{"id":3743,"date":"2012-12-09T11:45:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T16:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=3743"},"modified":"2020-01-04T17:58:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T22:58:04","slug":"more-dissident-literature-from-cold-turkey-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/12\/more-dissident-literature-from-cold-turkey-press.html","title":{"rendered":"More Dissident Literature from Cold Turkey Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of Heathcote Williams’s poem puts it country simple. You can’t get more direct than “The United States of Porn.” The poem, which runs to 208 lines, nearly all based on facts, is part of a portfolio called American Porn.<\/em><\/a> It was published in 2011 in a beautifully produced first edition of 36 copies by Cold Turkey Press<\/a>. Williams\u2019s “investigative poetry,” as he calls it, kills<\/em>: “Amerigo Vespucci, of Florence, a peddler of pornography, \/ Set his seal on America …” The name you knew about, but not about the porn. To put a finer point on it, “Thus America and its dream were named after a porn writer \/ Who worked for the Medici, the mafia of the Middle Ages.” And let us not forget, “As befits a country named after the murderous Medici’s gopher, \/ America spends more money on weapons each year \/ Than the whole world spends on food and drink.” This is dissident literature hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n

+ + +<\/center><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Heathcote Williams<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Amerigo Vespucci, of Florence,
\nA peddler of pornography,
\nGave his name to America.<\/p>\n

The name Vespucci didn’t sound right
\nOtherwise the world would be living with
\n‘The United States of Vespuccia’<\/p>\n

But when Martin Waldseemuller,
\nA sixteenth-century map-maker,
\nWas looking for a suitable name<\/p>\n

For a particular landmass to the West
\n(Which Waldseemuller thought held a short-cut —
\nThe fabled North West Passage to India —<\/p>\n

Long sought after by navigators who hoped
\nIt might spare them circumventing the Cape
\nOn this continent’s most treacherous, southernmost tip),<\/p>\n

Waldseemuller thought at first of calling it the North Indies,
\nIn line with the West Indies and the East Indies,
\nThen the name of Amerigo Vespucci came to him.<\/p>\n

Amerigo, a senior steward of Lorenzo de Medici,
\nHad travelled both to Guinea and to Brazil
\nAnd had written accounts of his adventures<\/p>\n

In which he’d reveal that he’d lived with Amazon Indians
\nFor all of two weeks, during which he’d made a discovery
\nThat his hosts in the Amazon rain-forest were naked.<\/p>\n

This of course was appropriate on their part —
\nTheir being nearer the equator than Florence —
\nHowever their beady-eyed guest foresaw a market<\/p>\n

In the drawing-rooms of Italy for some spice-up tales
\nIn which he’d detail their customs then invent some more.
\nWith a tabloid glee he’d make out the Indians to be outlandish —<\/p>\n

Frolicking in the sun, having carefree orgies; then fecklessly killing
\nUnwanted children, on whom Amerigo insisted they snacked.
\nIn his view all indigenous people were erotomaniac cannibals.<\/p>\n

His readers lapped up this exploitational gallimaufry
\nSet in a paradise untrammeled by Church or State
\nAnd his salacious tales became an Italian best-seller.<\/p>\n

Even though Amerigo was never in fact to set foot upon it,
\nWaldseemuller would give the US’s future territory his name.
\nIt was business: Waldseemuller sought to give his maps kudos<\/p>\n

By capitalizing on the notoriety of Amerigo’s accounts.
\nThus America and its dream were named after a porn writer
\nWho worked for the Medici, the mafia of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

‘In my beginning is my end.’ wrote Eliot in the Waste Land
\nAnd America’s now bankrupt landmass survives on pornography
\nAnd on profits from the sale of its instruments of killing.<\/p>\n

Chatsworth, California is the HQ of America’s Pornocracy
\nWhere the vulnerable are herded by the voracious
\nInto the maws of a multi-trillion dollar industry.<\/p>\n

An industry strewn with suicides who’ve lost their identity
\nTo repetitive grinding in exchange for money and drugs
\nIn a forlornly unfulfilled wasteland frantic for a hole to fill.<\/p>\n

A new porn video is produced in the US every thirty minutes,
\nWhere ninety-seven percent of all pornographic web pages
\nAre generated for a global food chain of interlinked PCs.<\/p>\n

When Adolf Hitler was preparing to invade Poland
\nThe lecherous, lip-smacking Dr. Goebbels
\nHobbled beside him, straight out of a Wagner opera.<\/p>\n

Goebbels was an expert on how to debilitate opponents
\nAnd, in the case of Poland, he’d make pornography a weapon
\nTargeting Polish officers in an erotic PsyWar.<\/p>\n

They were infiltrated with pornography by the Nazis
\nAs a matter of state policy, for Goebbels thought
\nThat if they possessed it they’d put up less of a fight.<\/p>\n

Goebbels believed pornography worked as an anaesthetic —
\nHis enemies ironically being softened by being stiffened —
\nAnd his opponents could be maddened by graphic portrayals<\/p>\n

