12.10.06

Sleepers Awake on the Precipice

Let me sum up. Please listen they are soft and dead and heartless . . . these "works of art" done by blood-smeared toads! Now wait a minute I don't mean all of them but goddam I do mean most of them I mean that almost everybody has sold out. It's terrifying. Don't you think that every tick of the clock brings us nearer the time when if you speak of beauty and love and dignity no one will have the remotest idea what you're talking about. Do you?
Don't you think we should all pour out into the streets yelling Stop it! Stop it! You've no right to do this to us!
A little pause while you tear out into the street. That's the stuff! A nice long letter to your congressman--a truly great spirit, your representative in 'the citadel of Democracy.' Now a P.S. --(take it down!)-- "And He sends you His best too."
Can you? Of course you can! Look what you've already been able to stomach . . .
A long way off--Yessiree! When we are lonely and afraid, who comforts us? When we are trying to do a bit more than just 'skim through' or 'get by,' who reaches out that old helping hand? You're damn right! Your congressman . . .
Life out of a dirty window. The blaster dull jobs, the juicelessness of our cities, our homes, our 'educations,' our bodies, our souls --all coloured by a love of everything cheap and vulgar and worthless, and by a bitter hatred of anything that is really valuable and fine and alive . . . The bastards will finally get it squeezed out enough that they can do anything the hell they want with you--
Aren't you even going to walk out into a field and look at the trees and the flowers growing there--?
Have you ever thought about a flower?
What would it mean to you if all the flowers in the world were to die?
Have you ever considered what a beautiful and wonderful thing it is to be a human being?
Have you ever actually thought of what a strange thing it is to be alive?
Flowers must be happy.
~KP sleepers awake pp118-121 (1946)

NICHTS Ist Nicht NICHTS