How could McLuhan,
a man so clearly from the future,
stay so resolutely in the past?
There is no place for truth
without those pitbull Mailers
to spray and problematize
in endless sub-divisions,
as if each person in the tribe will get
a slice of some large, useless pie;
his anger is as implacable
as an old testament God
but as vaporous as sky.
The only organizing
principle, it seems,
is implied violence,
when the gardens people walk
are arranged for them
and they think in finite circuits;
when the charge becomes too much
the propriety of sharing entertrainment
for the slaves dissolves
and the dark and ancient imperatives
take over, without a moment's pause,
without even a pretense of being threatened,
and the revolution skips away
in the electrical air
through the illusions of buildings and ground.
The air may be vacant
but there are ribbons always pulled
by the least and the freest among us.
The castle of cards never moved,
instead it, one day,
wasn't there
and I saw the Malay mother
with her iron tongue, the silver
dyed damsel with her finger
on the nearest available pulse,
the shivering beggar
pointing a soot-covered hand,
the wild and gray-haired prophet
speaking with his arms and
the buzzing that comes from his mouth --
all different worlds -- once unified by ghosts --
how could structures that do not exist
bear something alive?