Of their wives, at home, in the Polish officers’ absence —
\nDr. Goebbels knew his Freud and his Bernays and his Adler
\nAnd how psychosexual mechanisms worked.<\/p>\n

Still more has become known through hooking up lab rats
\nTo electrodes that stimulate the pleasure centre of the brain
\nWhen they’re placed in a cage with two buttons to press.<\/p>\n

One is dispensing food and the other dispenses orgasms.
\nTypically the rats will soon starve themselves to death
\nIf they haven’t already died from exhaustion.<\/p>\n

Goebbels knew sexual stimulation to be a powerful method
\nOf social control and that’s why it’s now permitted —
\nFor its soporific effect on consumerism’s lab rats.<\/p>\n

Particularly handy in a pre-revolutionary situation
\nWith levels of inequality such as never seen before:
\nPornography is capitalism rewarding political apathy.<\/p>\n

Pornography is the sensual soma of ‘Brave New World’
\nThe un-admitted tranquilizer that neuters collective action
\nSo that in the U.S. few are angered by just 50 people<\/p>\n

Having as much wealth as 150 million other Americans,
\nAnd few are provoked by another 150 new billionaires
\nJoining the American billionaire club every year,<\/p>\n

While 20 million people died from hunger and disease
\nAnd while the average billionaire annually spends $25 million
\nOn food; entertainment, then more food and entertainment,<\/p>\n

Which is enough to feed 70,000 hungry people for a year.
\nImperial Rome spent fifteen percent of its tax revenue on its wars,
\nThe imperial US spends 54% of its tax revenue on its war machine.<\/p>\n

Or rather on Defense Contractors — the body guards of an elite —
\nBecause the more money that corporate America hoards
\nThen the more weapons it needs to protect itself.<\/p>\n

To protect itself from the consequences of its own actions
\nAmerigo’s country is founded on the genocide of its first Nations
\nAnd sustained by genocide in countries all over the world.<\/p>\n

Amerigo’s country has sponsored serial holocausts
\nIn Central and South East Asia, and the Middle East,
\nAll with the same motive: capturing others’ resources.<\/p>\n

46% of children who lose and arm and leg in the world
\nLose it to a weapon manufactured by a U.S. company.
\nThe U.S. governments receives $2,650 billion in taxes<\/p>\n

Of which 54% goes towards war and destruction.
\n‘We are bankers. You are nothing, and when our greed
\nGets the better of us, you must help us out.’<\/em><\/p>\n

The sex toy industry is valued at $15 billion this year.
\nIt’s enough to provide for the healthcare needs of all women
\nIn impoverished countries. But ‘We are bankers,<\/em><\/p>\n

We invest in sex toys. They have a high yield. You are nothing.
\nWe are money’s oligarchs. We are happiest when making money;
\nMaking money by people pleasuring themselves with machines.’<\/em><\/p>\n

As befits a country named after the murderous Medici’s gopher,
\nAmerica spends more money on weapons each year
\nThan the whole world spends on food and drink.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Lockheed Martin refused to give free prosthetic limbs
\nTo children maimed by its weapons.
\n‘We are American bankers. We invest in weapons. You are nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are citizens of the United States of Porn.
\nWe are kleptomaniac oligarchs, you are nothing.’<\/em>
\nWe live in an armed Imperialist pornocracy.<\/p>\n

‘A few thousand miles of cannibal land,’ was how Robert Korner,
\nCIA Adviser to John F. Kennedy described resource-rich West Papua
\nThen both backed an invasion that benefited a US mining company.<\/p>\n

Similar allegations of cannibalism to those Vespucci once made
\nAllowed the Papuans to be slaughtered by the American Empire —
\nTo be treated as unpeople and therefore ripe for exploitation.<\/p>\n

Whilst back in the USA, in the cradle of another civilization,
\nPorn barons bewitch their tribes to enact equally primitive rituals.
\nSmeared with oil, and sporting latex sheathes, they eat each other.<\/p>\n

There are 22 million women in the world who spend 5 hours a day
\nCollecting water for their children and families.
\nDuring the financial crisis there were American bankers<\/p>\n

In Wall Street who watched porn for up to five hours a day.
\nBut a marriage between such unfeeling profiteers from poverty
\nAnd porn addicts is an ideal marriage since both bankers<\/p>\n

And porn addicts distort the way you love your fellow man.
\n‘We are financiers, we crunch numbers. You are nothing,
\nWe’re the money oligarchs, you are nothing. Pass the Kleenex.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Bigger than Hollywood, porn pump-starts the US economy —
\nThe cream filling in its military-industrial sandwich
\nUpon which the rest of the world is now force-fed.<\/p>\n

Every second in Amerigo-Vespucci-land thousands of dollars
\nAre spent on porn by 250 million citizens
\nWho look away from the porn screens<\/p>\n

To wave wet Kleenexes at their Statue of Liberty
\nThen smile, slack-jawed, ‘Look Mom, look at what we can do.’<\/em>
\nThen back to the infantilizing screen in every terminal.<\/p>\n

