Michael A.

“The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck”
― Paul Virilio

“Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has drooled in the mouth of your laughing little girl
someone has walked by slobbering all over the face of your domain

the world moves away from you

i am rowing

i am rowing

i am rowing against your life

i am rowing

i split into countless rowers
to row more strongly against you

you fall into blurriness
you are out of breath
you get tired before the slightest effort

i row

i row

i row

you go off drunk tied to the tail of a mule
drunkenness like a huge umbrella that darkens the sky
and assembles the flies

dizzy drunkenness of the semicircular canals
unnoticed beginnings of hemiplegia

drunkeness no longer leaves you
lays you out to the left
lays you out to the right
lays you out on the stony ground of the path

i row
i row
i am rowing against your days

you enter the house of suffering

i row
i row

on a black blinfold your life is unfolding
on the great white eye of a one eyed horse
your future is unrolling

I AM ROWING”
― Henri Michaux

“And there is no question that we are preoccupied by dying. But why? It is because when we die, we leave behind not only the world but also death. That is the paradox of the last hour. Death works with us in the world; it is a power that humanizes nature, that raises existence to being, and it is within each one of us as our most human quality; it is death only in the world - man only knows death because he is man, and he is only man because he is death in the process of becoming. But to die is to shatter the world; it is the loss of person, the annihilation of the being; and so it is also the loss of death, the loss of what in it and for me made it death. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasing to be man I also cease to be mortal, I am no longer capable of dying, and my impending death horrifies me because I see it as it is: no longer death, but the impossibility of dying.”
― Maurice Blanchot, Literature and the Right to Death