The Liberation of the Word

by

Fifth Estate # 406, Spring, 2020

The liberation of the word & the liberation of the world are codependent. Revolutionary writing should not be grammatically pure, disinterested or unpoetic. It should not be written from the cold vantage point of an absent silent god.

Anarchists we call ourselves—and yet we still gaze out towards Papa/Mama Syntax for permission, still we coo. We control & we deny. We hold back the shy yet flickering wet orifice of imagination’s best trickster—Wildness.

We trim out all the fat. The subgrowth of the automatic voice is ignored. And we feel smugly satisfied. We feel Well Polished & Dirt-Free. Yet our deepest inner gaze has been ushered away, exiled.

In the name of King Logic we have stupidly embraced our very own steel coffin. We are complicit in Empire, because our texts propagate Empire’s tomb-world existence. Where does the joyful Aardvark reside within these dull political texts? Where swims the spittle? Our fragile vitality has been deadducked & dulled beneath our own traitorous hand.

Comprehension & realism & the perils of the academic citadel. These are not our tools, and they never will be. Abandon & disperse, O, revolutionists.

We need liberated words now. Words that burn & scream & moan & drip. Red words that birth, & blue words that kill. We need desperate, life-giving forest words. We need non-human words. If the longing is there—& the ear is clear—& the blackened typewriter is willing—then everything we imagine is made possible.

Life waits for us in Dream. Dream’s hands? They are outstretched, overfilled. She has gathered for us (expectorated) an infinity of feverish new texts on Liberation & Desire. Still unseen & unwritten. A heavy human hand—an openfold anarchist Medium—is needed for release.

Will you, or won’t you? If set free, these feral texts of Dream will spin out like terrorist-flowers, they will vibrate with & in all the unknowns. They will storm us & they will seduce us with their overflowings & their pleasure/pains, & Yaldabaoth’s Empire will shudder & disperse.

In a truly revolutionary text, the words make love.

Steven Cline co-edits the journal, Peculiar Mormyrid and participates in a local surrealist group in Atlanta, playing games, reciting dreams, and generally living the good surr-life. stevenclineart.com

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