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THE COMPUTER ARCANE

1.

To have this at one’s fingertips,
the whole world before one
and it not be zero—,

that’s the humbling meaning
of this revolution one’s a part of
and one’s been party to

for a long time now, at first
denying it as a threatening
turning of the table

on which one wrote one’s
poems or typed them on a
typewriter, even in duplicate,

using carbon paper. But this
revolutionary instrument,
which lies at the heart

of the poem one writes,
or the poem one’s typed
with copies, or this

which makes not only that
possible but can put your
poem in the hands of the

eyes of hundreds if not
thousands of imaginations
at the touch of a button,

as if you were not only the
creator of this good news
of the world of tomorrow,

but the distribution of it as
you are that good news, as
you’re the world itself and

it’s true, what that detestably
majestic philosopher foresaw
when he wrote that, future-wise,

contemporary technology’s
real key is it has the ability to
reveal to us what it means

to be, that a poem’s the core
expression of what it means for
human being to actually exist.

2.

So after years and years of the
feel-yours and the failures of
the ideology of unions

(both in capitals and small
letters) I put my ideologic love
of the Soviet dream between

two slices of practical bread
and I eat the contradictions
down to the very bones of

genocided millions these past
73 years, including the making
of concentration camps for

homeless people in every city
rearing their asshole mouths,
farting into the peoples faces.

3.

Now one of the reasons why
technology can do,—-do what?
Is doing what? What’s it doing?

It’s ending nation, it’s already
laughed at borders, walls.
They’re the morphine of dead

politicians trying to make Nation
great, like Trump and Netanyahu,
But all nations’ peoples no longer

are national. People themselves
are in advance of that old, narrow
zerophobia. National’s a deathtrap.

National Socialism should have
made that clear by now. Computer
says: No nation. Different tongues

in a planet that needs a world
government. Yes, it’s true: the
whole story of the Soviet Union

can be seen in a film on your
computer. History now’s so fast

it looks like how Salernitano
sounds, which is jazz to my
senses. like birds talking one

to another, who’ve been doing
it since the beginning of time.
Who don’t know nation. Are birds.

4.

Because we’ve all arrived at the
whole world, even if not all of us
know it. Refugees all: that’s what

being married to technology means.
Never mind the mind to which you’re
a forgotten. Here you’re unforgettable.

The contradiction I ate was a pun,
and the cooler I was in the midst of
a hot sun, the butter I became for

the bread that was hanging on the
line of poetry. No, comrade, the
computer’s not neutral, an indifferent

instrument conveniently helping its
user. It’s been 26 years it did away
with the Communist Labor Party,

in effect forcing us to recognize
the Leninist style of work couldn’t be
sustained where digitalization was

calling the shots. That’s a whole
alphabet of years since that fiery
ideology died with the death of

the Soviet Union, but now we’re
Basu-bound, not just for Russia,
nor will it be for any nation, but

for the whole world itself, when
the New Class of human beings
becomes tomorrow’s revolution

by organizing a demand for an
end to poverty in all lands, a
demand that sees monetary

exploitation to the door, that
effects the liberation of all
universities from corporate

greed so that every child can
go to school tolerant what real
freedom is, and the tearing

down of Wall Street so that the
human neck can move freely
on the human torso, and may

the concentration camps for
the homeless end in every city,
with the flaccidity of every

rifle and pistol in the NRA’s
arsenal aimed at the head
of every student of love,

and the opening of the heart
so that the national anthem
takes the knee, and white

women and black men and
black women and white men
walk hand-in-hand down your street.

–Jack Hirschman


Poetry

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