over on the table play into their hands / as a staged dinner —

that I am forced to respond to such arrogance will be clear :: they already

fear the wild of your thinking, your affective disorders, the

abstinence that you practice :: your furor for flowers / barricades / dialectics, your

sexual preferences :: the laboratory of Marxist linguistics //

coz I believe neither in an order of principles nor in the truth of reason —

to pursue the ruse of sleep, of idleness; vagrant pacing :: all to cash out

on the alms of the state ((free pictures of model citizens, the kind of

idiots that order their graves online)) there is

a knife that I will not forget (Artaud) —

locate the black cracked all over red streets, the radioactive fallout of

conciliatory remarks — I scream at open windows — my intermittent

depressive episodes have an economic matrix of their own / we look

up at the sun in front of us, paling in sequence on the screen ::

cities under siege, display parades in smithereens, craters glowing in

Mesopotamia ((in East-Ghouta & in Afrin)) where those still left

know how risky it is not to die //

these sirens, I only hear them when they stop / impressions of

blasted glass, synapses imploding & burnt dreams cut up with

sentimental experiences —

at this hour, as you wait patiently in line / projectiles

fly across the blazing sun at the speed of sound / for a

piece of bread, water, sarin, & chlorine —

she crouches down, knees tucked in / the tips of golden hands thrust into

the ashen black sun/ glowing ether is leaking / pleading

commit Polynices to the ground / between her small sharp teeth :: stain your language

red :: ready to die the most hideous of deaths, more than killing won’t work — yes

bury him, my brother!

enough heard :: the scraping metal the scalpel shaking in my hand

:: anti-terror laws for every district :: reading as a kind of nail polish

removal, a letting Hell unconceal ((distraction from ourselves))

its machines lock into place /

enough concealed: Pavlensky on dry hunger strike at the disposal

of the intravaneous avenues of power /

if you insist that it can’t go on like this anymore :: someone will be there

to pour green acid in your face /

a barbarization that I perceive, that doesn’t give a shit to

mask itself & since it’s hostile to you, you take it personally,

a pandemic spanning the entire world, that impairs hearts or lungs

in a very specific way impairs your waking, arrhythmia, happy cops,

heat palpilations, insulted breath :: tooth decay, rotting priests,

territorial pissing, expropriation, normative behavior, precarity, hunger,

borders abound, the rule of lies, the black ends of complex hybrids

freshly pulled…

silenced between two big decisions :: you discover

you’re still living/ making way in a vanishing frame

((TV ads, shitposting)) / the explosive, fragmented subjectivity, threatening to burst

like a giant tumor / as if from open graves :: every idea must be lived with the body / a

gust of wind at your back / the various reactions, have given up on my own self

preservation :: as this colossal ferocity takes the world by storm

To oppose the unfettered & voracious domination of the police :: to break the law ::

this moment, bravest of all, approaching the highest consciousness :: to know

the self in sap, to identify as this : as rutheless ghosts in search of home :: by

jealous suns, the feeling, that your head, its fucking exploding & you wonder

if you shiver in fear or in fever & in a splay of rage / in your defiance /your power increases

fuck a consience, the’re shameless, cops, pigs, murderes, the feeling that you’re

burning out inside :: the feeling, that your skin its being ripped off.

(after Hölderlin & Meinhof)

Translation by H. Bolin


Peter Bouscheljong lives in Cologne. Some of his works has been translated and published in Alienist Magazine.  He writes a bloc called  BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics)).

Photo of Leif Holmstrand performance.

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