trombone poetry

Art galleries are obvious sources of inspiration, and Tate Modern is hard to beat. The poem below will only make sense (if then) after visiting this page: Tate Modern April 2012

CRITIQUE OF PURE VERBIAGE
(or, Tating the epistemology)

they say that
they explore counter-hegemonic
transnational networks
global voices
and cartographic practices
that map the abyssal line
between epistemologies
of the North and the South

they say that
Northern epistemologies
draw abyssal lines
between zones of being
and zones of non-being

they don’t say
what’s in the abyss

they don’t seem sure
whether the abyssal lines
are there to be mapped
or are just being drawn

they say that
Northern epistemologies
are committing epistemicide

they don’t say
whether this is achieved
by bundling
laid-back
Southern epistemologies
into the abyss

they say that
Northern epistemologies
are wasting social experience
on a massive scale

as they peer
into the abyss
do they contemplate the blackness
of pots and kettles?

they say that
mapping the lines
is a search for absent beings

they don’t say
how these will be found
if they’re not present

they say that
knowing otherwise
is also being otherwise

they know better
than to say that

they say that
they discuss knowledge
between the imagination and the imaginary

imagine that

they say that
democracy which functions
in linear time
is illiterate

they recommend
knowing and being
in a post-abyssal way

this may be
how things are
after you have jumped
over an abyssal line

this may be
illiterate

this may be
abysmal

they say that
the understanding of the world
by far exceeds
the Western understanding of the world

they don’t say that
the misunderstanding of the world
by far exceeds
even this

they say that
they shift stagnation
in the folds of the soul

they say that

they say that
through poetics/analytics
they mobilise affect

me too.

© Paul Taylor 2012