V i s i o n a r y V o i c e s
Poetry by Rodrigo Toscano
Rodrigo Toscano is a 2005 Fellow in Poetry at the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is the author of several books of poetry and his work appeared in the recent anthologies Best American Poetry 2004. and War and Peace. Originally from San Diego, he now lives in New York City. More of his work can be seen at
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/toscano/
Postcard to Tacitus
Of Jefferson Adams Madison residing slaver triumvirate of lxxvi as Protectors return concelebrating Civis Americanis whence came the advent of Freedom English anno imperialis mmiii ornamenting not a Silver Age but a strip mined tin heap of Pacifying the air the waters the land significant from anywhere GPS armipotens ancestral leafy sprouting thrashing nation faces tree.
Wonderworking earth of Sumer is a depression some 100 meters in circumference 40 in depth Protection soft skinned covered mortal skulls be they mist droplets unaccounted for evaporated Liberty . And returned to their decks their stadiums gazing cheering and farting at a time of their choosing What We Possess immortal dissimilarities to All The Rest intellecting that told that.
Told Intellecting same in the Tin Age.
Reduced the name is Humanity chiefly lost the venerated byword who's sidling up who's snoring who's irritating their beauty sleep white be it impious piety or pious impiety quicquam whichever locked into a path of Calvinist Superstition.
Leaders pressed Fears onto fears as leaders as pressed leaders fearing fear leading leaders as leaders press leaders unto the words their correct position eludes me not so much the grammar.
Tons per square centimeter fabulae smushily textured blaring hymnals with processional victims no less of Freedom English's success by its lonesome stumbling the we's have it looting self.
Postcard to Horace
Sensed that at a crossroads out of something desired as pure activity as something super-involved super-obsessive kind of new but not so much that at a crossroad's maximalist heroic stance a non-class-aligned momentary comfort might become a minimalist heroics scattered to the winds adventure talking to the floating leaves on all sides as special ego-less moments monuments to machine's ego built by certain methods certain techniques labor deployed arranged conducted that at a crossroads feeds to run it or can we starve it a plan the hot end idling down.
And so as in helicon which mount's eternity mounted on which sky's paternity background mounts which cloud's luminosity class daylight's glare covered in mist in the demotic keepin' it for real or not for real word up or down whose labor deployed or withheld the only foreground head to bonk ars poetica a bit sore to bonk but tempered by it yours a radically altered social anatomy antiquity opts mount opts background productions opts poetry determinatively opts.
Ovidius pal yours says ars longa vita brevis my ass in gear feels it the reverse that is art sputtering out before the second shift of declaimers tonight tumble in like beets out of a sack all spit n' shine beets to be spit n' shined beat into sugar arsenic or sugar to be gleaned out of a word by word in the word qualitatively multiplicative and or divisible politically speaking forms.
Postcard To Cicero From whence the prime minister averred the MP's stentorian noggins jilted proving himself a marvelous coadjutor inspiring spurious constitution society misadventure from whence he and his censors interpres carnifexes turn their attentions to Alaric ostrogoth wearing a spikÈd hat not of suevian bronze forged but of lime green yarn sown at fantastic concrete fantasy bar to be there ex parte a thing to say ex parte anyone hankerin' a torquey turn phrase or events more Artfully writ than it.
from the days when your fingernails were tender you also said I have admired your claws.
this Relatio too will evanish from your head more precisely your crypto-spartican servent's ready quill like Radium out of a remote storage unit with the capacity for and nothing else if even that so light yet surprisingly filling torquey turns.
Postcard To Lucretius
Meeting you likewise pleasant so veritably stripped fickle fortune to ask a stroked up Divus mercurius slobber silly slain albeit so briefly in the rush of things stuck out a yearning murmur against the purple sky compressed time and space scientifically talk some more about writing projects we'll write some more about talking projects we'll valorously let fly a willed volley aliqua ratio valeremos a tad or ton more each our fates or at least the exchange rate of and with great relish indeed soon all we'll.
