A SONG FOR INTERNSHIPS
1
A
song for internships!
in
the white collar of low-wages and unpaid fields I
find
the tenements,
and
find the historic precedents.
Workmen
and Workwomen!
You’re
as useless as a doctorate in the woods
Were
I a judge on The X Factor and you sang,
what
would be the ratings boost?
Were
I to dangle a salary over your cubicle,
would your hand shoot up?
We
who have exploited the surfaces of race
unsupportable
assertions//canonized inertia
a
tranny like me is never in the same dress twice.
Neither
a student nor a teacher I,
I
have no bargaining power, I will
do anything for entry
I
will scrape the barrel and you shall ignore me
If
you slump moribund in a bureaucratic swamp I sink as low as the lowest
of you
in the same swamp,
If
you steal from your employer or your congressman I
extract the same price,
If
your lover, comrade, spouse, is friends with you on Facebook, I
must also be Facebook friended,
If
you become depressed, incarcerated, disabled, then I become so for
your sake,
If
you remember running from the cops as an indiscrete youth, do you
think I cannot recall my own juvenile
record?
If
you meet strangers on the Internet for anonymous hook-ups
why I often am the one coming to meet
you.
Why
have your selfies been downcast?
Are
you ashamed of your reflection?
Is
it you thought the Patriarchy greater than you?
Or
the rich better off than you? or the schooled more enlightened?
(Because
you have acne, a stutter, or pirate
DVDs
Or
that you are uninsured, or replaceable, or a sex worker,
Or
from your low Twitter following, or that you are no trendsetter
and never saw your name go viral,
Do
you give in that you are any less immortal?)
2
Clones
of men and women! it is not you I call invisible,
voiceless, unassimilated and alone,
It
is not you I troll, and to track your data as you go,
You
are my public, and on one else’s.
Half-grown
adults with kids, of this country and refugees,
in
shelters and in streets, one just as much as the
other, I see,
And
all else outside my vision.
The
housewife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,
The
teen, who listens to Smashing Pumpkins,
The
mother, and she is no less parent than father.
Welfare
babies, burger flippers,
Young
interns assembling PS4 and old interns factory farmed,
Gays,
capitalists, hipsters, aliens,
All
these I see, but distance means nothing,
The
reciprocal pleasure of domination is addictive.
I
bring a metaphysical sales pitch,
Not
money, eros, meth, olives, expertise, but equal,
I
am pure agency, haters gon’ hate,
but
my game speaks for itself.
There
is a mystic flashback that haunts us,
It
is not in a language that we speak, it eludes
communication,
It
is not translatable, it is not found here,
It
is yours, stranger, hidden in your senses,
It
is hinted by reflex, compartments, phobias, it is easily
agitated by poems.
You
may be bilingual, yet illiterate about it,
You
may read the President’s scripts and find
it unmentioned,
Nothing
in leaked diplomatic cables or
the supreme court, or in mass media’s
cycles,
Or
in the stock market’s recovery, or any
commercial basis.
3
The
celestial bodies black holing above,
The
spherical earth and we upon it, surely our arbitrariness
is something grand,
I
do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is
paradise,
And that the nucleus of life’s goal is not a
green lawn or finger-pointing or
surveillance,
And
that it is something which obeys its own form of chance,
And
as a process it is irreversible.
The
skin and race, the gendered paradigm of identity,
the capital that with pernicious complaisance
devours all
things,
The
extreme illogical patriotism of man, ahistorical
opinions and hashtags,
The
wonder of your Instagram feed, and the wonders of time’s infinite
unraveling,
What
you have reckoned them for, bro?
Have
you reckoned them for your popularity? for attention? for karma?
or for profit?
To
fill your coffers? or to perform the ritual of self?
Have
you reckoned that the landscape took locality and place and that it
might be
monotonous?
Or
men and women that they might be intersex, and their songs unsung?
Or
the attraction of gravity, and the great laws of physics and thermodynamic
energy
as subjects for the ignoramus?
Or
terra firma and the oceans in between for the commonwealth?
Or
the authenticity of the certificate received when you name a star?
Or
the insidiousness of neoliberal law?
Decrepit
institutions, these arts, archives, museums, auctions,
and the obsolete artisan manufacturer,
will we
rate them so high?
Will
our credit score improve? I don’t care,
I
endorse debt forgiveness, revolution,
and foodstamps.
We
thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,
But
they are nothing without you, comrade,
I
love you as much as I love America,
Our
love so intimate and polyamorous.
We
consider God destroyed, I do not say he
is alive,
I
say we outgrew him, and may outgrow others still,
You
created his image before he could make you in his,
Out
of your skin grow trees shedding leaves unto the earth.
4
Only thyself should you be worshipping,
The
President is your servant, do not wait on him,
The
Senate should be the bureau of your desires, not those
of
corporate interests,
The
Congress shuts down over affordable healthcare for you,
Loopholes,
secret courts, juridical discourse, new voter ID laws,
black ops, clipper chips, are
all
for you.
