Five Poems

by Louis Bourgeois

CANNIBALISM IS CONFORMITY

I wake at sunrise to the sound of squealing pigs; outside, an idiot child is eating pig shit and rat meat in a dish of black decaying rice. Next door, a virgin is being washed in a huge zinc tub; she is being cleansed for a political sacrifice of dubious worth. Tonight, her loins and buttocks will be served in rich sauces at the Imperial Table. I do not know what they will do with the rest of her, except that she’ll disappear forever with the rest of the sacrifices—

But before then, I too will fall into a trance, intoxicated with the dinner conversation of Aristotelian Logic and Middle Eastern Affairs.

EVENT IN THE LAND OF X

Last night, stones fell hard through the midnight sky when all was quiet as moth wings in the village. Figs began to bloom under the heavy moonlight, and fish crows and geese took off from the Lake in un-timely migrations to the north. Hermit crabs and water snakes sought new shores.

The Butcher was found dead on the stairwell, he died from inhaling too much lavender, and the Village Priests all went insane at the same time, speaking inverted Latin and Greek. The Cradle Maker, who was also the Casket Maker, shot himself in the mouth, apparently overcome from the hypocrisy of his craft.

Since dawn, the children have gathered the stones that fell from the sky in order to build a new altar to appease the god of Movement—to show their respect to Lord Chaos, yet fearing him beyond all other gods and all scientific principium….

FINAL JUDGEMENT

The children of Dust have grown tired of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and have taken all numbers and have thrown them into the Abyss, from which they came. As well, they are utterly irritated with Ancient Knowledge. They have slaughtered Pan, Apollo, and Dionysus. They have taken sledge hammers to their temples and reduced them to pebbles.

These children are the Almighty Future and they rightfully demand Clarity, Authenticity, and Truth, even at the expense of Everything that has preceded them.

They will prevail and should prevail. Let all who get in the way of their progress be burned at the stake.

We have finally arrived at a generation who will make truth stick, even if there are no witnesses left to attest to it.

Amen and amen and amen.

A Few Lines Before the Shots Go Off

There are too many who still cling to this black and rotting corpse we call literature and writing.

Hard to say if they should be pitied or massacred.

We who wait patiently for the REVOLUTION know writing and literature must be annihilated; that we need a world un-contaminated by any replication of reality at all.

Either accept the brute nakedness of ourselves and of the world or into the pit you go

HERRISON

The clocks are dead and a mean thought enters the room; namely, you are your father even though you’ve hated him from day one; a hard father who is in the habit of strangling large fish with his bare hands as he would strangle you and mother if he wasn’t afraid of going to prison as much as he is afraid of losing power over the only two people in the world that he controls.  A large father in which flowers expire as he passes and lakes go dry.

The sky goes dead in his presence.

Even fish burst into flames should he as so much as touch the surface of the water and trees turn to blood—don’t you understand?  The clocks are dead because your father has defeated everything, has left nothing to chance.  Don’t you understand that everything including the very molecular structure of nothingness is under his command?

There is no God but there is father—

Who has turned into a doll for his own desires—you a doll—in a world without content—you only see yourself in nightmares—amazing life, but ever so painful.

A race of fish-men and purple women—you can kill me dear Father, but I will never surrender to you, please forgive me—there is rebellion within rebellion that not even you can comprehend—

I see myself reflected everywhere and I am frightened.

We shall bake you tonight, Father, like the fish:  I will whisper into the lemon sauce, there is no I.  Who wants life if there is even one moment of pain?

You are hard Father, I would prefer it no other way—you are so dark too, no other father has been so dark before—yet, I am proud of your darkness.

My father is a fish.  I am the happiest child in the world.

We are so intensely, intensely large—we have sacrificed many birds together, in order to keep ourselves alive—

How I hate the Middle Class, Father, just like you Father, how proud I am of you for destroying me for thirty years but which feels like twenty centuries—Father, you have earned special recognition for destroying me with no political motivation.

Dear Father, never cast your darkness off and I will be your everlasting bride, I will lie down next to you and will fill your ear with the new scientific dialectic that will anoint your wonderful mind with pure blue—

All those days in the fields making other people extremely wealthy is making good on a future payment in which the rich will never be able to afford.

We will never die; the plows are quickly turning into scrolls and swords—

And midnight is teaming with life

--and--

--and--

Father, most of all I wanted to assure you that the Revolution is about to have a name:

{ANAXIFORMINGS}

Can you hear it, Father?  I can’t believe how lucky we are!!!   

POLICHINELLE

You have taken my bones, yet charge me with the crime—then laugh at me because I walk funny; failing to mention the extraordinary willpower I exercise in order to walk without bones—

Then, you want me to forgive you, after these biological predeterminates prey on your conscience, for your psychological crimes—my response—

BURN IN HELL—

Crippled, undaunted to the bitter end, willful, prodigious—I will become a bird—a genetic bird—

You are an aspic—

There are absolutes of which your kind always fails to understand—there are circumstances that are irredeemable for the victims of those circumstances and the crimes of the perpetrators can only be remonstrated through the shedding of

Their blood—

Your blood—

There has never been a judge who wasn’t guilty of judging—there never was a teacher who didn’t sacrifice her students—

There is no world without oppression and only the crippled possesses any notion of truth at all—

But admittedly there is Progress of Events—one day the tortured will become large winged birds, they will seek their prey—

Illimitable justice at the End of Everything—

The wounded are about to take flight.

BIO: Louis Bourgeois is the Executive Director of the Mississippi non-profit arts coalition, VOX PRESS, and is the Director of the Mississippi Prison Writes Institute, a literacy agency that serves incarcerated writers and artists. He is primarily a poet, but he has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and interviews in over 300 magazines and journals and is the author of the National Book Award nomidoznenated , The Gar Diaries, and the award-winning collection of poems, OLGA.   He graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English and was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in Creative Writing.