Tonight seems such a long time ago
even as time passes I wait in public
gritting my teeth hoping to discover
the potentiality of rotating images
To answer complaints rising slowly like
masterpieces of decision I continue to
reject the conceivable for the concept of
continuity wishing for transformation
Baghdad had already been the site of
many book-burnings, mostly of works
deemed heretical. In 923 fourteen sacks of
heretical works, outside the palace gate
To change from the thing into not a thing
seductive whispers slither lightly tickling the
skin, a surge of funk our sole source of shape-
shifting a surge of break beats a divergent guitar
Forever is our grief our wish to know our wish to
be atmospheric and to know is to know time and
knowing know time passes as time passes ambitiously
like a genre of music scalding us with licks and quivers
There remain no images to remind the unknown only
the known and reinvention of the known will succeed
I'll mention a few loose couplings of the known in
order to remind you of what defies knowing:
Baghdad had already been the site of lyrical surges
of heretical break beats like a genre of music shifting
like the mewing of a cat trapped between the whisper
and the rumor and grief tumbling down
To change seductively these whispers producing an impact
a feature a stereoscopic film electrified to soothe or excite
Monsters from the Grave Monsters from Grace Monsters
and their trademarks: pain, loneliness, and operatic death
Thought is not like that and our thought though willing is
unlike the thought of Heidegger or Wittgenstein; we only apply
the nature of perception, and the structure of subjectivity;
known all known through learning through time nothing remains
There remain no images to remind the unknown only
a feature a stereoscopic film electrified to soothe or excite:
It's the fate of Baghdad through time to face sackings
from time our bodies too mewing with rumors and grief.
-- Jeff Wietor
