The first revelation
hits so hard that I say it out loud,
and the second follows
immediately and inevitably upon it:
and I'm an ant!
But I'm a rogue ant,
who has eaten the ergot
on the grain,
and who stops to wonder
at all this.
Did some sinister
magician in pre-ancient times
get a vision from an
anthill
and cast a spell to
shape humanity in its image?
The queen/goddess
replaced by the king/god
replaced by the
fetish/gold replaced by the infinite/number!
Here the apex of all
anthills, we the apex of all ants!
And it is noble and
wondrous to be an ant,
but do we wish to serve
this queen/king/fetish/infinity
which towers on the
shore?
It's anthills all the
way down –
What we call history is
the story of anthills,
and this the most
majestic ever conceived.
We are the most
industrious ants in history
because we believe that
we are free.
But the pheromones here
are tightly monitored and policed.
Don't weep or laugh too
much or the warrior ants will be alerted and will come take you away.
Above all don't try to
stop the worker ants as they build their leaning towers on rotten
foundations,
don't tell them that
it's all hopeless, or that it's all brim-full with hope –
in fact it's safer if
you don't speak to the worker ants at all,
or the warrior ants
will be alerted and will come and take you away.
See the worker ants on
vacation,
industrious even at
leisure, piling up things and moving them about.
On their phones, on
their bicycles on their phones,
before a miracle on
their phones, before a murder on their phones,
always on their phones,
and it seems the only
thing that can tear their eyes away
from the small screen,
is a bigger screen,
and how big must the
screens become to satisfy their escape
from what and where and
when and who and how and why they are here and now...
and
I wonder and pray what will become of their spirits
when
death the biggest screen of all falls over their hollowed eyes...
But
keep moving, even when exercising or entertaining yourself,
stay
in line; never stop; don't disrupt
the flow,
for when a warrior ant recognizes a rogue ant, it is too late.
*
This
is the diary of a rogue ant
and
its search for meaning in the anthill.
You
wouldn't know me from the others.
I look just like them on the outside; the
rogue element is within.
For
I have eaten the ergot on the grain
held
in the palm of William Blake
and
so I swallowed infinity,
and
so eternity became aware of itself;
I
am a membrane slipped into itself; I am inside-out,
and
so I close my eyes and still see the bright day.
Yet
see how I am still an industrious ant,
piling
up words and sorting them by meaning!
But
I would not serve this queen nor carry tribute to this anthill,
and
so I search for meaning in the labyrinth;
clues
to the world it left behind,
so
before I grow wings and take flight I may learn enough
to truly escape the planetary paradigm whose pinnacle rises here.
Have courage comrades!
It
is still a noble thing to be an ant,
and
there is more function and fulfillment in your smallest ligaments
than
in these mightiest of towers.
*
I am not the only rogue ant here...
indeed,
rogue ants here are revered!
This
city is in constant celebration of them!
Their
individual freedom
is
the master pheromone
which
binds all these workers to their queen's capital.
So
sing, scream, stare, rant, rave, rage,
wave
and weave and wonder at strangers –
that
too feeds the colony.
Just do not speak to any other rogue ant!
Because
what is not tolerated even for an instant --
is
a swarm.
The
warrior ants here have centuries of training
in
the elimination of rogue swarms;
in
stabilizing the flows of pheromones;
in
getting everyone back in line to labor upon their freedoms.
This
city is built on a mastery of the swarm –
this
is the mastery of this city.
Witness
“The Immigrants,” molten and melting, sculpted and sculpting
down
by the harbor in bronze,
their
poverty literally turning golden with wear and time –
and
yet it is not gold, and neither could gold buy
what
they believed they came in search of.
But if this is an anthill and we are ants,
then
our hill is far beyond these buildings;
this
whole city is only its outward appearance.
Most
of all we labor upon language itself;
ceaselessly
sorting and stacking and
building
and rebuilding mental structures;
words
the building-blocks and meaning the secreted saliva that binds them,
language
is the body and the breath of the colony –
and
here is where rogue ants can be most dangerous of all.
(If
you fuck the pheromones, the colony ain't shit.)
*
The History Mystery
of Architecture
First
the circle, then the square
(Stop
right there! All of history, in that snare!)
The
first boxes were made beautiful,
they
remembered their mother.
