The chimp lived with and was trained she said by a scientist. For many years. Learned to sign words, learned to communicate with language. Learned to express. Suddenly, for no reason the chimp could understand, but for what we learned humans know as lack of funding, the chimp was moved to a cage full of other chimps. Who did not know human words. In a zoo. The chimp sat by the bars of the cage and over and over again for months kept signing:
"""""""HELP"""""""
"""""""HELP"""""""
and it makes me
weep
weep
weep
weep
I understand that chimp completely
BACK AT WORK AT THE BIG LAW FIRM:
Communism is dead and Marx is more relevant than ever. Privatization.
Big `90's business word. In the `80's it was merger, now it's privatization. I type the documents THEY use to privatize all bits and scraps of this planet. This planet. This planet. This planet.
Public.
Private.
Privatize the gas & oil supplies, the forests, the mountains, the water, the air. Nothing shall be left in the public domain. NOTHING shall remain unowned including the option to own. This species overspecializes daily, heads for extinction.
The idea that any inch of earth shall remain unowned by some private capitalist concern is heresy, Communist, unAmerican. Oh well. It's not a species well prepared for survival.
Who are THEY? THEY are the buying ones buying everything. The owning ones owning everything. Property they think the planet is property. Air is property. Water is property. Selling it to themselves. Selling back the water to me, the air to me, the earth to me then taxing me on what they're selling me. They own the earth so I must go to them to eat, to drink, to breathe.
Big corporations getting bigger, greedier. Grabbing up everything. Corporate feudalism, that's where this species is headed. Be under the protective corporate-owned blue sky or live on the edge of the edge. Corporate profits grow, wages fall (the wages of sin is hell and so are the wages of wages), jobs become scarce, Christianity flourishes. There is no peace.
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::+++:::Magic:::+++:::///
Feel breath go into these lungs. Sun coming in through window, sky a lot. Green ivy climbing black metal bars of big window. Gazing at green leaves on little New York tree, that species of tree that grows in concrete. This here window. These plants always lean into the sun, lean into heat and energy. This could be a cat today. Or a bud opening into a shiny green spring. This could be this coolish breeze having no ulterior motive. This doesn't much resemble a breeze. This looks more like the most insane species on this planet. But this is unconvinced of this membership in that particular event.
Particle physics fills this with awe as does this beating heart. It's so continuous the little things. This thinks of all the hearts beating on this planet. The large and the less large and the not large at all. The universe is a rhythmic gesture. Batta Boom Batta Bing.
In Tompkins Square Park playing drums with people these eyes have never seen before. This has no words for what floods this spine as hands pound voltage into transient air, big trees branching green and glorious over benches, skull evaporates. Synapses vine their way into big night sky stars.
Yeah.Drums is gOd enough. Is Magic Enough.This spine, this heart, this breath.
Yes. Drums. And also shampoo. And new shoes. And wrinkle cream.
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::+++:::Taboo::+++::://///
FuCk SuCk eat my shit FuCK SuCk gobble gobble FuCk SuCk pound throb drip cream fingers tongue asshole cunt FuCk SuCk cock lick slurp bite YaWn.
Everybody should know how to FuCk by now, should know how to get their orgasms, should know how to get laid (you can always buy it if you can't scam it).
No dearth of FuCk poems, FuCk stories, each time presented as if we hadn't been saying FuCk for the whole FuCking 20th century, as if we hadn't read de Sade in college, or SuCked and FuCked our way across America and other in continents.
FuCking and SuCking hasn't been taboo in years is no longer transgressive does not shock.
No what's really much more taboo here in the 90's what's really transgressive after the death of communism and politically correct bleeding heart liberals and the rise of religiously correct stigmatic conservatives is
TALKING ABOUT:
Why some loud white men experience giving up any crumb of privilege, any crumb of space, of air time to women and people of color as white male oppression. Why some loud whiny white men think they've lost their voice if someone else speaks.
Don't cha get it?
Why the well known gay male writer feels it necessary to personify female sexuality as rotunderous, foul smelling, cavernous AND EVEN STRANGER why women in the audience giggle at his mean and deliberately cruel descriptions and SuCk up to him.
Don't cha get it?
Why the well known black male writer trashes feminism at the symposium, thinks calling a feminist "fat" is equivalent to debate (i.e., the ideas of a woman not physically attractive to him have no entry to his ear - she's a feminist because she can't get laid is where he'd like to lead us to believe), feels free to assume himself the definitve word on feminism and when called on his sexism accuses white women of being racist.
Don't cha get it?
Why the young woman in my English class writes an essay speaking about her concern for women's issues, yet in the middle says, "I'm not a feminist. I don't want to be a soldier or a fireman." Where did she get this idea that feminism was about the masculinization of women and not about the issues she is so concerned to think about? Why do so many men in the art world think like she does?
Don't cha get it? Don't cha get it? Don't cha get it? Don't cha get it?
Karl Marx is more relevant than ever. bell hooks is more relevant than ever. The Constitution is more relevant than ever. I am more relevant than ever, only I'm the only one who notices. I'm gonna tell somebody. I'm gonna tell you.
Barbara Barg is a poet and performer, and the author of "The Origin of The Species" (Semiotexte 1994). She is drummer and lead singer for the all-girl band Homer Erotic.
