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John Hall

An essay on lyric ethics

a circuit of economics belief territorialism


a competition for the right to resources


a desk of my own


a lyric elegy for a damaged world


a noble violence


a political life-cycle of fuel


a roll call of names


a space of arbitration and withholding


a violent anti-violence of writing


a word with dance in it like chorus


an ineradicable violence



and to resist damage


anyone who isn’t for us is against us


apostrophe is dramatic not lyric


as ontological destiny


as part of their job




behind me beside me above me


bracketing out particularity


but these should not be confused




can lead to systematic mass murder


constellated by coincidence into systemic evil


costing lost sexual violence




dispersiveness




epic song


everyone needs to know who deserves


expensive solitude


extend beyond any lyric instance




for players of musical instruments


from the ethics of lyricism




geared teleology


genealogy of comfort




having nothing to stand under


helped death workers see themselves as noble


however ceremonially restrained




I keep the company of the articulate dead


implicit violence of any belief


implies a world of the possible



in a denial


in certain circumstances


in most circumstances


in my solitude in my negotiations


in notorious examples


in the conditions of a poem



instances of individual pathology



is a condition


is certain and figures


is dangerous


is it enough that


is love or war


is lyric always melancholy does it need


is not caught up


is this sentence one of ‘ours’



its surface inscribed




love takes the named as its object


lyric mobility




modal possibilities




named as a ‘war on terror’


not just a competition for resources




of corporate extermination


of course there are ‘bad apples’ at home


of the dramatic


of the nameable


of the purity of sameness


of the right to inflict damage


of what it could be to be human


only one of which


or perhaps where drama hands over to lyric


or this terminal with its abstract address


overseen by images of male ancestry




part pensioner part employee


points at the name-holder’s chest


power outpowers power




quiet like a no-reply




repeating its silence




say that each poem


sitting at a desk indirectly bequeathed


spreading freedom


stories accounts poems and arguments




take a simple lesson


take the names away and I speak foolishly


tempting into place a theology of devolved absolution


temptingly nameable



that a poem’s linguistic order


that certain poems


that freedom is a right


that gives me title


that right is a freedom



the American people


the articulate absent


the mechanics and performances of power


the motor car for example


the nameable is destroyable


the right to damage in the name of this right



theologians used to know this


these conditions of lyric personae


these epic conditions of lyric solitude


this new expensive pen


this world in which evil is abroad


those who murdered


though as ever names double as decoys


though I have no doubt


through its exclusion of certain


throughout the world



to adopt the posture that humans do when they sing


to catch an erotics of will a violence of drive or purpose


to ignore and deny damage



transcendent subjectivity




uncertainty of circumstances


up against




violence that conceals itself




waived the death sentence


we want each other (’s)


what contract of belonging


where music and poetry are concerned


where resources are always subject to contest


wishing for a better world


within a territorialism of style


within the complexity of financial regulation


within the law




yes ok co.uk

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