Then
they abandoned and forgot her,
forgot
beauty and built to match their brutality,
and
reveled and raised it to scrape the sky.
But
see! Look at the boxes trying to escape from themselves!
Yet
without any grace; like a crime trying to escape from itself –
that
is the poisoned harmony of this skyline,
model
and metaphor for many others.
And
now see the whole species poised
on
the precarious lip between circle and square
and
who knows how many people and planets
must
bear this burden, until an answer is found...
First
the circle, then the square,
Who
cares? Who's there?
PS.
The synthesis of circle and square is spiral,
And
we only await its queen to assemble her workers
and
build buildings worthy of the great mystery – said the snail.
*
“Cleopatra's
Needle”
Who
knows what Ramesses did in the house of his father,
that
no one else could?
Only
the sands who kept the secret know.
And
could they have known, or can we know now
what
they prefigured when they rescued this needle from the dunes
and
carried it across the ocean
and
planted it here upon iron claws
and
fulfilled its prophecy?
“Contented-with-strength-who-smites-the-rulers-of-foreign-lands-who-attack-him,
according as his father Ra has ordained for him victory against every
land and strength in his efforts to extend the boundaries of Egypt,
the son of Ra, Thutmose, granted all life forever.”
Look in your pockets!
Pull the dollars out of your wallets and
find the kingdom of Egypt,
inside you and all around you!
The pyramids are in our pockets
and our minds and our hearts –
and our souls too!
Yes, that's what it's all about actually:
In God We Trust –
“granted
all life, stability and dominion like Ra forever.”
This is a cosmic propaganda beacon!
The colonists and their collaborators could not have dreamed
the PanAfrican paradigm they inaugurated
when they planted it here upon the lay-lines of the Atlantic,
to lead the metropolis through its eye
into the kingdom of heaven.
(Or at least that was always the dream of rich men,
from the Pharaohs to the Federal Reserve,
which is why there is such a wild prophetic justice
to find it erected here, in the uppermost story
of the planetary pyramid.)
Yet this rogue ant too worships Ra!
This rogue ant too is given life like Ra!
This rogue ant kneels to Ra,
This rogue ant finds more mystery and mastery in this needle
than in this whole haystack of a city.
But this rogue ant prays to where she points
and to where her eye rests hidden underground;
Oh Ramesses, beloved-of-Amun, if you were
“granted
life like Ra”
then who, or what, granted Ra life?
[Here the rogue ant begins to pry at the pheromonal foundation stones
of a world-system...]
This rogue ant seeks also the service of whatever and whomever gave
Ra life,
as the raindrops fall,
before the storm begins.
*
The
fireflies are flaring and the words follow,
swallowing
whole the enchantment's soul.
When
people are daring the worlds follow,
opposite
poles transpose the glow.
Why
not another? But not like any other,
You
never know where the next glow will appear.
Why
not now? But not like any other
Time
before now, to roar, and disappear.
*
And a final thing I must transcribe,
before the ergot goes and pheromonal hegemony is restored –
that we are not ants!
And it may be important to reflect on the ways in which we differ.
Most obviously of all we are mammals,
born alive to one mother and one father.
If there is a place to break the cycle of the anthills, it is here.
Mothers and fathers: Do not raise your children to serve this queen.
Daughters and sons: rescue your parents from this queen.
*
Thank you and let us
all thank
whomever balanced these
stones on the Hudson
just South of its great
metal bridge,
let us all thank the
initiator of this
mystical climate
resiliency program!
For the native Kapsee
called themselves the guardians
of pointed rocks, which
used to stand
far out in the harbor
keeping the storms from
shore.
And in the meantime,
the birds love your works!
(More than can be said
for most artwork,
or any work of man for
that matter.)
They fly from perch to
perch, singing and playing.
And thank you to the
sparrow who taught me:
Be careful where you
perch!
And are these stones
more or less precariously balanced
than the skyscrapers
that pierce the horizon?
Thank you mighty
river and a prayer to you mighty river,
May you cleanse this
city of its physical and spiritual poisons,
May you carry them
far off to sea
to be purified as
raindrops
to redeem and
resurrect the soil.
May your currents
cleanse us,
May your ripples
reveal forever
to whomever searches
them
the secrets of all
time and space.
