Politics

Aphorisms XXVIII

Condescension of Revolution – It is so easy when you look at what such an upheaval costs, first, in violent reaction and, then, the counter reaction which tends to follow. But when a political arrangement will not change, has no inbuilt manner through which to change it to make it more democratic – when the tantrums of imperial powers set their unwieldy mass behind autocracy and freely exercise and defend their monopoly on violence – then what else is there left to do? As the gridlock tightens, as reaction tightens, the temptation grows and grows…

And when democratic revolution can be undertaken peacefully, for the most part, the arguments against it are dulled to a whisper.

What am I saying here? I’m saying that there is space for a democratic revolution even in a nominally democratic system, a system which bears traces of democracy already.

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The Field

THE ARGUMENT

An itinerant treads through the fields in London, Wales and England, picking through the debris of a culture war, heading back home to the north. They record the thoughts of objects and see the others talking and gesturing, haunted by visions and dreams of the past and future. The field repeats, each time slightly differently. In each field a different assemblage – maybe a castle, or a festival, or a bird

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V.44

Coming home on a long warm night
where the air takes the noise of keys
and holds it cupped in its hand like
a ladybird which alighted

on the hand, and is climbing up.
Coming home after mild concern
has flared in a blank stare forward
and later a stratified phase

of conversation while the feet
hit their warm rubber on the path.
Coming home after talk of trade
and politics and other large

and uncontrollable forces
which fluctuate like black storms do,
hung waiting behind the buildings
on your right, and seen between them.

To say power is power just
raises violence to a law
and that seems a dull reversal.
There are as many reasons to

do a thing historically as
there are to do a thing today
at least, and as reasons densen
a cool breeze blows over the street

V.32

The parallax intrudes sometimes
like a muscular pain after
being sat too long in one stance
and you can barely find comfort.

Browsing the internet you find
a cry for help you can’t tell from
pastiche. Then you see an empty
box sat on the doorstep, you see

moth larvae curling in your clothes.
Everything seems to be able
to connect with the following
link. But the pendulum has reached

its apogee and watch it turn
revealing its dark side to you
just as it accelerates down
the side inlaid with relief carve

of massacre and stupidness.
The frictionless pivot of time
and history is mute. But hear
faint squeaks of the ghost hung upon

the nail there, with all its effort
breaks itself to try warn you of
what is to come. But all there is
is a faint sense of deja-vu

V.22

Smash unconscious bias now! Old
things like this fall to us to end
by selective edits of our works
and days. Prune and sculpt our canon

thus to take subtle exclusion
and make it brash for a moment
before using the breeze disperse
to end the dandelion.

Hannah said we should simply think
what we are doing. This is hard
perhaps too hard to succeed at
day after day the fog rolls in

over the ramshackle cobbles.
Let’s try to take pains of process
of pen and paper and avoid
long and still oxbow lakes where life

can find its niche, but is dull to
all except the historical
swimmer, caressed by quiet plants.
I agree with Hannah. I know

difficulties in life which my
skin has allowed me to avoid.
Though I am not my skin. I can’t
do without it, like a soft veil