Saturday, February 25, 2012

I shudder to think

























I shudder to think
            in the Marxian sense
of a proper grammar.

Its structure of domination.
The flood and buffering.
Of an industry.
Spoken or typed.
By which we neglect.
The conditions of conflict.

Our right to contend / with fissures of text

     for the concept
     the predictable
     means of production

(The implications ...)

Any linguist will tell you
These truths lie with their utterers
Conceived in tongues.
Like the meaning of Class.
Italicized.
Into all these periods
Of linguistic slaughter.

We adapt / evolve / conceiv'd over drinks

Contractions. For nothing.
As quick and immediate
As history itself.

     we only think
     we control words
     Assume their identities
     & bury our brackets
     in the onus of redaction

"Talk about grammar / Punctuation and explosives."

[The actual use of guns]

& Libation
Our normal drunken banter.
A shared tongue
in the gutter of meaning.

Listeners / living out a séance

on the battlefield.
of self-censored eggshells.

     Only language
     Leans upon its triumph
     Like a complete moron,
     Its format and pronunciation
     Always spelled correctly.

For example, this clause—
                   To thrust his ellipses / into her flesh ...
—is an English purist.

An operation.
Of misguided violence.

"In a small town / Where everything is known."

The villagers vote
a little disheartened
on the issue of words.

Their non-dimensional voices ...

As Syme once said to Winston
in the furtherance of silence:

                   "Our language / is almost stupid"

(but not quite.)