THE AESTHETICS OF DESECRATION

THE AESTHETICS OF DESECRATION

 

The aesthetics of desecration.

The cult of personless personality.

Ego-pigs wallowing in themselves.

The obscene frivolity that snows like the news

on the dogshit and body parts of daily human events

just to prove that things aren’t as horrific

as they’re going to get yet.

There are still puppies looking for good homes

and sewing bees making community quilts

to send overseas

in memory of the dead vets

who died haemmoraging like planets

in the name of the oil companies

defense contractors

plague-rat politicians

spreading rabies

and black death

like a racial profile

of undocumented water

coming across the border illegally.

The ghouls and zombies

are running for office

to uphold the rights of the gluttons

to eat everybody to death.

The lobbyists are out in force

on behalf of pharmaceutical cartels

to kill a child

in discrete corners of five-star restaurants

over lunch

with campaign contributions to a snake-pit

that wants to govern the country

like the gut of a big corporation

by cutting her from the budget

as if all human values

were just a matter

of economic liposuction

and knowing what to do with the leftovers.

A good life is measured

by knowing how many victims

swallowed up by your foreign appetites it takes

to make you feel lucky to be born in North America

where you’re sure

that someone like you

who’s as true as a colour

to his country

could never happen militarily to you.

God helps those who help themselves to everything.

It takes a lot of votes

in the name of a few ideals

worth fighting for

to kill a kid.

One vote.

One bullet.

One man.

One cornerstone

rising up like a nation of quicksand

to take a stand

against her ever becoming an adult.

It takes a lot of mindless memes

and sins of omission

to make a culture great.

Haut cuisine

of the obesely obscene.

You can tell at a glance

how advanced a civilization is

by the people it scrapes off its dinner plate

like a rich man’s brat

throwing a tantrum

like his first coup d’etat

since taking his highchair

on the bestial floor

of a popular abbatoir.

Socialism for the rich.

Free enterprise for the poor.

All the natural resources of the world

a foodbank

for the wealthy

a black market

for everyone else.

The money-changers

have taken holy vows

and amalgamated their benchs and banks

like Cosimo Medici in the Renaissance

into low risk temples

that take the guesswork out of chance.

Civilization is an ongoing war crime

that destroys its own evidence

by digging up the bodies it’s buried

in deep holes in dark forests

without any names

for a forensic analysis

of serial genocide

so the truth be known to history

like the future of a gravestone

that lies to everyone

like a psychotic killer

on death row

about what they died for

like the Polish officer corps

at the hands of Stalin.

Or a girl with a copper face

etched in acid

by the Taliban

like the words of the Quran

recited by an unlettered prophet

who liked women prayer and perfume the best

she was learning to read

so God could make that known

which was hidden

like the mind she was born with.

The aesthetics of desecration.

Find something people still cherish

and destroy it on tv.

Instant celebrity.

Psychological shock and awe.

Voyeurism in Bedlam.

The death of innocence

in Sodom and Gamorrah.

And its infinite impotent witnesses.

A gathering of wild dogs

living off the corpses

sandbagging the streets of Mogadishu.

The aesthetics of desecration.

Sensation the grave-digger of perception.

Harmony degenerating into order

order into system

system into discipline

discipline into fanaticism

and fanaticism into nemetic chaos.

Chaos without inspiration.

Madness without laughter.

Indifference like a great desert

at the end of our tears

that taste more like acid than water.

Destiny a lottery

and even the future

already out of luck

and asking for an advance.

I hear the gnashing of hearts and minds in the night.

Slave rage.

The orphan’s familial longing for revenge.

The eyes of people more homeless than the stars

dying like birds against the lie of the sky in the window

trying to get in.

The fury of the mothers

who watched their children’s bellies

swell into tiny distended planets

pregnant with death

knowing they could have grown up

fat and happy

on the garbage of Toronto.

High overhead

I see the sunlight

flashing off the wings

of the watching drones

as if the whole focus

of the eye in the sky

were to kill the bad guy

at the expense of the innocents. 

I see the amputated children

leaning on their crutches

like AK-47s.

I see the glee of hatred

dancing in their eyes

as if they still had two legs left

to make up for what was missing.

