Ohshitmy
Head’s about to explode
All this talk of
Man
= Consciousness
= Nature
= Being
= Endeavor.
Gotta say right now that Barbie®’s not cool like that,
Not with dialectics and diacriticals
Or Matter and Self-
Externality, the Lady
Or the Tiger.
Seems like, out of nowhere,
Man’s a thinker based in sound common sense.
Say what?
She wishes she was making this up.
But now the deepest thinkers all go in for
Elaboration of questions, daseins,
And what is Representation but Socialism
Via Art.
Or vicey-versa, maybe:
What is Art but Socialism
Via Representation.
No one forgives the past anymore, she thinks,
Sipping her Bavarian lager through a bendy-straw;
Her pleather pants crackle when she throws her leg
Across her knee,
(or, Maybe it’s her knee’s
Kicking a black faux-satin
(Bendability breaking down)
Pump, size three point sixty-seven,
(simulated
Four-inch heels), veinless foot-top on display
For all the world to behold and envy,
At least all the world existing inside this two-bit
Dive at the corner of Never Again Drive and Philosophical
Meanderings About Lost Love Avenue.
It’s true that she’s alone tonight,
That dewy stars are not in the shining sky for her
Tonight, that she is going to unpeel her like-lace
Bodice in front of only
An unappreciative mirror, no Ken
To kick around for a while,
As though he has a leg to stand on, she thinks,
Him with his closet
And his skeletons, mostly the same skeletons
As her own. Cars on the autobahn,
And him, in his tweeded elbows, at the podium,
Saying “Enunciation is the key
To cleaner living” but meaning
Eradication.
You can only claim out of context as a viable excuse
So many times before you become your own context,
Before your conduct is its own context and
No massaging of the message will change
What you are saying. So, the very idea,
Holding Barbie® to task for the elimination
Of certain members
Of certain colors
Or creeds
From the family.
He’s got his nerve, his all-of-a-sudden Lutheran
Finger of righteousness pointing squarely
At her fully posable hips, as though therein
Lay the problem. No anatomical correctness
Is going to make up for his lack of performance
Is what she shot back with, but now,
Alone at the bar pretending her bottle
Is a sippy-cup, she wonders how the tautology
Equals endeavor is the first place. Sure,
She’s not completely versed on Hegelian theoretics,
And yes, she has never written propaganda for a daily,
Weekly, quarterly or monthly, but
Nature can’t always be Being,
And that’s only the first completely broken link
She can come up with. The notion that Nature
= Consciousness is its own problem, of this
She’s positive but she cannot
Define Consciousness
Without nature,
And she cannot
Define Being
Without Consciousness
But she knows that sound common sense
Was an idealistic goal even back when.
The man has it all wrong,
She thinks, again, leaving common
Undefined and lumping
It together with sense.
Maybe another long stare at the table in the corner,
The one with the set-up like a punch-line,
The one with the cowboy, the Frenchman and the duck
Smoking Gauloise cigarettes and saying
Aunts Aunts Aunts too often for her Americanized ears,
Maybe another gulp of courage and an introduction
To the Grandfather holding court on the Romantics,
His every word a circle around the subject, or
Maybe a shot of Jack and then pass a note
To the poet buried to his feral eyebrows in feedback
And anthologized series, but
Then what? What to say to them, in their defense
Of either their defense or their hypocritical
Bandwagon-jumping naysaying? Nanny nanny
Boo-boo? As though that – any that –
Their defenses, their criticisms
Their theoretical positions, their supposed scenarios,
Their huddling in the halls, their piddling upon their masses,
Their argumentative ad hoc attacks,
Their pillaged graduate students –
Will change anything or means anything to anyone
But them. So small is their circle,
And to find them all here, tonight, at the same bar,
Even the dead, doesn’t surprise our panoptic Barbie®
On this evening of heartbreak
And disappointment.
Ken will come back. He always does.
There will be apologies, recriminations,
Denunciations,
There always are, and the dust will settle,
Like out-of-print books, like flowers
On graves, no matter the mass,
The dust will settle out,
Nature returning to nature,
Consciousness into
Endeavor.
© 2007/12 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved
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