The event was produced on December 20, 2023 at the Soulshine Market in Pine Bush, New York by James Pogo. Dan Andreana performed poetry scored like music stretching words to their limit with expressive variation in pitch, volume, and timbre. Then James Pogo and his associate Kevin, performing as Flux Duo ++ passed out party hats and lay on their backs shirtless with lit candles in their navels while playing a little toy organ and leading the audience in “Happy Birthday.” The third portion of the program was a set of simultaneous readings by me and Patricia. The evening was concluded by Steve Roe who carefully set the stage, lighted it, and performed a moving song dedicated to the children of Gaza.
Artist Tom Gargiulo, only just arrived from Florida, introduced the performers.
document 1: a sample of Dan Andreana’s texts
Softly 1/8/19
nil ad sense a)voided
oh doze on the lid!
brat shines boldly
bodily in every nigh(t
hangar shut down
with doug fir sprigs
needling the crossing guard.
they sings the songs
and sonnets of tar
burnt under a frond
like paper clippings.
your’sis hours in t)his.
a gradient of wan
to wax above
the rippled sea
in a gully of sand.
she waits on the bar(d
expecting any moon
for the path(age
over the moss.
25#2 (2017)
S take urn
table lego BL
ox E blew shrill
tower over crow
D lighted my lift
on 47th teen strut
terd door from the Reich
a champion rains on
foul ingot morsels
stuck to frozen lip edge
G oughtta rat a tat
sir man on the muonty
red queer queen a miss
blacking out the middle
slight offended shuffle
T rye red shot guzzler
shooting from hip
corner pocket
got a rocket in?
lawn before the dawn
tossed out the water
grayer than black is white
just before going to work
she said why knot?
So we tied one on
document 2: William Seaton’s simultaneous
readings
Elizabeth Barrett Browning/ Henry
Miller
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful
indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal
light
Leaps in the flame from
cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee . . . mark! . . . I
love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified
aright,
With conscience of the new rays
that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest:
meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while
loving so.
And what I feel, across the
inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself,
and show
How that great work of Love
enhances Nature’s.
Sauntering along the boulevard I
had noticed her verging toward me with that curious trot-about air of a whore
and the run-down heels and cheap jewelry and the pasty look of their kind which
the rouge only accentuates. It was not difficult to come to terms with her. We
sat in the back of the little tabac called L’Elephant and talked it over
quickly. In a few minutes we were in a five franc room on the Rue Amelot, the
curtains drawn and the covers thrown back. She didn’t rush things, Germaine.
She sat on the bidet soaping herself and talked to me pleasantly about this and
that; she liked the knickerbockers I was wearing. Tres chic! she thought. They
were once, but I had worn the seat out of them; fortunately the jacket covered
my ass. As she stood up to dry herself, still talking to me pleasantly,
suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward me leisurely, she
commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with her two hands,
caressing it, patting it, patting it.
Nicene Creed/deSade
I believe in one God, The Father
almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Of all things visible and invisible. I
believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, The Only Begotten Son of God, Born of the
Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God,
Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; Through him all things were
made. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, And by the
Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, And became man. For our sake he
was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried, And rose
again on the third day In accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into
heaven And is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in
glory To judge the living and the dead And his kingdom will have no end. I
believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, Who proceeds from the
Father [and the Son], Who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
Who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic and
apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins And I look
forward to the resurrection of the dead And the life of the world to come.
Amen.
The idea of God is the sole wrong
for which I cannot forgive mankind. To judge from the notions expounded by
theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to
crowding hell. There is no stupidity religions have omitted to revere; and you
know just as well as I, my friends, that when one examines a human institution,
the first thing one must do is discard all religious notions. They are poison
to lucidity. Let nobody doubt that religions are the cradles of despotism. The
first of all despots was a priest; the first king and the first emperor of
Rome, Numa and Augustus, both allied themselves with the priesthood;
Constantine and Clovis were abbots rather than sovereigns; Heliopolis was the
priest of the sun. In all times, in all centuries, despotism and religion have
been so thoroughly interconnected that, as is easily demonstrated, in
destroying one you undermine the other, for the profound reason that each will
help the other to gain power.
Hitler/Marx & Engels
Aryan tribes, often almost
ridiculously small in number, subjugated foreign peoples and, stimulated by the
conditions of life which their new country offered them (fertility, the nature
of the climate, etc.), and profiting also by the abundance of manual labour
furnished them by the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing
faculties which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes. Within
the course of a few thousand years, or even centuries, they gave life to
cultures whose primitive traits completely corresponded to the character of the
founders, though modified by adaptation to the peculiarities of the soil and
the characteristics of the subjugated people. But finally the conquering race
offended against the principles which they first had observed, namely, the
maintenance of their racial stock unmixed, and they began to intermingle with
the subjugated people. Thus they put an end to their own separate existence;
for the original sin committed in Paradise has always been followed by the
expulsion of the guilty parties.
The history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and
oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either
in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of
the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost
everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold
gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights,
plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters,
journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again,
subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the
ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but
established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in
place of the old ones. Our epoch, the
epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up
into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other
— Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
document 3: the Flux Duo ++
document 4: Steve Roe’s song
“Blue”
Intro (spoken): “it is said that
our understanding of happiness comes from the experiences of our childhood.”
Hold up sign “blue.”
Hold up sign “for the children of
Gaza.”
Sung:
“keep things simple, my love, and look at the
sky….. it’s blue”
“Sit by my side, my love, and
stare at the sea…. It’s blue.”
Keep your heart true, my love, for
we are all born to die…. It’s blue.”
