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Thursday 24 September 2009

Stoogism: A Manifesto


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File:Sunrise JAX and palms.jpg





























The palm trees
the bars
in my internalized sing
sing

A peon feeling meaningful
he's missing something

We are not fools
or terrorists
we are stooges

This is a movement
not a weakness of character

I will be a stooge in
order to survive
the coming pulsations of Class






File:Sing Sing old cell block.jpg
























Sunrise at Jacksonville beach: DeusXFlorida, 2009
Old cell block, Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, N.Y.: photo by C.M. Stieglitz, N.Y. Telegram and Sun, 1938 (Library of Congress)

6 comments:

u.v.ray. said...

It's funny really. All these literary schools and movements. Who creates them? There's currently a little conglomorate of writers here in Britain dubbed the "Off-beats" - where do they come up with these things? I'll never allow myself to be counted amongst any of them. I am a cantankerous grouch. And I call what I do Grouchism.

aditya said...

A peon feeling meaningful
he's missing something

hahah .. nicely done. You got your point through. Some people are pretentious when it comes to making/understanding art.

Art, as I believe (my beliefs will never make a difference to the world, but for the sake of it ..), is the same for a farmer walking down the road .. and some one sitting in a penthouse smoking a 500$ cigar admiring an expensive painting he bought.

TC said...

Ray,

As I'm not a joiner, I'll now have to crawl a little further out on my personal limb and start a new movement: Post-Grouchism.

TC said...

Aditya,

Yes, I'd almost be tempted to go you one further by suggesting that as the farmer has likely seen more of life than the penthouse fellow, he may well be in a better position to make/understand art...that is, if he would ever have the time and materials at his disposal.

Mariana Soffer said...

Good poem, thought provoking, I liked the way it says order to survive, it is so special.
And the picture of the bottom is amazing, I have not seen many pictures with such an artistic quality on it.

TC said...

Thank you Mariana.

The geometries of rectilinear confinement in the two pictures seemed to call out to one another, perhaps a bit like prisoners attempting to communicate within a cell block late at night... trying to find a language in order to survive.