left to right we read
printed lines on law or
lobster longevity;
script dull or scintillating, spam-gibberish or textbook-rigid;
it is all distilled to twenty-six symbols and steamrolled horizontal
across pressed pulp or flashing pixels—
let’s kiss, i say,
forget it all, what do you say, i say,
take a car—mine, i suppose, since yours
could go clean past el paso, all the way to oakland
but was still deemed junk by the rubber-stamped judgment
of an insurance company, somewhere
they did the math, you know—we’ll
take it to the beach and make plans to sleep through
together
we can argue over the color of my eyes
or the sound the sky would make
if it could laugh at us (& it would laugh, if it knew
of all the poems it’s been crammed into;
it didn’t ask for this)
we can embody the things that can’t be written
all those things outside the twenty-six symbols—correct me
if I’m wrong but
i count at least four things outside of them:
your mouth is one, and
love another.
you’ll have to guess the others, dear
(I’m too shy to say)
i love you the way
sleep tugs at your eyelids and winter
strips green from the trees;
the way plump dumb babies grow
bony and tall, with
report cards and first kisses and other
secrets to keep from you;
i love you like that place where you bit your tongue
heals, or like the toenail turned black last september
falls off in the shower—the way
milk goes sour, or melted snow
drips from the porchlight down your nose,
putting out your cigarette;
far from fated—nonetheless
beyond control.
i love you like i can’t say no.
i put things on tumblr when i have nowhere else to put them.
anyway. this is hypocritical in a sort of hilarious way. but i mean what i’m saying. so. for what it’s worth:
i believe in gun control and i think it’s silly to allow civilians to own assault weapons for any reason. a handgun should be plenty good enough for self-defense in the rare case that you might need it. ain’t nobody upstanding got armies coming after them.
that being said, i think the most pressing problem here is not the availability of assault weapons. i think it’s media coverage. first off, america has been a violent nation for centuries. this isn’t new. school shootings aren’t new. they just got rampantly popular in media coverage starting with columbine, for no real reason other than that it made a good story, and maybe it was a slow news week. remember that summer when the media was all about shark attacks, even though there was no actual statistical increase in the number of shark attack incidents?
the people who have committed the deadliest shootings in america have all been disgruntled men, people who feel invisible or betrayed. some were people who were trained by this very country to kill others in the military, and when they returned, they returned broken, forgotten, isolated, unsupported. they are seeking glory through violence—the kind of violence that seems the most unspeakable or shocking. they want to die notorious. they crave the power and the larger-than-life status that comes along with committing the deadliest, most horrific killings. and the media gives them exactly what they want. they leap on the stories that have that “hook” to them, some novelty that they know will appeal to the public’s fascination with the grotesque, the unbelievable. we love stories about monsters. we always have. the types of monsters we love to hear about change over time, sure, but the american public has always eagerly devoured any and every seedy story about violence. once we loved stories about young and innocent (white) girls being raped and murdered. once we loved stories about affairs gone wrong. once our favorite stories were about scandals of the rich and famous. and it’s always been true that the more gruesome the mutilation, the more famous the story.
and now, ever since columbine, we’ve loved the spree killings. the deranged loner who lost his job or his girlfriend or his mind in the military. the type of man who craves nothing more than being remembered. i’m willing to bet that this dude today chose a kindergarten classroom in a wealthy white area because he knew that this would grab headlines and be remembered for decades to come. he wanted to be the embodiment of pure evil, of terror, of monstrosity. but evil isn’t monstrous. evil is human. it should not shock us anymore. it should not draw all of our attention, because that is all that these men want.
we may not commit these crimes, but we love hearing about them. look at your facebook. how many statuses are about anything other than this killing? 1 out of 10? 15? 20? and that’s how it always is. we love talking about it. we love hearing about it. i’m not saying that we WANT these things to happen—of course not. we are also appropriately horrified and disgusted. but we feed the beast with our attention. and that, i think, is more dangerous than an assault rifle.
Hey Neil deGrasse Tyson! Here’s some cool facts:
1) The Mayan culture *still exists*. There are an estimated 7 million people who consider themselves Mayans still living in Central America, with their own unique culture, languages and traditions2) Mayans never predicted the end of the world was going to come in 2012. Claims that they did were pretty much invented by people who didn’t understand their culture and wanted to sell shit. Perpetuating it is based on ignorant imperialist ideas.
3) A LOT of religions nowadays still practice animal sacrifice, including Hinduism and Islam. These alone take up approximately 40% of the world’s population. The contributions made by people of these religions to science in general have been immense. Dismissing an entire culture’s achievements because they perform animal sacrifice is bigoted, ignorant and gives an incredibly distorted view of the world
4) The wheel is not a mark of a “worthwhile” culture. It appears that the wheel was actually invented in one place and then spread throughout Eurasia and Africa, rather than being invented in multiple places, meaning by your metric it’s “hard to take science cues” from near every culture ever. Mesoamerican cultures had wheel-like objects but it’s likely they never developed it further because there were fewer uses for the wheel, as there was a lack of domesticateable animals that the wheel would be useful in conjunction with, as well as geographical factors.
5) a) How could you *know* they didn’t predict their own *empire*’s (not culture) demise? We know virtually nothing about what people at the time thought and have too few examples of their writing to know. b) No empire ever has predicted its own demise as a mainstream view. What an absurd standard to hold
In conclusion, your comments are highly insulting and perpetuate imperialist myths about the Americas before the advent of European colonisation as well as the indigenous American populations today. Maybe do some research before you comment on these things again.
Haven’t posted on here in awhile but i want to put this somewhere so here you go, internet.
(Source: cashcrab)
Giraffe girl…always a favorite
[video]
Anonyme - Jeux d’Ombres Surréalistes, 1920-1925
(via mudwerks)
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