Johannes Göransson

Knowledge is Power. That is what the billboard says and I agree. I am an adult, therefore I understand the threat of passengers. The threat to Our Children, who don't understand the threat of these bird-like, twitchy people. They pose two kinds of threat. To begin with, there is the one we all know about, the predatory threat, the hawk-like passengers that prey on children as they sit in front of their computers or televisions. The terrorist threat. That threat is easy to handle. You shoot it. You contain it. You confiscate. You stitch. You bleed from various orifices and sockets, but you survive, you rebuild house and rinse the child. The more serious threat is the diseases passengers carry with them. Internal terrorism. Children love those diseases. It makes them babble like possessed. Their make-up looks like oil in the moonlight. Such children cannot be cleaned off. Kill them. Or turn them into entertainment. Art.

I have become wealthy in a foreign land gravity makes me sick in my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy with summer like I'm buried in the sun in its sounds with my mother there's something about having a heart beat like traffic like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty body in Berlin it was all right I'm taking some time out from being alive with daughters It's OK I'm impersonating a kiss of lilacs a murder of crows are settling over my corpse the dust covers my photographs I only ever write about childhood because that was before I died and now the devil has brought me back to Berlin in summer in Stockholm I'm starting to make sense of my body which is becoming buried in pop music and now ooh-ooh I have to rebuild the wall an erotics based on occupation I write you a letter ett brev about my body as if it were split between foreign words whispered by stringy angels and soldiers who march in through the eye of a needle I write my body with the eye of a needle with nålen I write when I'm sick with gravity in summer in summer I'm sick in light summer light musical light from hell and you dare call it heaven my body you dare to call it heaven

Dear Tourists, You can grope for moist souvenirs in the basement, but you'll need patience because nobody down there will warn you about the floor. In the street you'll find squirrels; on my scalp, bumps. If you want proof for the folks back home that you've surged like a seagull, print your name and number in the bathroom. If you want a seagull for a pet, talk to my therapist. If you find her, tell me where she lives, and where her daughter goes to school. If you want a piece of me, suck my dick. If you want to sell trips to the general public, take my pulse or my coffee-table picture-books about Italy. If there's a house in the trees, throw up a hammer and see what falls down. The bleeding kid isn't the best prize and you can't return it, so be careful where you walk when you've had a few. If there's a nettle between your shoulder blades and you're having trouble breathing, tell the teacher, but don't tell her it was me cause it wasn't. I was just watching, maybe even laughing at your gurgling sounds. That incident belongs to somebody else's amusement park. I don't ever want to see it again on this side of the blunt tracks.

Dear Ra, There are no more cigarettes in this letter. It's all about spray-paint and traffic jams from here on out. Honk if you're epileptic, honk if it's 2:40 p.m., if you love shells. Honk in the name of freedom and fear of the human body. When I say "human body" I mean the kind that tears like lettuce. And when I say "fear" I mean the kind you feel seconds before crashing into a wall. That's the kind of poem this is. The kind raised on excess television violence. All that's left are ads for brotherhood and blowjobs. An ad for 2:42 p.m. A wad of hair. This isn't Marx. I'm not trying to bite the hand that feeds me sour candy. Run down the deer. Rain. Wear a red jacket and pumps. Pave the road back from my bed. I don't own a bed, it must've been the trap I've crept in and out of since I learned how to sleep alone. The Count of Monte Cristo's funeral. God's earlobe. An army of lamb can stop a film but not the violence of handbags. Not 2:43 p.m. Two forty-four pee em. Speak from a babble and a switch. Piss in a telephone booth. Grow a tree. Kidnap a car thief. Talk to him as though you want to be slammed in his trunk like a bag full of rocks. Talk to me in the woods. To my chest. With your fingers. Even if you kick in the gates, nyc is still nyc . My concussion is still a hotel. The guests are staying lukewarm and I'm picking up the tab. Ask me if I have ever wanted to tear out cables, burn up cradles. Interview my architects about hands. Ask an illegal immigrant how to escape from a political cliche. Does one use hammers? What about the moist area? The brutal caress? The spindle? Where does one learn to speak such a broken language? Are you jealous of films about Vietnam? This poem is dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard. This poem is dedicated to the man who put a gun in my gullet. This poem is a pay-phone. Someone has slashed its chords and ripped out its face. This drink is mixed with a plastic fork. This is an invitation to my Halloween party. Come as a key. Come as a metatextuai tear in the metatextual fabric. Listen to my concert through walls that were built to keep the vermin out of my armpits. Shovel. That's all I ask in return for my sonata on gravel. I mean gravel in a dialectic sense. As in, tomorrow dirt will be glamorous. Asphalt will be categorized as a sound. You will be categorized as an outdated method of psychotherapy. Like confession. Or the couch. Or the chair. I will be classified as a sore loser. Last year's winner must have thrown something hard at my head. Something that shattered like a waltz in a bomb raid. It's almost three o'clock. That makes it exactly several thousand miles since I left your town. I left your mice. I left a confusing note for the exterminators. I've been confused when I should have been reborn as a crusade or a hospital of innocents. I've been bored when I should've been screwed. I've been a hungry year.