Welcome to Poetic Terrorism--a new method of communication. A new vocabulary for resistance. We're opening a new front in the war against soundbytes and corporate catchphrases, because it's impossible to think when your words are controlled by discourse that is manufactured by imperialist corporations and sold to us wholesale in our schools and TVs. Bullshit shoved down our throats by government spokespeople and paid advertising--WE (you) have something to say, SAY IT!
Poetic Terrorism is profoundly nonviolent. It is the resistance of our voices. We are controlled by a submersion tank of manufactured ideas--by the media repeating the talking points of the government.
Poetic terrorism is about bringing the art of resistance into every facet of our lives. Live your life loudly. 'There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.'--Hakim Bey
This blog is open to anyone's words and ideas. If you would like to post, email jed.bickman@gmail.com to let me know--I'll give you privileges and then you can post whatever you want.
self realization impossible in a sea of rooms built by men you’ve never met the walls you can't understand, influence. lean if a bar presents itself, drink others drink, seems to be the order of the day obey. obey. obey. obey green bills house solemn white men obey your phallus and spend night after dreary night following it around from darkened streets and sickening parties shallow selves centered obeying animal noises only terrifyingly 'uninhibited' hiding behind impossibly high walls obey finally fucked green tile floor. obey linoleum, bottles of holy beer obey and release yourself into debauchery between the lines, allowed rebellion, freak with no consequences. selves bind to selves excluding watchers, dreamers, stoners. sidelines embrace these moments, and foster an imperialistic cynicism that allows you to finally realize how ridiculous this picture is, created by this time and place and each individual human being in the room could never change any of this. god is our hive mind, we do what's available, we follow the herd especially when it contains those few people we feel comfortable with, and we can never leave their sides even though we have grown to hate them. they could be anybody. but no one would be much better, so why bother. whoever is around is around. obey them.
obey invisible leashes that tie you to familiarity with crustacean people in animal selves who can't suppress their beast but try too hard anyway.
the burden of smalltalk suffocates me. obey green dreaming surviving night after empty night in the blurred cage of droopy eyed drunken life paralyzed by desire and disgust for what they believe has become the human condition.
the ashtray full of days, butts bathing in ash. soot from thousands of lungfires, cherries eating rat poison, gulp by gulp. this night, every night for months, this table, this ashtray, these people consuming for themselves with each other. using each other, hungry eyes caged by depression, apathy. depend on the unfailing ego. depend on curling smoke hurled across the room, the music to fill the void where conversation died weeks ago. I looked at alex across the room from me, lengthwise opposing. she met my eyes, stared at them hard, took a drag. she raised one dark eyebrow and reached for the ashtray. For a moment, I searched for the perfect words, to summon her. Gave up quickly, ruthless fantasy. Henry around the corner cradling his camera. tripods strewn over the floorspace, lights. Life has become a long photoshoot, posed existential boredom, reinforces the haze. He kneeled, focused on Earl looking destracted, exposed. the unblinking lens shuttered and fell silent. She felt the weight of my gaze still on her. I didn't hide my eyes behind a smalltalk smile, my stare got heavier. She looked at the posters, the ashtray, at my hands rolling a joint, back to the ashtray. She flicked invisible ash off a clean cigarette. Suddenly she returned to my eyes, unafraid. "Death comes with immediacy. Death comes with your uncontrolled present, which hurdles headlong unstoppably toward the future, toward death. We are slaves to the idea of time that leads you to death." Her voice, oh god, her voice made her ascendancy transparent, gave her away, the voice of an old soul in youth. I liked to pretend I could keep up with her. I liked the feeling of being able to play her games. "Time is manufactured by society and injected into you at the same time that the myth of cohesive consciousness is injected into your sense of self. The lies at the center of our lives." "you're so full of shit, jed. you inhabit absolute time. you live from one moment to the next, lusting after each one, slaughtering and dismissing the present." Earl attacked, as she will do. Henry focused his lens on me and I tried will myself out of existence. "humble immortality, this moment here and forever. beer and cigarettes. This story has to beginning, no end, it is yours, yours alone, I can't share it with you. Stop trying" she said gently. I would do anything for you, I said intraskullular. I wish I could say it out loud. I would be anyone for you. Your skin, your voice could justify me, give me leave to exist. It will never happen. We are alone. I let mingus fill the room, fell silent. I lit the joint, found solace in acrid smoke. Smoke my companion, my mistress. In this moment, she will never leave me. In your picked liver, in my blackened lungs, we live. Paralyzed by desire, living in insecurity only enhanced with daily drugs. The ashtray accumulates her cigarette. Henry and I passed the joint back and forth, I could feel it making my night hazy, could feel my exoskeleton beginning to calcify. I know this feeling well—I will stay silent and cynical all night, full of self loathing, paralyzed by loneliness. "Don't we have somewhere to go? I've been sitting in this chair all week." "yeah, governor street. let's go," said Earl. a hike.
Americans herd themselves through cement streets with their eyes on the grime of the city beneath their feet. They have learned that they have to hold their minds clamped tightly to their skull in order to survive a rounanized life within the panopticon of postcapitalist life. Their dreams are imprisoned within their own heads, silenced and repressed so that they can stay numb enough to move through the same rountine every day. But I've been feeling my thoughts vibrating up and down the elastic cosmos. my desk can't hold me anymore. my mind runs from language like a hunted fugitive. I surrender myself to the animal in the back of my head. Humanity is a construct manufactured to justify a life lived devoid of spirit, to rationalize the greyness. It is the sell we wear over our buying selves. Animals are simply the subjects of the natural beauty of the world they inhabit. Americans are the subjects of a controlled economy, and gain meaning mostly from their place within it.
at the corner of truth and voice lies the death of separation, end of apathy and belief in discrete souls. we silence ourselves daily. we silence ourselves with smalltalk.
Language binds us in the selfsame cells of compartmentalized life where words are manufactured by media executives and white intellectuals backstabbing for tenure. where words end, thoughts lose meaning. The thought of revolution has left our lexicon leaving the mass of men castrated, destined to spend their lives strangled by suits pushing forms down each other's throats. That we can change the world by recapturing the words.
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" Monday, July 25, 2005