[Newspoetry] 608 911

[Spineless Books]

Newspoem 23 June 2007
by the Fifth Column and Q. Synopsis
poem needs an ending

608 911

1

  priorities of state
   shock the conscience
    and fail to protect the people
     freedom dances
     aghast at the laziness
    of statistical mirages
   mean streets, deluded objectivity
  shred body, mind, spirit

2
century’s crosscurrents collide
fertilizer, ammunition

filing cabinets wait, weight
utopian dream, research nightmare

Marxist nexus, forest of metal
divining rods trickling texts from the atmosphere

warm crackle of a vinyl hearth
red green blue pixel spray

data mecca where breathless newspoets
await the update at the top of the week, millennium

the magic magnetism of this site is lunar
drawing larcenists and arsonists from sleepy streets

lured by the mystic power of this hewn structure
where the caretaker, in hippy discipline

locks peace, violence in boxes opposite
jolted from dream into near-death

in this intersection of contradictions
when arrives the paradox of the state

wielding hoses, nightsticks
cultivation, control

socialized protection, repression
but a historian takes the long view