Pasolini's Ashes
The gauntlet has been thrown down.
Will I dare to pick it up, hold it nervously in my hands and follow
along a path
of semen, despair and class struggle? Or instead, will I turn
away from you?
Denigrate you.
Easier to denigrate you. Now that our bodies have succumbed to
the
machine, now that our spirits have been extinguished by the cold
electromagnetic rays of the television screen. I am no longer
human.
Consumption has made a junkie out ofme, gorging on shit frompolystyrene
boxes and hitting up on video sex.
There is no longer a proletariat.
Not one that you would recognise.
The gauntlet has been thrown down by you. A cruel dare. Will I
pick it up or
will I denounce you?
Easier to denounce you. Now that the bloated body of Marxism has
been
shattered on the bloody rocks of the Balkans and the gulags of
the East.
But if I turn away from you, then in which footsteps should I
follow? Follow the
trail of those other faggots - those gutless faggots - who pay
top dollar to
enact their pleasures in the safety of saunas and sex clubs. They
pay top
dollar to ensure the State will look the other way. Those muscled
faggots
whose wealth betrays them, strips them of the masculinity they
so diligently
strive to achieve. (But, of course, their soft fleshy palms also
betray them).
The proletariat is no longer a man, Pier Paolo, is no longer human.
The
proletariat is dead, Pier Paolo. Your vision of Hell
I'm living it.
The great God money has dominion all over this globe. West, East.
North,
South. Air, fire, water, earth. I could walk this planet, roam
the last desert,
sail the last sea searching for my Authentic Man. And find instead
Only Narcissus gazing into my reflection.
The violence of labour is marked on my body. (I can't act).
The violence of displacement is trapped inside my skull. (I can't
articulate).
The violence of benevolence is wrapped tight around my heart.
(I can't feel).
There is no escape, no eluding of History.
It is easier to denigate you.
To pay for my pleasures in the safe confines of leather rooms
and red-
velveted sex clubs. For me there is no Franco Citti, no handsome
Nino.
They too now pay top dollar to enter the club.
For in there
there is no danger, no struggle, no pain.
It is easier to denigrate you, but I prefer to follow along the
treacherous paths
you revealed to me. And if I too die in a glorious blast of agony
and
humiliation, it is preferable to the road chosen by the sated
queens spitting on
your name.
For I am born peasant
A child of the last of the proletariat.
This is madness. This is insanity, I know, but
I refuse to die bourgeois.
- Christos Tsiolkas