Porn screens in the Pentagon; porn screens in the White House;
\nPorn screens in the Senate offices; porn screens in Congress.
\nTwo hundred and fifty million militarized masturbators<\/p>\n

Are enslaved by billionaire pornocrats relentlessly promoting
\nCybernetic snakepits of squirming bodies, all gasping. ‘Ah!’
\n‘Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!”Ah!’<\/em><\/p>\n

Porn stars can be paid by porn barons to eat excrement;
\nTo self-harm; to use babies and animals as sex objects.
\nPorn’s tone is brutal triumphalism: ‘Take this. Take that.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Its audience is in denial: ‘I don’t like cocaine. I just like the smell of it.’
\n‘It’s got nothing to do with sexual belligerence, it’s harmless.
\nIf people want to see people holding women down. So what?’<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet romantic arousal is now mediated by favorite porn clips;
\nOne addict confessed to logging on to three hundred vaginas
\nBefore getting out of bed — it’s causing synaptic change.<\/p>\n

“What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn’t sex but death.”
\nSaid Susan Sontag, and she was echoed by J G Ballard:
\n“A widespread taste for pornography means that nature<\/p>\n

Is alerting us to some threat of extinction.”
\n“When liberty comes,” said Wilde, “with hands dabbled in blood
\nIt is hard to shake hands with her.” Equally hard to shake hands<\/p>\n

With those swearing and throbbing due to a repetitious distraction
\nInduced by Miss Porn USA and her enveloping porn cloud that governs
\nThe global weather, despite pornography being as dull as golf.<\/p>\n

In the caves of Lascaux, prehistoric man drew virile penises on stick figures
\nBut which may not have rooted him to the spot while he pleasured himself
\nFor instead he’d leave the darkness of the cave and pursue his own history —<\/p>\n

Being sensible enough to know that compulsively playing with himself —
\nPreying on his own energy and milking himself for hours on end
\nWhile watching flickering images might make him prone to predators.<\/p>\n

Amerigo Vespucci, of Florence, a peddler of pornography,
\nSet his seal on America: trillions in debt; its economy sexualized;
\nStealing others’ resources at gun-point, and unable to feed itself.<\/p>\n

“They are living like parasites off the global economy”
\nVladimir Putin said of America, now lacking only William Burroughs,
\nA former pest control expert, to describe its final death-orgasm.<\/p>\n

America stripped of its Triple A credit through its own profligacy;
\nIts life-blood’s drained by being slaves to digital sex zombies
\nThen topped up again by killing third world children with drones.<\/p>\n

If Amerigo’s land were personified it’d be as a sex criminal
\nBringing irate women with rolling pins out onto the streets
\nDemanding protection from slathering, dead-eyed pariah.<\/p>\n

To fake an emotion can damage your immune system,
\nInviting opportunistic diseases;
\n‘Got wood?’ porn producers bawl to start their wooden shows
\nIn the nowhereland which Amerigo never visited<\/p>\n

Where plotless stories are crammed with climaxes to sell in billions
\nVia porn barons’ multi-platform production outlets;
\nWhose actors may be trafficked, or be willing slaves — few can tell,
\nOnly that America constitutionally defiles love.<\/p>\n

For its pornographic power has blended sexuality with death:
\nLetting it kill for pleasure whenever it chooses;
\nIts Statue of Liberty is mounted upon piles of imperial corpses
\nAnd now it holds a torch that’s ignited by porn.<\/p>\n

The American dream becomes a meretricious nightmare,
\nA fake country living on fake orgasms;
\nPorn’s a ploy to smother you as America devours the world,
\n‘We are Americans. You are nothing.’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

+ + +<\/center><\/p>\n

I’m told by Ben Schot of Sea Urchin Editions<\/a>, which partners with Cold Turkey and distributes its publications, that the limited first edition of American Porn <\/em><\/a> is now sold out. This means that unless there’s a reprinted edition, the other poems it includes — “Mr. President,” “Snuff Movies at the White House,” “Barbie World,” “Name a Radical Film,” “Forbidden Fruit” — won’t be available to read. That is a good reason to post them here. Although it’s possible some may turn up on YouTube, where Alan Cox has montaged and narrated Williams’s poems, brilliantly — such as “The President of the United States is Really a Tree”<\/a> (posted a week ago) or “Maggie’ll Fix It<\/a> (posted in October) — and where Fred Proud has posted his montage-narration of “Nameless Wildness”<\/a> (actual text here<\/a>), there’s no substitute for the original.<\/p>\n

Williams has written in an email about Cold Turkey founder Gerard Bellaart<\/a>, himself a writer and artist:<\/p>\n

Gerard is certainly a unique publisher. Everything he does has its own atmosphere, and you just hold these magic leaves of deckled paper with the most extreme graphics conceivable and you absorb them in a quite special way. … There’s always something of Gerard in them. They’re reflectively produced. And of course the great antic, towering above all, is its war against commerce — by its very existence it’s saying NO! Down with the market place! (poets are of necessity anti-capitalist, being invariably poor).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I couldn’t agree more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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