CosmiKnot

  Let’s call it the scene of empathy. Let’s call it the hesitant sociological scene. The scene of the incalculable rhythm. It is a scene neither of subjection nor objection. Looking with this hearing is a kind of building with or bearing. (Fred Moten 2017) Oh Lucky man   Whilst you were queuing The earth quaked Seth asked if you could bite down And you find yourself in the washrooms Wondering if you really should Wash your mouth out with soap and water Excited to finally have this opportunity  To enact a phrase hitherto only heard In the echoing hallway outside  the headmaster’s office Knock and come in said the Pharaoh A machine whines and whirs As you wait for it to deliver its verdict You will grow up to be a parent with a fine head of teeth Well, if that’s all there is to it? You think I’ll take my chances and sit here Lapping up the applause As you stand to acknowledge your victory In the district school sports sack race Your thumbs squelch into the clay You pas...

Kings place. Oh my god I’m back You finally did it How can I be so curmudgeonly as to deny the seduction at play? Oh the pristine vintage cobbles The plate glass fronted warehouse arches Framing slim silhouete of new student Who sips coffee Totally amazing tote bags University of the Arts Tram lines flow encased at floor level As archival patina Of an industrious past It’s all good How can I fail to see that this is betterer Double plus gooderer I visit an exhibition of Soviet childrens books Encased in glass Remember the smell of mildew? Its freezing here comrade. I grasp and gasp Hoping for the oxygen of something actual The fleeting memory of a real experience An actual event. There is a hand printed lino cut cover For A Russian book of Walt Whitman’s O Pioneer. Is this it? The moment that evaded the death grip The strangulation by equivalence? Asphixiation by reproductive thingness. I think it is And a part of me celebr...

Well Isis are a bunch of ignorant fuckers and your instinct is to annihilate them. Wow wipe them out right? Well guess what I'm pretty sure that is the response they were hoping for when they burned a man alive in a cage. We've been having a very civilised debate about freedom of speech round these parts since they gunned down some cartoonists. There's a pattern here. The destruction of twin towers was a media spectacle not a comment on skyscrapers or unsustainable models of usury. These elements were part of the symbolism but not the debate. Al Qaeda are not a debating society no matter how hard we try and turn their slaughter of people into sense. Their actions are disruptive not logical and yet we, the West - the occident, somehow feel that there is a simple framework of cause and effect to be extracted. This can be distilled to an “eye for an eye”. Kurt Vonnegut spoke about the law of Hammurabi that somehow still grips our collective thinking today. The rule of an eye ...