Another Taken Shot
So the dark haired boy
lifts the megaphone and
puts the set text
through the mic.
with fervour
working to a purpose.
The angle of his arm is fixed;
a picture of marketable energy.
And the girls’ eyes
(they are all his type)
go awandering
across the empty map
of his scrubbed clean skin.
Ernst Jünger, in his commentary to the great Edgardo Cosarinsky documentary One Man's War, remarks on the surprising readiness of women in occupied France to offer favours to the troops of the Reich.
ReplyDeleteWomen always prefer the victor, Jünger says, as if stating the obvious.
Mechanical and marketable energy works out its own ergonomic solutions.
The boy was a Socialist Worker, a party that always makes its presence felt. Their membership is drawn for the most part from the campuses. It's a vaguely martial glamour that draws them in part; they're known for their direct confrontations the English Defence League, the British National Party and other far right groups. However, for all the SWP's talk of equalities of all kinds, its always instructive to see where the centres of power are at these events.
ReplyDeleteAll those ergonomic solutions take no time at all to settle into a working grammar. Even among the revolutionaries, the given gestures trump the body's freedom every time.
This is the right hand panel of a triptych that began with the 4th in the series. I'm the girl that don't fit and there's the boy I'll never be (I'm sure there's the seed of a song in this sentence). The central panel will come in a few poems' time.
ReplyDelete