A Pilgrim’s Digression

[Note on the transcription: It seems to me pointless to say that I have remained accurate to Acker's reading. Although I think I've got the words down right, who knows where she would insert a line break or punctuation. So the line breaks are wholly my own, though I have tried to break at points where she pauses in the audio. Keep this in mind as you read: I have made the poem a little bit mine by my arrangement of it in text format.]

“President Bush” from Redoing Childhood by Kathy Acker

I want to tell you about my childhood
Nothing will prevent me
Neither the close attention
Nor the desire to be exact
From writing and speaking words
That sing

[distant, electric sound of a woman's voice, as when one holds a phone away from one's ear while still listening to the voice on the other end]

My childhood began
With President Bush
Precisely
This childhood
Began on the day when Bush started carefully
To write down the instructions which were to be carried out
On the day
Of his funeral
He did this because he knew that people like him
Do not die

“I, this country’s supreme dictator”
Bush spoke clearly into his dictaphone
“Otherwise known as only I
I the everlasting, everblasting President
And all other names
According to my discretionary powers as President
Declare that on the day of my death
Which is just about to take place
According to my wishes
Declare that my head be cut off
This head should be draped in rose buds
Roses in full bloom
And dead ones
Human bones will hang all around the dead ones
Stick the whole mass/mess on a pike
So that people whom I put in prison can pay homage to me
Afterwards the head rose bone emblem shall be this country’s new flag
Seven grungy emaciated boys shall carry the original
Around the courtyard of the United Nations until they drop dead
Then all the children who are now starving can feast their
Eyes on my empty eye sockets
My eyes shall live forever.

“May the death penalty which has just been nationally reinstated
Remain in effect so that everyone who worked under my auspices
Can be executed
There shall be no more University education
No need
For by that time human memory will have been formed
Education instead shall become this
The head rose bone emblem
Or I
Who shall continue talking with God

“May one fact remain
To continue forming human memory
Since a state is just a mask that secretes and shelters the power relations behind it,
Every state is fetishized or sexually desirable
For I am talking about my self.”

I want to describe the beginning of this world
This world of Bush
Where for us there is no language.