Tag Archives: politics

Aug 04 2020
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Art, Essay, Excerpt, literature, Non-Fiction, Outsider Artists, Philosophy, Poetry

Morality is a Creative Endeavor…

A link to my latest essay, “The End of the Imagination” — an updated, refurbished, and almost completely re-written exploration I had begun to explore in 2016.  This is an essay I am not only proud of…The_End_of_ Imagination_1200x628 but, sadly, one that seems to crystallize how I feel now and how I have felt for a long time.  Thank you to Brian Alessandro and Lupe Rodarte for once again having the courage to publish work that is challenging, personal, and radical.

“The critic discusses the medicine, the artist administers it.  It is neither the job of the creative artist nor the creative critic to make you feel good.  It is not our job to provide hope, but truth.  The artist gives you truth at all costs.  The critic – merely interprets and records what is before him and tries to illuminate certain things we prefer to keep in an artist’s shadow.  Or his closet.

Once you have usurped true creativity with an eye towards consumerism and advertising culture you have turned your back from the North Star and have settled on the ethos of Madison Avenue. When banks become proselytizers of culture instead of the individual artist you are in a wasteland.

And wastelands are living death brought to realization by inability to imagine.”

http://thenewengagement.com/literature/the-end-of-imagination

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Sep 12 2013
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Books, Excerpt, Fiction, literature, Poetry Quote

Lying Meat


There is a risk
in knowing
trusting
and believing
the eyes in your head
and the voice in your heart…

…The feeling
that crawls
along the wall of your
spleen
underway
inside your mind
the decay
of a possibility.…

that lying meat is proven right with each and every passing day their structures stand and balance the board of the hollow man’s wet-dream
A scoreboard for the insurance man
A loose noose so the stock trader can’t hang himself
(Not that he’d want to/No he’s made the bet against the hands that tied the mesh together/In fact he owns the machine)
All hail the robotic father and forsaken son beaten into the sand of the King Tut exhibition where they’ll teach you to walk like an Egyptian for a special price but think like an Angry Saxon on his way home from the yards teeth tongue and dripping waiting in the mouth
Below there are about a million suckers who’ve reached the end of their lollipop
Each of them a Joe Stack in between the sheets of their mind sheets of the sound sheets of a lonely woolen brain tired of trying and nervous about what it all meant
Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide,
but sheep know when it is time to raise the b-b-b-baahh…

Not sure where that leaves us

Do we have hope?
(What’s hope – but nope with more hair!)
Hope has been AWOL since 1492 and returned briefly somewhere in between the Beatles and Martin Luther King
NY and Alabama
A porter’s camera and freshly painted theater that still smelled like a barn and had a few drops of sweat left behind by Max Roach or a sari that had just been ripped and was struggling to break free of its curry and dog eared ruffles

O-bomb-a reappraised hope and made off with a hefty sum
Not sure where it exactly got him
But i know for a fact that he sleeps well at night

Glad somebody does


There’s a bleeding termite inside
each of us
what was once sawdust
is now
the backbone
of an African chief
a winded Viking
an Indian sermon
once gazed upon
before the dollar made its move.

*
— from the 2011 chapbook, “Lying Meat & Other Poems Beneath the Oil”

Lying Meat

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Aug 29 2013
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literature, Poetry

The Best Minds of My Generation

Ginsberg wrote: “I saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by
madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo
in the machin-
ery of night…”

But not me.

No,
I saw the best minds of my generation
resist their true insanity
and give up their imagination to Dead Steam.
The best minds of my generation are writing poems, but not sharing them
The best minds of my generation are not on the picket line, they’re being trampled by them
The best minds of my generation do not want to occupy
The best minds of my generation have a hard time ordering a cup of coffee
The best minds of my generation have no desire to follow idols
The best minds of my generation stay indoors or inside, off-the-grid, or out of bounds
The best minds of my generation are not being supported by grants or parents
The best minds of my generation create unheard symphonies and daydreams that would put a long-gone Maestro to shame
The best minds of my generation can’t seek some spiritual fix cause they are too busy remembering pin codes
The best minds of my generation aren’t interested in owning anything but their own lives
The best minds of my generation are caught between beepers and iPhones
The best minds of my generation mourn for all we already could not accomplish
The best minds of my generation no longer ask Why, but How?
The best minds of my generation realize that a man not offended by anything will stand for nothing
The best minds of my generation know that the pen is mightier than the sword
The best minds of my generation are not lost, they are simply…not found
The best minds of my generation don’t see their own potential & therefore they cease to imagine
The best minds of my generation don’t understand their times because they are not creating them
Instead, we’re willing to become like every other part of the universe and give up our identity –
desperate
to join the parade
The best minds of my generation could be beautiful –
If they could only see themselves
If they could only pause
& accept the failed status quo –
Infinitely being hurled at them
With the terror
& grace of a runaway train
& the tremor of the other poet’s great maxim: “The best lack all conviction.”

