Mixed Love



You had an avtomat Kalashnikova of ’47?

Assembled in minutes by children in the old USSR.

Kalashnikov and Heston are beaming with obscene pride:

In the efficiency of the automatic

In the accuracy of your aim

In hitting the Pig’s Eye

Four in a row!

You could have surrendered like Amadou Diallo

Raised your hands

Taken sixteen

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Except a wallet!

Or, heard the bells, like Sean Bell

“Made it to church on time”

Your wedding day now a funeral day

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Nothing!

Or, lay face down, a boot on your neck like Oscar Grant

And get it in the back

And be blamed

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Cuffed in steel.

You had an AK-47!

Easy to use

Easy to transport

Easy to kill

The AK has caused more deaths

Than Hiroshima

Than Nagasaki

Than HIV

Than the bubonic plague

Than malaria

Than all earthquakes

Than anything organic or synthetic, metal or chemical.

Kalashnikov’s automatic:

Won’t jam when dirty or wet

Has a feather trigger a child can pull

“Can turn a monkey into a combatant”

There’s pride in that…obscene pride

In the accuracy of a killer

The rehearsal on man-sized silhouettes

Dark shadows

The outline of a person

The will to kill.





The vulgar pride in:

The ABM

The drone

The nuke.

Hitting the pig’s eye.

All you needed was the will

The will to kill

The will to be free

Simply…Free

Not ideologically

Not intellectually

Not romantically

Not consciously

Not politically

Like Nat Turner

Like Malcolm X

Like Steve Biko

Like Fred Hampton

Not like that…simply

Not behind bars.

The repulsive, indecent respect some pay:

To the monsters created

To vindicate a people’s historical abuse

Surprised that the monsters

Dutifully designed

Consciously created

Meticulously molded

For the cities of Iraq

For the cities of Afghanistan

For the cities of America

Frankensteinesque

Should act other than

Monsteresque.

Is Fanon correct?

Is such violence redemptive?

Is it cleansing?

Is it a rebirth?

For a microsecond

For this generation

The score was evened.

Four pig’s eyes in a row!

Wow! How sick! This obscene pride.



Fritz Pointer

17 April 2009