Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Santheripean Kingdies by Stan Apps

Sometimes I feel the need to write these
very straightforward political poems
in the style of like
Vachel Lindsey, Carl Sandburg, or maybe Kenneth Patchen

poems that denounce the abuses of the powerful
and call on the people to throw
the powerful out a high window.

And then when I'm done and I've written those poems
I realize that there is no THE PEOPLE, anymore.
The populace has become highly specialized,
and persons out there in the populace

can only be communicated with
within highly specific and technical frameworks
appropriate to their differentiated roles in the technological economy.

There's this idea that we should not say
pointless and obvious things;
because of this, no one can say anything important.
Important subjects have been covered by experts
who were more involved or following more closely,
and it is up to us to deal instead
with dividing and sub-classifying
our own areas of expertise,
those messy arcane issues portioned onto our plates

like, what kind of textual apparatus
implies the most forceful political critique,
like, what alternatives to direct statement
will have the most decisive effect upon discursive norms
to open up alternative pathways of reference
through which a better kind of politics can be articulated?

This is valuable because it is not
forced on us, because it has not been done for us
by the experts (we are the experts
when it comes to the political implication of indirect reference!),
this is valuable because we CHOOSE to value it
and can't nobody stop us from having our power
because WE are the experts here
sheltered in these issues of reference,
our lifeboat of relevance
like a tiny speck upon the open sea of audience.

I'm trending at an angle to that lifeboat.
The pointless and obvious writing in this book
details those frustrating things it isn't worth addressing,
that we will be efficiently exploited:
one political party will exploit with ruthlessness,
the other will exploit in a soft respectful way,
the old good-cop-bad-cop routine will work.

You know it. You know the material.
Your life has covered it.
You know the material, you just happened to fail the test
because the way you knew it wasn't money,
the way you knew it stank of debt,
stank of the blandness of long mortgage
or the empty tub of years of rent.

To be exploited until death
while enjoying pleasant social interactions
with family and friends and
modern media technology.

I am very good at using modern media technology
to get information that I am allowed to have,
and I use this information to understand
things that happen far away.

This is a fairly useless skill.
How is understanding the ins-and-outs
of political conflict in Nigeria
any better than watching Letterman?
These are just two specialized discourses
that one can converse about
with similarly interested persons.

So you see why I write those incantatory
political poems, meant to be chanted on a stage
while I stamp my foot and slap the podium,
in front of a riled-up audience of THE PEOPLE.
It's a big nostalgia trip, a kind of cornpone,
a fantasy about the time
when THE PEOPLE hadn't been specialized into extinction.
Other poets can listen to it
and feel like it's kind of
limited but somewhat hip.

There's this line in a David Bowie song
called "Sons of the Silent Age"
which is a sort of critique about, I guess
minimalist composers? how they had no passion or whatever
(in implicit contrast to the passion of David Bowie, natch.)

The line I like is about how these "Silent Age" composers
"listen to tracks by Santheripean Kingdies."
Whenever I think of someone doing something
really esoteric, I think of the line
"listen to tracks by Santheripean Kingdies."
So that's what happens when you read political poetry to a crowd of poets.
They kinda like it but they want to get back to
listening to tracks by Santeripean Kingdies.
They want you to be Santheripean Kingdies;
they want to enjoy a specialized discourse.
And I am Santeripean Kingdies.
Am that, been that, done that, do it again, yeah.

I love being Santheripean Kingdies
because there's more to it than
just being exploited until death.
It's a way out. The reason we're all so specialized,
so specific in our interests and
particular in our discourse
is because it's a sort of a way out. It's a way part way out.

I'm Santheripean Kingdies and I'm way out, baby!

I'm not sure this poem proves it though.
You'll have to check out my back-catalog.
That book that Dana Ward put out is trippy.
That book Shirinyan put out will weird you out.
Or catch me at a reading and I'll weird you out.

But this poem is, as I intended
(or at least I hope, I want it to be)
pointless and as obvious as death
(death is the most obvious sub-worth-mentioning thing, I think?)
pointless and as obvious as exploition
(in the sense that being exploited specifically has no point
since it's all for others, coerced to be for others).

I intend that, hope that because
I want to tell the truth (but why?)
as if by telling it the truth itself
could be destroyed (it won't),
could be made malleable by virtue
of the tired art of spitting it out.