*

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Aug 26 2013
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Poetry, Protest

Kitty Genovese

Anger is just rage with an ‘N’ to soften the blow.

Always look out for someone who cherishes books & then burns them.

first noticed the lack of outrage in the summer of ‘04
the year Republicans blew through NY like a shark in water
looking back over my shoulder
through the pinched elbow of time,
i can see it was merely a habit i had noticed,
a conscious “putting-down”
a fear of “letting loose”
elements of souls
not saved.
We have no anger. We have Facebook.

they have pathologized everything that is normal.
mtv created our generation
a holocaust of chic-violent-racist-woman hating nation
gave a boat of idiots who were weaned on Star Wars – cheapness & trash,
pimps & prostitutes,
& Lexus-wet dreams
& made sure they were dried like corpses
& believed in like rain

rage is of a past era
so we’re accused of romanticizing the human ‘error’
of civil rights
cause we’d rather crack open the skull of a depraved man
who refuses to give his seat to a woman
rather than call my black brother a nigger
or my white sister a bitch—
so we’re branded “Dinosaurs”
& my head aches & my teeth ache & i wonder where my son is, what my daughter could be —
They’ll have no anger. They’ll have Facebook.

take some responsibility
stop blaming your kids
you don’t hate anything cause you don’t love anything
you don’t love cause you’re consumed with fear
you say you hate your landlord but you give him all your money
you say you hate the war but you’re glad it’s bright & sunny
you won’t give to a man without a job
but you’ll pay your taxes so Uncle Sam can maim and rob!
eat your pizza & shut up
we’ll join you if you’re ready to sweep —
we’re not preachers
we’re cleaners
sent to take out
the morning trash

everything is personal cause there is no business
just opportunity for the rich to get richer while you defend them.

Call me when the guilty decide to bleed.

We have sewed the seeds of Kitty Genovese.

*

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Aug 13 2013
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Essay

Everyday Activism

A Personal Philosophy & Message to those who Claim to be Revolutionary

Everybody wants to change the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

–          Leo Tolstoy

[Union Sq.Park, NYC, July 2004, Anti-War/Republican Protest] (Fleck)

[Union Sq.Park, NYC, July 2004, Anti-War/Republican Protest] (Fleck)

 Activism is in the everyday, the unmarked corners, the unseen hands, the lonely hum of an elevator shaft. It is in the mind and heart of every waking human being who sees the horror of the world in himself. We’re on our last legs. Give a part of yourself wholly before this society rips you apart. Fight, speak truth to power, live creatively, love intensely, never shy away from an argument, spend your last dime on someone you’ve never met, and know that you have tried your best. 

Activism starts in the home.  Or, if you do not have a “home” of your own — in the heart. Real activists are human beings with a lot to lose, with no group or organization behind them. 

True compassion and activism in life must be in a continuous state of flux; the wheels must be constantly revolving. It is not good enough or justifiable, frankly, to attend a protest march while you are fully aware that your next-door neighbor is starving to death.

To be courageous in daily life by speaking truth to power is all the activism one needs to engage in.  And yet how many activists challenge the cruelty or hypocrisy in their daily lives?  I know several so-called activists who will march on the White House lawn and yet won’t lift a finger to scrub their bathroom floor.  There is more activism in keeping your closet organized than there is in empty sloganizing and cliché’ mob-anger.  You want to stop the war?  Stop beating your kids, following incompetent bosses, and getting angry at your spouse for telling a white lie.  Your government lies to you everyday.  And what do you do about it?  You give it your money!

Activism implies taking action.  It implies doing something.  Organizing is different.  It is part of it but it is not the fruit of the womb itself.  It’s the labia. 

Activists assert their humanity and impulse to change the world every single day. It is a way of life, the way some people are born blind or live by a certain code.  These are people you may not acknowledge, but they are real people. They are stars in their unique way and out-shine the dull luster of celebrities and  “professional” activists. They are not slummers and are slaves only to their conscience.  

Remember to look at the drama everyone else ignores.

Revolution, after all, is not the huge explosion — but the tiny threads that make up the wick.

 Words & Image By

  Dennis Leroy Kangalee & Nina Fleck

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