Ali Alizadeh
Ali Alizadeh’s most recent books include Ashes in the Air (UQP, 2011) and Iran: My Grandfather (Transit Lounge, 2010). With John Kinsella, he has edited and translated an anthology of Persian poetry in English, which is forthcoming in 2012. Ali is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Monash University, and has a website: http://alializadeh.wordpress.com/
Words
I can’t find my phone. Plato
couldn’t find the Beyond, denounced
Word vis-à-vis Voice
as inherent poison. This weekend
the planned occupation of Melbourne
by activists, to announce the end
of ‘corporate greed’. I dial a number
and burn the Other’s ear with irony
of hidden envy. No, Word isn’t
the perpetual deferral of a signified. Void
is Truth misnamed, a-voided. ‘Greed’
the very tip of the most visible iceberg
of Capital’s glacial matter. I can’t
stop talkin’, talkin’, don’t care who’s hearin’
the repetition of unfulfilled urge; tomorrow
a song may ‘unite the human race’. Marx
the only dead thing I can’t speak ill of
(who hasn’t sensed a ‘spectral’ Real?)
which makes me hang up the phone. Use
written words to formulate the unspoken
and the unspeakable. Yes, I’m out of credit
and too stingy to finger the alphabet
and text-message bored friends. Capital
-ism may be its own undoing.
Thus Capital
Capital is the Real of our lives.
—Slavoj Žižek
I’m here for an encounter
with Power. Can’t accept It
has nothing to offer but ice-cream
and pink lingerie. I prowl the mall
to catch Its sordid eye. Never mind
the sales, reduced symptoms
disguised as fetish. What haven’t I
disavowed? I’ll serve in the society
of disrobed spectacles. I’ll see
the naughty bits. Ethical consumers
fumble with fig leave; not fair
trade indulgence, what I seek. I aspire
to bow before Its grisly form, kiss
the slimy rings on the all-too-visible
hand of a festering market. Then relish
the stench of Its anus. So free, so real.