumb. 2009. Print. A Short History of America . Giclee color print. 24 x 20 inches (paper size) 22 x 15 inches (image size). Limited...

robertcrumb.blogspot.com

 

[parafernalia]

you haven't lived until you've been in a flophouse,
with nothing but one light bulb and 56 men
squeezed together on cots with everybody snoring at once
and some of those snores so deep and gross and unbelievable—
dark
snotty gross subhuman wheezings from hell itself.
your mind almost breaks under those death-like sounds
and the intermingling odors: hard unwashed socks pissed and shitted underwear
and over it all slowly circulating air
much like that emanating from uncovered garbage cans.
and those bodies in the dark
fat and thin and bent
some legless armless
some mindless
and worst of all:
the total absence of hope
it shrouds them
covers them totally.
it's not bearable.
you get up
go out
walk the streets
up and down sidewalks
past buildings
around the corner
and back up the same street
thinking:
those men were all children
once
what has happened to them?
and what has happened to me?
it's dark and cold
out here.

~ Charles Bukowski