“The Killing State”/The Murdering State
by pain of passing by pain of pain,
pain
from life to life-to-death,
the whole tone scale
of passing state
to state
what’s worn to see our comfort note discomfort’s
end results this roll this role to play to show one’s hand
its powerful grip to placate hate built
in relatives, friends and workmates
of the dead
requiring
need
requiring help from selves
help from wish to make
pain to speech
to words on a script
or script on a page
to any words over-
heard
into flesh
tattoo through afterlife
or no life
a tattoo to carry
definitions of pain
as far as their
punishment
compensation
body gestures
(reconfigurings)
before witnesses
seeing the job done how the job needs to be
Examples samples
exports imports
palm shelter orchids flowering
temple
tickle of the palm,
greased wheel of spectacle.
Inside the belly
packages of powder
acid-bathed
and caveat.
A burst suffering- also pain-
to bring back to life to finish.
Conversion. Why not God
in the afterglow of a life still wanted?
That other self
not recognised.
Begrudged the peace-making
with maker only there for victims’ loss?
Cauterise and placate
remove all reasonable doubt
have pain count or no pain count
partially or leaping the gap
leaping the river
as it meanders through the heart of the land that is
the state and
takes water like blood
to the ocean spreading
world and culture and technology
of quick crossings anywhere,
locating devices while musing among clouds
or driving fast, sedately.
The ferryman knows his quota, and gags on gender:
hanginggassinginjecting
shooting
electrocuting (“frying”)
which gerund takes the cake,
which gerund satisfies the stomach for race and predilection?
which gerund makes for closure?
A Place in the Sun
A place in the sun
is hard won
by blood
ties and shining
lights on the hill.
A place in the sun
is hard won
compelled
by factory-
made beauty
and attention.
A place in the sun
is hard won
when God
lingers on
cold and harsh,
there in the cell.
A place in the sun
is hard won
by blood
ties and shining
lights on the hill.
in a banksia tree down the road from us- a childhood
emphasis, he worked with my father
who always said, “He was a bit simple, and tormented
by some of his workmates.” [I am guessing the species
of tree, but it’s likely up there
in the black sand of the hill, all limestone
beneath, where zamia palms and banksias
and gnarled eucalypts grew to look out
over the river, all gone now- the trees and scrub-
and the river has been killed brought back to life killed
brought back to life, but never
resurrected.]
My father
who held his workmates back
when they wanted to torment
him like the cat thrown in sump
oil. His funny talk, they said.
His “hair lip.”
Passing the killing under table
ushering lip service to crime solving
crime solution
electrolysis of dysfunction
in salt mines of disconnection
(and killing performs in the driest places,
in the wettest places, overcome
by desire)
where
no death sentence no sentience
remains on books
inscription
distraction
collective advocacy
summons vengeance eating and prayer
hesitating to ensure the difference: civilised and
but then again
reconfiguring states of nature
echelons of savagery
would take the brutal route
nevermind
nomenclature and the cold hard specificity of legalese or
brute reality of metaphor.
with its abolition of 1847? Its no state killings
since 1830? Not even the treasonous have burnt.
The killer murdering the murderer unkilled. Thorn in side.
Life filters through and birds fly easier. Dogs bark, cats prowl. Language
does its tricks. Once, one was bludgeoned unraveling of pathetic fallacy.
Unwriteable, forgotten?
Red and Black
Love fuels death as “relief” in sacrifice:
Julien Sorel’s death-compulsion kills choice.
Burnt offerings come instead of motive
(Madame de Rénal survived the shooting
during Mass, and the words of service
lingered). Execution day glows like sun-
displays over resistant earth, feet
firmly on the ground like sea
sold as reality and end of clarity,
memory all undamaged ecology.
Love intense as the blue-cloaked head
raised to its marble platform, kissed
and kissed in the shadowy office,
office of the dead; mountain tomb paved
with coins spread like petals, such
exotic sculptures carved in grief.
Note: the most despised are lifted
to the pantheon Real-life Crime Dramas
by viewers who thirsted for blood.
Method: Waging war: body of all,
body of you,
body of me,
body of him and her
and them;
mitigating
arbitrary
clemency
vested
interests
errors made
nail on the head
death for the dead
the ugly absence
of the guillotined: precise as Fall,
precise as law
would be
decisions crunch times
nation impetus disclaim
biological chemical nuclear
Manhattan projects and its sidespins
and the analogues of execution
the verities the conceits; differential;
Maralinga Tjarutja people atomic clean-up compensation (victims)
not mass killing of white land-killers and slow people-killers
blindness cancer deformities
playing totemics with totems of desert to name first Bomb “Totem 1” at Emu Field
Pintantjatjara
Yankunytjatjara
operations Buffalos and Antler a jurisdiction of New World naming,
a gleaning of unfamiliars
to make death a wanderer, a nomadic label? Mode of punishment?
Traditional as spearing? Or forced into a reactor
to absorb radiation? Absurd? It’s an equation.
I found the killing book on killing
in the coffin rooms of a mausoleum: the pain of waiting,
expectation of writing, of speech:
here’s my pain as I lay dying:
overdosed and clinically defunct
I knew the long road back and someone
said adrenaline! and I rose from vertigo.
Some double
killings, a dismurdering; a Damoclean
sword of mythmaking
carves “eschatology”
as script or signature
in rows of punished etymology
just as “machine” makes
but also euphemism
and the offer of last words.
Inarticulate
clausumfregit
theft and ownership a portioning of soil
of each grain
and roots that band
or relent: erosion unsettles
state’s overseeing of clearings: bush, jungle, forest, people.
We have our records,
the medals of precedent.
And so I appeal to states
in varied economy, in faith discrepancies,
with or without juries
and analogues
illustration
entertainment
co-efficient disposal to keep up appearances
power complex
fear factor
impressionism
mob rule
empathy
disgust
sadism and cruelty (quibbling on scale and whereon)
appeasement
anger reaction
eye-for-an-eye default for want of a better
morality?
Birth of a Nation: “Legal Lynching”
(Shame, shame on you, Georgia)
No undoing
switched testimony
play out
each decision to pass on
restless
flawed
evidence
along the chain
lash of vengeance
placed wherever
eternal rope around the neck,
white-sheeted ghosting
to smash Gus
caught in black-face,
scripted to death
in Flora horror moment
sublime rock-drop
The Birth of a Nation
recruitment film
good souls
not behaving
anymore
to kill off,
make silence
which fills even
the noisiest of battle-
fields when the injured
and the dead
are recovered,
dealt with.
Time of death-start
11:08 PM ET
legal
lethal
injection,
in the eyes, I didn’t.
You didn’t birth
of a nation.
I have known deeply troubled individuals who have killed.
And some who have killed and killed.
I have known them to hunt in packs.
I have feared them. I have feared their smiles, their storytelling.
I have seen the wreckage left behind.
I have watched the nightmares of generations.
But every one of them has been saturated
in the language of killing. Where pain
makes those outside your body arrogant
or silent, killing makes a language
more universal than words or gestures.
No art is more communicative.
Overloaded with linguistics,
words and lexemes
where killing
is eating
and belief,
where confession
is information.
Last meals.
Last rites.
Last words.
“That today most executions in the United States are not newsworthy suggests that the killing state is taken for granted. If there is any issue at all left to the public debate about capital punishment, it is a debate about how the state kills.”
Austin Sarat (“Capital Punishment and the
Technologies for Taking Life”)
