Revolution: the act of turning again by Richard Lance Williams Mythopoetry Scholar vol. 3 2012 mythopoetry.com publisher




	Mythopoetry Scholar
	Annual Reflections In Depth Perspectives Revolution: the act of turning again -Richard Lance Williams
	1. you wake up —thud— unarm the night (it could be the murder of your last dream) & the world smells like piss— a thick sludge of orange butter piss— you check your sheets the commode the tank the couch the cat box the fridge the garbage can the backdoor front door tool shed garage washer dryer car bicycle Segway the woodpile & then you hit the TV remote ah! there it is— the world will end with everybody pissed off at everybody else de-evolution is televised there’s your apocalypse fire your sweet comeuppance doesn’t it feel great to show all those self-righteous pricks how it felt to put up with all their shit for all those goddamned motherfucking years fuck shit cunt 2. who are you—Bret Easton Ellis—does anybody remember him or who cares shooting bullets at schools of stink drawing diagrams of the human female reproductive organs—staining silk shirts with movie squibs of ketchup & Karo or clearly the mystery genre simulates our search for who we are—incidents we have forgotten—secrets— the blanks—define us more than what we clearly remember— we are each detectives good & bad ones intermittently— but we are all confabulists filling in the gaps with bullshit & beauty 3. early 20th century artists disassembled the world—Schoenberg Nijinsky Picasso Eliot Joyce— blew it up—fractured the narrative & you get Julian Schnabel with his godawful pots & beautiful films —a shit can become gold— you say: it works—this Rube Goldberg contraption of disparity this conflagration of piss & shit—glass bellied blueprints of “the bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even” left to be covered in dust by the chess master Marcel Duchamp 4. & you gave up on Castaneda when he hung you in a barn saying you could not be free until you could remember every detail of your life & you knew it was your dreams that held you hostage to the fire where be Swift Gulliver with his huge hose (control this R. Mutt laughed an all-white urinal the sign of the times) your youngest daughter calls asking who was that woman with the high IQ who was more famous for her breasts the one who died in a car crash literally losing her head—Jayne Mansfield man’s field—it is not irony how you gave up on cigarettes sugar alcohol & red meat but not on lying (o Hermes does Zeus even know, most clever of usurpers—media master—the revolution will be advertised 1/2 off the top it’s a fire sale— “Ash Wed.” T.S. had it wrong except about cats boys setting them on fire cruel little bastards Lt. Calley Nero Jehovah Sherman whoever ordered the Dresden bombing the ovens of Dachau the crosses KKK all those stars up there waiting to burn out this fabric of emptiness & the garden of Eden guarded by a flaming sword when the executioners push a man to the wall they don’t order “shoot” Lennon singing “You say you want a revolution . . . you’d better free your mind instead” but you see what that got him & we all got it coming said the joker to the Big Chief burn that mother down —disco inferno— & who reads beyond Dante’s first book with Lucifer a black baste embedded in ice the rosy fingers of a Nagasaki nightmare turn around & she’s a young girl going out—her hair on fire singing along with John Lydon “Anger is an energy” —light a fire in the watchtower Agamemnon is home & Clytemnestra is not happy—o regicide Prometheus lost his liver & the gods are pissed “I am the god of hell fire & i bring you . . . ” the world turned upside down o Copernicus, you’ve made of god a liar Notes: “Wake up” is a call in The Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet The Watchtower. T.S. Eliot “Ash Wednesday” based on Dante’s Purgatorio has the refrain “Because I do not hope to turn” while his “The Hollow Men” concludes with the famous whimpering end of the world. