Anne Waldman

She continues at warp speed, mounting her poetry dance for the stage
and podium. She could be riding a seven-headed howling dragon, as harlot
who has rejected the patriarchal robber baron juta, riding a dragon with tail
so long that it sweeps down a third of the stars of heaven. She’ll carry a cup,
a skull-cup of blood perhaps, a transmografied grail with its abominations and
impurities of fornication, drunk with blood of martyrs. O Babylon, perdition and
idolatrous paganism, all rebel angels stand with me now. Against the Powell
Doctrine, the Bush fatwas, the euphemisms of apocalypse. Thirty silver coins
Ha! You warmongers sell the country cheap. Down with the tyrants.
Saint Michael dance with me. Have you heard about the mirror neurons that
show sentient beings wired for empathy? Sometimes referred to as the
„Dalai Lama neurons“? Invoke them now, so that I feel what you feel deep in the
desert trenches. Ida Lupino has a unique career, a thinking actress, who back
then could mouth her interesting syllables, have some studio clout as director,
take a stand outside the distraction culture.

This is the writing dance
Or a plumed helmet which itself
Resembles a heart in the shape of Africa
Continents! Continents!
The challenge is to question the „warrior“
Get inside his/her armor
Get inside the land which has no boundary
We could talk about China now
Its economics, its technocrats,
The backdoor deals
We could happily be Canadian
But could we really?
We could talk about Liberia,
Suffering everywhere
& Congo and our own backyard
safe... starlit
Stomp on it right now
Out on that turf

This is the obsequious politician
Flattering you
You never believe him
Never. The eminence of philosophy
So crenellated, so terraced pronouncing
The name of your dance: Down with the tyrant!
That is the gesture and the name: Down with the tyrant
Down with his exaggerated thunder
You wanna talk psychosis?
Down with the tyrant
Daggers...hysterical puritans...starved animals
You wanna? You wanna? You want to talk?
You want to write?
This is the writing dance, written
for all to see
the whole picture of the decimated site, the picture
of charnel ground.. .the jackals came... .& the jackals came
sift, sift through the body parts
sift... sift...

See the back of his head?
Would a gesture
Knock him off? Or is he too steely-eyed?
Eyes look through the head—inside there the
Little screen -the trick is to dance upon it
The dance I was doing is the written dance
To be a barker, be a noise maker, be a saint—
Tools, linen, weapons, wires, women creating
Sainthood, place hands together and bow

This was the written dance…eyes looking back on
Themselves before growing cold, check out the moon
Check out all the characters
The philosopher for example – her window of the room
The guy ready to blast his M16
The naturalist with steely gaze
Dark streets out there below the moon?
Is that what I see?
Is it written? No this is the smitten dance
Flying over the Occupied territories
Don’t talk to me about transgression any more
This is the trespass dance
This is the way I get down for it
It’s my power structure to strangle Rumsfeld!
STRANGLE Rumsfeld!!!!!!!!
Avuant thee thou Rumsfeld euphemisms!

If I were a scientist I would scream in my
Scientist
Neurons! Neurons!
I would say it again & again the way
The neurons like to be commended &
Commented upon: Dear Neurons
You can be kind
I would say elephants move like this
Neuralinguistically
Snakes move like that
Hyenas are shrieking at the body politic
If I were a Sufi I might spin outta control

This is not the terra firma dance
This is not the map of the capital materialist Junta dance
This is the writing dance
Ida Lupino liked id
She wanted the script to go on
Many of the women stars of another era
Were never confused about priorities
They had their stage directions. Their “moves”
Their maps
They had their “songs” their “gestures” their “postures”
They wrote for a silver screen
They had their “desires”
Their sky was covered with a thin layer of clouds
Everything was
quiet and still when they came on the "set"
It was like a scene of tranquil poetry
It was a scene you had to have been there for
As it got written
And the one who emerged, who lingered
Was the one you pointed to-was-was0-"she"
She who had been stalling, feet like the feet of many
Different animals
& with eyes in all the pores of their pelts
& voices
sounding as only she could as them,
and mapping
and changing the way the writing would go
if it were a dance
You might wonder