But to it to me too as to you too done too with it reeled out and spit-roasty feeling so done so grist graded of it knowingly gradually jostles jamming the terrific no justice ever so little.
And how done jus bellicum is it with me and how done jus bellicum with you vaguely too much these words fail me concretely how much it is no inconsequential trickle simply polarized elocution you'd be kind to emend it sternly.
And so briefly and in the rush of things indeed meet us the social movements the counter movements the aesthetic compacts what they say seem to say or the odd sum their combination the ratio nay heat of such appellations fulminate parsing everything time and time again siren dolor in dallying such dread such people pulsing of pallid wondrous eyes that to them I submit and rebel of me some portion yearning to move on passed those waters to bone's-ashes bound inevitably so necessary hazy fearful this crossing.
But before all that all in all of all of us camp the shivering moon before the rushing down from the philosophic mounts into our hovels for the evening I wish you strength resolution and ever good cheer vale.
Postcard To Frontinus Architect Champagne's animus released ribbons cut howling to the heavens they are and oberon fairy king of the bright night thus having sprinkled in their eyes the magic powder and satisfied they've awakened to their whatever's-first-seen-will-be-new-found love settles in for the evening at kelly's house of steaks back booth.
And still spying on them from behind two massive concrete-and-steel fronds transfixed as they are by the marquee a now rickety but still keen and covert reverse LE corbusierian as it turns out puck.
How reverse Le corbusierianism could be conceived of in anyway whatsoever escapes me architecturally.
Hic tamen nevertheless four ferociously kool and bespectacled and be-pistollèd up the kazoot hominem representing not the universality of values but the universality of valuation mark that for discursive mouth-to-mouth gleam with the power of a million candles.
Denique moreover these same patriotic lumbering action figures fend off the hinterlands and who gets the evergreen chaplet of vines coronet for best supporting role santa no less consumer blog confidence futurity as to how the little centurions get framed daily and intrigued into it and also the infanta herself exchange off broadway off cycle generally but still in the glare of times square always anywhere you'd be truly amazed at these constructions.
4 Reflections on Content & Form
1 .
That on a lute, Berlin techno loses a little bit of its tenderness.
That on a woodblock, Parker's scintillating 14ths become intervallically a bit murky.
That on a Thrumbola (a speculative instrument—a specialized arraignment of microphones attached to a Universal Standard Urinal) Mozart's minuets retain their charm by way of an institutionalized acclaim.
That on a Kalimba, Webern's five orchestral pieces still take about 128 minutes to perform.
2.
What happens if you import the dullness, the utter boredom of the suburbs into an exciting megalopolis?
What happens if you export the over-excitability and glitz of the megalopolis into the suburbs?
What happens when a rurality chooses to speak to a rurality? (solely)
What happens when a rurality turned suburban imports a megalopolis's imported suburbia?
What happens when an exported doubly taxed rural suburbia gets exported to another country's imported megalopolis's rurality imported from another country's duty-free rurality?
What happens when a megalopolis's megalopolosity is lost but looked for by a suburbanite expatriate?
What happens when a repatriated ex-rural imported sub-urbanity gone busto…moves to Bayport, Long Isle.
What happens…
3.
“...so that the overall labor-process obscured, the overall knowledge of the process horded by management, plus the problem of un-organized outsourced labor; the struggle lies in wresting management's prerogative of the work process, that is, by attacking the division of labor as it currently exists, giving the workers the opportunity to train themselves based on their own knowledge of the process. This involves openly sharing information, and condensing their input into a curriculum to be used by other workers, critiqued by other workers, and ultimately re-written by other workers...”
4.
Brazil. The PT's first run at electoral politics (circa 1982)
“our candidates' appearances…”
uma galeria do criminosos
“My name is Joao. I live in a shantytown. I was arrested four times. Vote for me.”
“My name is Athos. In ‘68 I highjacked a plane in defense of my country.”
“My name is Nanella. My name before that it was Baladora. Before that, Chuppetina.
Result: 0 governors, 0 senators, six federal parliamentarians out of 500, 1 mayor out of 5, 000.
BACK to top of page BACK to What If? Online
|