Gold cobalt tin and coltan

a mineral used in cellphones

I see the jewels of Hades

deep underground in the Congo

weeping blood like Proserpine

as if she’d just been raped by an army

of poisonous snakes

like a natural resource

foreign corporations are trying to gain control of.

Sometimes insanity

is the only reasonable way to be

when the sane are still looking

for what’s human

in our inhumanity.

The aesthetics of desecration.

The ethics of rapacity.

Mediocre talents in crisis

trying to spin the thick out of the thin

by pretending they’re overwhelmed

by the pure genius of their next catastrophe

where ten thousand ships are launched

against the topless towers of Ilium

every time Paris Hilton walks her face

like an ostrich

who’s being held hostage

in front of the camera

like the latest perversion of Helen of Troy

where the Greeks leave the soul of a camel

hidden in the body of a seahorse

outside the gates of a worthless city

whose beauty is as dubious

as the lustre of fool’s gold to the mob

that mistakes it for real wealth

instead of the filth it is.

Obscene irrelevance

imposing itself like news

of nowhere and nothing

like Hollywood glamour posters

over the faces of suffering

missing like murdered children

who didn’t leave any clues

about who did this to them

like hieroglyphs

on the back of the obelisks

of their breakfast milk cartons.

Children die behind the scenes

of movie-queens

upstaging

the unphotogenic drama

of the victims of the world

that twitter like the spirits of the dead

in the starstruck limelight

of personalized cellphones.

Snowflakes on a furnace.

The princess on her pyre

sleeping her beauty off like hangover

awoken by a dragon of rage

for hogging the spotlight

like the sleazy fairytale

of a wannabe vamp

asking the mirror

who’s the most beautiful of all

in a concentration camp.

Homophobic conspiracy theories

of paranoid heterosexuals

trying to constitutionally interpret love

like which choice of tunnels

you should take

like a ride in the dark

through love canal

behind the tent flap

of a phoney freak show

at a Republican carnival theme park

devoted to family values

like snakeoil poured on troubled voters

or bad meat down the well

of their persecuted neighbours

to calm polluted waters

about the gender preferences of hell

by assuring them heaven remains

as it always has been

asexually obscene.

People eating shit all day long

for a place at the table

below the salt

and a few crumbs of daily bread.

The aesthetics of desecration.

Cry out

scream

try to shoot the stars out

in the crosshairs of your third eye

like a hunter with a spotting scope

and his finger on the trigger of the moon

spinning in the ante-chamber

of life and death

in a game of Russian roulette

he presses like an emergency exit

out of his head

as if he were already dead. 

Bruised by a sense of loss.

Cosmically under-rated

by the universe

you’re apprenticed to

like a journeyman 

to a jealous boss

who demands perfection

from the flaws of created things.

Who can remember

when it was enough

just to be a human being

walking around on the earth

without feeling like an accomplishment

it’s impossible to live up to?

The aesthetics of desecration.

Being a ghost of yourself

in the media mirror

of a new sensation

as the crowd roars like a Coliseum

for you to show them

the new swordtricks

you’ve learned to do with your blood

as the purple emperor

turns his thumbs down

on the half-life of your infamous childhood

just to show the crowd

it can’t be done

without some kind

of hierarchical organization

approving the kill

like a sign of civilization.

The aesthetics of desecration.

Wherever the stars are out

anywhere on the planet

children

with adult-sized nightmares

and adults

with child-sized dreams.

I can feel the cheap thrill of the circus.

And out of the lights

in the darkness beyond

when I stop listening to myself

like a lonely audience

disappointed in my own performance

on Dancing with the Stars

I can hear a child’s screams

way off in the distance

like a willow in a hurricane

that came without a storm warning

and tore her up by the roots.

I can hear the vast solitude in her cry

that suffers savagely

without asking why of the moon.

And I look deeply into my heart

and all I can see

is how unspeakably sad it is

the more I care

the more I realize

there’s nothing there

but a high-minded buffoon

bobbing around

at the edge of the world

in an empty lifeboat

on a starless night sea

full of drowning children

watching their lives

flash before their eyes

like the previews

of coming events

they’ll never live to be.

The aesthetics of desecration.

Someone like me.

 

PATRICK WHITE