After INDECLINE’s multicity American art
installation featuring a naked
Donald Trump
August 2016
written in collaboration with allen
ginsberg & karl
marx
the little old man destroyed
by madness : his face is a grimace
of sorrow & gloom
starving
hysterical naked
madhouse : trumping tower
trumping fame
trumping power
yacketa yakhe’s
[screaming, vomiting] facts :
cock & endless balls
anecdotes : promises
budgets : borders
as they break & fall
as they break & fall.
Union Square, NY—Bulbous, veiny
birthday boy slaps mystified, giggly,
selfie-snapping crowds at impromptu
strip sess.
Cold of heart, cold of mind dragging
the negro streets
a lost
battalion of sardonic
conversationalists
who threw down a wall
who threw down terrorism
(eating) fire & jump(ing) in limousines
out of Gingrich’s moon.
the little old man
talked continuously
seventy hours from park to pad to bar to
Bellevue to museum to Brooklyn Bridge
rushing, rushing
looking for his anger fix.
: : : : : :
they seem to feel no pain at all
jumping down stoops off fire escapes
waves swirling
white supreme as whip cream
no muslims no mexicans
shut down these huddled masses
yearning to break free
Visions! omens! hallucinations! harlequin speech of
cock & endless balls!
gone down the American river shuddering!
mouth-wracked & battered bleak of brain
all drained of brilliance in drear light
of ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind.
The poem is a written version of INDECLINE’s naked statues of Trump, unveiled and subsequently destroyed in five U.S. cities as part of the group’s anarchist politics. The poem also comments on the ludicrous nature of American politics. | The alternative political views of the contributing poets are a contrast to Trump’s ultra-capitalistic, ethnocentric, misogynistic politics. | Allen Ginsberg, politically motivated American Beat Generation poet. Much of his contribution came from “Howl,” which denounced capitalism and conformity. San Francisco police arrested Ginsberg’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, on obscenity charges after the publication of Howl and Other Poems. Felinghetti’s lawyers proved the book had literary merit and was protected under the First Amendment at trial in 1957. In 1986, Ginsberg wrote a poem for then Vermont mayor and socialist Bernie Sanders called “Burlington Snow.” Sanders was Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic Primary Presidential Elections of 2016. | Karl Marx, German social activist known for writing The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Marx also wrote love poetry, including the ballad “The Little Old Man of the Water.”
August 8, 2016
