This is a new series attempting to explain my misunderstanding of perhaps the most important 20th century philosopher, at least to artists and other weirdos
This is just a simulation of a song
—John Langford, Mekon, late 80s, 90s
who knows? And this simulating
of knowledge or verse may end up
not recognizable at all, unworthy
of the magnitude any signifier
might bring, not quite laughing
at itself, but veering off
from any prescriptive medication
that would make it whole
aligned with a model of recommended
integrity or breadth, with necessary
sensory infusions like cute animals
or gardening apparatus. But come now
is the model really that which is
divine guide and authority to the good
and true, or simply a tyrant
demanding worship, falling to one’s knees
or to be led to the scrap heap
or slavers’ auctioneering keep?
Colonizers comparing what they knew
had believed, to seeing imperfections
not even of a copy, but something
trying to be a thing it’s not
never realizing that the unknown freak
that other, may itself be a model, a truth
newly discovered — a poetry of flesh.
Thanks for nothing, Plato, though
I understand you may have intended well