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is a 1970 poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. While decrying the commercialization of everything, his was a plea for a revolution in the heart. The Hopi and other Native Americans have a prophecy that the world will end in fire. “Fuck shit cunt piss” are the first of George Carlin’s seven incendiary words not to be uttered on television (in the public place of discourse). Motherfucker is another of the words. Bret Easton Ellis wrote Less Than Zero, a nihilist novel famous for its casual moral emptiness. You never read it. Robert Downey Jr was in the film version playing the heroically emptiest of characters. The reaction to his death belied the nihilist pose as mere fashion. His literary pal Jay McInerney was famous for the use of second person in the novel Bright Lights, Bright City. The early 20th century saw fracturing as its main theme in art and culture— from Einstein’s relativity to Cubism to 12-tone music to “The Wasteland” to Finnegan’s Wake, narrative was revolutionized. Julian Schnabel gained notice for large paintings whose chief substrate consisted of broken ceramic plates. He was more successful as a film director. “The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even” usually referred to as “The Large Glass” is a large assemblage on glass. It cracked but Duchamp made use of the cracks in his repair. He incorporated dust into it while it lay in his studio the eight years it took to complete. He spent his latter years playing chess, creating art in secret. Carlos Castaneda’s The Eagle's Gift, 1981. Prometheus had his liver pulled out day after day by an eagle for stealing fire from the gods. Firewater is a term purportedly used by Native Americans to describe whiskey. The Gaelic term for whiskey is usquebaugh, meaning the water of life. Alcoholism does damage to the liver. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the titular protagonist outrages the Lilliputians putting out a fire by urinating on it. Marcel Duchamp outraged the art world in 1917 with his “Fountain,” a urinal signed R. Mutt. Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” combined with the famous red covered Big Chief tablets. The Trammps 1978 disco hit. A famous commercial in the 1960s for Kodak used the song “Turn Around” with the lyrics “turn around and she’s a young girl going out on her own.” John Lydon’s “Rise” begins with the refrain, “May the road rise with you.” To be pissed is English slang for being inebriated. English band The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s only hit was “Fire,” released in 1968, a year of revolution. At the Yorktown surrender of the British to the American revolutionaries, the tune played was “The World Turned Upside Down.” Empedocles posits four elements. Heraclitus considered fire the fundamental element: “All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods.” (Diels-Kranz B90 (Freeman [1948] 1970, p. 45).) The term revolution was first used in politics in England in 1688-89, to describe the overthrow of James II in favor of William III and Mary II (from Richard Pipes; see http://chagala.com/russia/pipes.htm) Nominated in the community generated category #mythopoetics, Revolution: the act of turning again, a part of the top ten nominated pages from this issue, finishes competition on 2/18/14 with an overall standing in position *37* among more than 3,500 nominees. Congratulations to Richard (Lance) Scow-Williams on this fine achievement. * ** * ** * **** * ** *
	Richard Lance Williams (Ric Williams) received his master’s degree in mythology with an emphasis in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 1998. Ric has edited the Litera listings of The Austin Chronicle since 1988. Ric also wrote the “Poet’s Beat” column (interviews with local poets) for The Austin Light from 1987-1991. He edited for Ed Buffalo’s poetry anthologies Aileron and Vowel Movement in the late 80’s and early 90’s and was the associate editor from 1997-1999 for Alchemy on Sunday, the literary journal of Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2006 he became the senior editor for Dalton Publishing. Ric has written and/or edited for the Austin Chronicle, Man! Magazine, and the Salt Journal. His interview with Larry McMurtry is included in Conversations with Texas Writers, published in March 2005 by UT Press. Publications: Secret Book of God read an excerpt from this book poetry, 104 pages, soft cover bookstore price: $14.95 December 2007 - Robert Bonazzi, critically acclaimed author and Poetic Diversity Columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, announced Ric Williams’ the secret book of god as the best book of poetry by a living Texas poet in his 2007 Poetic Diversity Awards. These awards intend to bring recognition to significant books that have been overlooked. Previous winners of the Poetry in Texas award are Paul Christensen (Hard Country, Thorp Springs Press) and Naomi Shihab Nye (You & Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd.). Purchase Here Woman In The Tower: Stories for the Wounded Child read an excerpt from this book read what people are saying about this book Fiction, 200 Pages, Hard Cover Bookstore Price $19.95 Richard Lance Williams reads from His novel: WOMAN IN THE TOWER Purchase Here website: ricwilliams.com Return To Table of Conten