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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’

February 1, 2013 by Jan Herman

My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas:

Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice
From his mouth, his nose, and his ears
Signifying the creature’s urge to merge with nature
And rouse inhumanity’s darker fears.


Click for the video. Listen to Heathcote Williams’s poem narrated by Alan Cox and watch the montage.

He’s Dionysus dancing drunk around maypoles
He’s Pan stamping a cleft foot on the ground
To awaken the sleeping Earth’s spirits of springtime
As winter dies and a new life force is found.

Thanks to subversive stone masons in the Middle Ages
This green remnant of man’s pagan past
Finds its way onto church ceilings, corbels, and bosses
Along with Sheela na gigs mad with lust.

Williams messages that Cold Turkey Press may be planning a print edition of “The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist.” If and when that happens, we’ll will pass the information along.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

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Filed Under: Art, Literature, Media, political culture

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
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Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

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