I
Like Rimbaud; such illustriousness followed
By a silence, but ended now in fatality; in – at least,
If not at – the hands of officers; custodians
Without due care and attention, if – that is –
Not in on it; an unlikely opposite. Handcuffed after
The fact, the sad fact of Smiley Culture’s death.
Teacher, poet, translator; Rimbaudian importer,
Miner, of diamonds and gold, from Ghana and Liberia.
As Merlin, a nephew, said in Tottenham, of an ‘internal
Covers-up commission’, a presiding-over a robbed life,
A stoned grave, an entertainer, entertainer, lost. We had not
’Nuff personality of the original ragamuffin MC. Speaking
Quickly, translating Cockney, slanging Maggie, bridging
Discrepancies: abridged now, too early, too early. And a
Year unsettled followed in that wake – a wake among many –
Seeing cut-and-shut, riot, excess, disruption, corruption, occupation,
Unemployment, racism, Powell starkly reawoken, regression
In this recession, to a point history can’t even re-evoke,
Disenfranchised as it is, by the rubbly coverings of subsequences.
If Clegg predicted it, as YouTube’d show you, so what? A cleg to
Stand on’s what they got. And us… we’re left with a single-word oxymoron,
Right, a scandalous might of shady figures with shadier friends,
Embezzled in the networks that purport to report the truth of the world,
An empire of own ends, gratifying itself in miraculous light, as
Plain as day, light, interrogatory, light, shining in their faces, light
That still somehow can be hidden in, cold suns, hoarse gates, no
Rest, no peace. No justice. No peace. Cities, which are now known
As financial districts, and’s how now they operate, became occupied
By a percentage not seen by the BBC, peppered with tears, Maced faces,
Another discrepancy: what makes broadcast news? Two sides, at least;
Thousands of stories. Prompted by austerity, which is what? A cull.
History repeats, not through destiny, but through this discrepancy.
For David Emmanuel.
II
Lacan may have been right, in sixty-eight,
However unfortunately. In Derridean
Terms – as far as I’m able to interpret them –
An instance of ‘reinscription’. A master’s
Mastery remastered. What makes sense,
In this day and age, as they say, is
The topology of the Möebius strip:
Its inescapability.
Don’t get me wrong: revolution
Is necessary, as necessity… as impossible
As it, nevertheless, may be. We must keep
Placarding the bastion. ‘Perpetual’ means,
Precisely, ‘unrelenting’, and unrelenting
Means that we don’t leave any wo/man down;
As proletariat, we’ll tarry at no stations
Of the Big Other’s sacrificial crossings.
What we perceive is, precisely, an answer begging
Questioning. Cutting deeper into open wounds
Tends to prevent healing. Education is a right, not a
Privilege, and if education is about the spreading of
Knowledge, and not the guarding and withholding
Of it whilst pointing and laughing at those disinvested,
It would appear that a great portion of today’s ‘educated’
Have greatly miscalculated their imperative worth.
But indeed, if we should meet with courteousness
The uselessness of our souls,
In the most Žižekian way, with Jones on our
Side; and in an analytic situationing of
Fetishistic disavowals, communistically,
With conditions, etc. and etc., paying with
Attention, through the nose; this is only a
New dawn seen through the slats of a blinded door.
Diagonally striping our floor.
III
So, what is this; some Shellian thesis, antithesis and synthesis?
Perhaps. A say, interpellated in canonical disarray, as I
May have put it. But blared out, what does ‘outside of
Canons’ mean? Precisely what this corporationism breeds.
Going to London on the fifteenth of August, over to the Hale,
Where friends reside now, as well as in Peckham, and Salford,
In my two university cities of that time, and listening to Paul
Gilroy and Merlin Emmanuel, as well as a brave scared mum,
Thinking about the children, our youth mans, our youth womens,
Wanting to stand and to say, from the Westcountry, need to spread
This awareness afield, but overwhelmed; next to smoulders of debris
Still smelling in epicentric catastrophe: moved so, going straight from
Work on a train and tube, reading Kant’s groundwork on board, and
Cracking up nearly, with nervousness when a mile away, having
Never seen this country in such a reality, and yet here a community,
Knowing, knowing what that word means. Trying, uniting, fighting.
For what it can bring.
