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Ecco

"What has Kant got to do with the platypus? Nothing."

Umberto Ecco, Kant and the Platypus.

God spoke to me last night
through the thick stuff of bombarding sensations,
a thought of perfection.
The tortoise proceeds.

I smoked the cigar,
the raucous black Honduran,
or was it Nicaraguan,
and I inhaled too deeply.

His Word was on the table,
too big to walk around,
and I eyed it obliquely,
luminous, thermic, tactile.

Let us praise the discarded butt,
that little universe of primary indexicality;
the fiery voice of prophets' heat -
only afterwards do we say that it is cold.

Debating the Internet at the party
and the pervasiveness of fascism:
touch the Word with my tongue,
the Word dangles, my arms flap about.

Over the centuries
we have linked ourselves
through this torment over Being
imposed by our subjectivity.

Is the demonstration irrefutable,
the antitrust breakup of Microsoft,
Being as the flaw in the purity of Nonbeing
stretched out in divine tranquility?

 

by John Richards