Two Poems | Lewis Freedman

1

another concern i’ve got

concerns trauma &​​ 

the point of sale.

like which comes first today,

loss as a repeating structure

or loss as an exchange,

or, why do i want to disorient myself

to make a text that can’t flex b/w them.

we​​ may precede but

not proceed to, or

we may precede & proceed as.

our friends are binding us to the motions

as they shift cash from month onto our sides.

the in or on aspect of time runs like rust,

or flicks a giant ear, or is below the building

whose undone aspect we are accommodating

by being on while in.

we may no longer precede us as us.

we may not choose to proceed to or in the shift.

they slapped the time to a giant bellow in cash.

in other words,​​ 

as the month samples on

it friends the​​ flexibility &​​ 

function of choice

which is drastically increased

to no good end.

A

A public intellectual takes a stance, we don’t exist. I know there’s a break between the ways we think we know and the community we think we’re a part of, I repeat​​ this, so what is it? A plea to the public intellectual. We need more public intellectuals to stand up and say that our passage thru time is only a baby flood or the displacement of many many worms from the wars they must fight & thru which what we think we​​ know is presented. Like how a manifesto’s chief prognosticative quality is its failure to produce revolt as no revolution can move in the process of already having happened. The public intellectual becomes a​​ target of our scorn. Such a kind ache that produces what’s right. So good to be concerned for what’s not oneself. Then to feel one’s thought as imminent in the world, to know it can speak to whatever among us arises, is to lack the encroaching sense of having been drugged by moving, is to lack an immigrant’s sense of a place where one’s not, and when we think we are the target b/c we feel we can & thrill to risk ourselves to think for others, then we are the producers of a power we say we oppose.

What I’m trying to say is this: all of my political intention is in excess because it’s very cold outside this morning & I want to stay inside. When I’m outside my breath climbs out of my mouth & it hangs in the air. I see it looking. This is how we stay inside when we go out. Simple as the ecological engineer​​ melting into the cene they design. I’m not a public intellectual, I’m a poet who indulges a fantasy: because I don’t know how to localize no one knows or reads me. This helps me to dream an anonymity in my call. I dream I’m written in the chapter of non-humans desynchronized from a system I brought up to own me.