Listen
close my future adjunct,
The
weight of the university’s unpaid labor is upon you,
The
masterpieces you teach are nothing to what you are,
As
epic and as heroic as unwritten myth you are,
Without
your presence civilization is abandoned,
The
cantos of Homer, the voodoo of Zora Neale Hurston,
the tragedies
of
Shakespeare, would be in a dustbin.
Your
architecture of flesh and blood is the real monument.
All
music is a call you heard and answer, sound springs from your earbuds.
It
is not the instruments, not the violins nor the dubstep, nor the sax
nor
the guitar’s strum, nor the producer’s
melodic pop score,
nor
that of any choir, nor any harmonium,
It
saturates your perception yet is not itself perceived.
5
The
whole will not come back.
Can
each see signs of its fragment by looking in the shards of glass?
is there nothing left?
Does
all phenomena dwell in your breast?
Contradictions
aren’t lies,
In
you matter and spirit unite.
Card-stacking,
mortgaging, spawning the bubble,
Investment
banking, paper-filing, conference-calling, telemarketing,
loan-sharking, middle-management,
Ship-scuppering, scab-laboring, fish-mongering, floundering of
fortunes by scions,
The
pimp, the profit-margin, the great depression, the landfill
and
the leachate,
Pipe-lines
and all that is petroleum, the poinsettias in the
garden, echoes, oldies, what medications,
what vast
invasive species, what cosmetics to
feel inferior,
Data-warehousing,
forest-fires in the mountains or by rivers,
men acting girly with huge hard-ons,
clumps
of hair, their coupled positioning,
limestones, cum,
The
blast-shelter and the free-speech zones, the stretched rectum
of the bottom, the rolling eyes, the
bed sheets swept aside,
Hydrofracking, civil suits, white-bread dudes, the picket
fence,
tribal tattoos, the great malls and condos,
Cyber-stalking,
plastic surgery, the gavel, the Snuggie,
the pin to
protect accounts,
The flag-waver, the suicide nets at Foxconn, and
the flow of information as power,
The
iPhone sales, the pole-axe of the abattoir, the last buck of
the cow as it bleeds, the asbestos lining everything,
and all the
ice shelves calving,
The
fair and balanced news reportage, grippers, televangelists,
black-markets,
Surplus
and scarcity, party buses, couch surfing, mosh pits,
panhandling, trickling economics,
The
veneer of upward mobility, the conjugal visits, the
overdraft fees, the shame of self-immiseration,
The
war and PTSD, the pork barrel spending,
Counterterrorism
taskforces raiding activists, the silent power of the quill,
or metal, the word forged by hammer,
the internal censors, conspiring,
Remember:
Nietzsche wandered just as restlessly through these hills, everything
you feel has been felt before, so open
a bottle of cabernet and know the worst
it could go is you grope a horse.
Leather-dressing
bears on Folsom Street, potheads, fire-dancers, small presses,
anarchists,
body piercing, masturbation, bondage, hoola-hoopers,
acoustic
guitars,
craft brew and Liberace, dumpster diving,
Defense
spending, aircraft carriers, the slave trade, combine harvesting,
warrantless wiretapping, ponzi schemes, American Idol,
The
cab of the trucker, the subway, the ferry,
July
Fourth, the roman candelabras, the sky’s rocket shower, the six-packs
and tiaras;
The
supersized meals, the blue jeans, the bald eagle and the dove, the
Black Eyed
Peas,
the twerk team, the halftime shows, the gluten-free, the anorexic,
Diabetes,
KFC, monosodium glutamate, poached ivory, rainforest logging, carbon
storage,
gerrymandering, gentrification, the mentalization
of the factory;
The
hourly wage of your routine, the cubicle, the jail cell, the grocery
aisle, the
airport,
the hotel,
Soap
operas blaring by day and night—workers!
whoever you are, unite!
1984
is now—the conditions of daily life are far more ruthless and expensive
than
you
anticipated,
In
these new realities for you and me, in these poems for you and me,
can we speak of soul at all?
For
the soul is enclosed like a commodity, and I want to reach a wider
audience.
I
don’t think Marx was wrong, I don’t want to give up, I don’t want
bloodshed,
I
didn’t say you’re a fool of a Took,
But
endless attrition is already a struggle, haven’t you had enough?
6
Will
you job-hunt long? you surely come back at last,
a waiter, an overqualified wreck,
In
friends find your true value as a person,
In
the antechambers of the communes, actuate these spells,
Man,
woman, sister, brother, midwife, poetess, pilgrim,
the culture of today is violent,
You
rise above it your anthems, your escapades, your lovingness, you go
girl,
Rome
wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in one.
When
I can be touched like a book,
my spine folded into leaves to be caressed,
and
read with childlike wonder,
When
every gold ingot is given back to the people,
When
killer whales don’t have to be at SeaWorld,
I
intend to shake your hand, and ask you politely to take out the trash,
without making eye contact, as I do
of my interns like you.
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