The Love Song of David Livingston by Charles Cantalupo
You have brought me new life.
Please talk now. You won’t come back.
I’m the scoop of the century.
I like the money. I like it.
Too much. Repent. Look again.
The main object, the greatest triumph
Is to extend knowledge: the mineral
Agricultural, human, industrial;
Cultivation, manufacture, production,
Geography, daring, development, recourses,
Energy, engagement, encouragement,
Legitimate commerce and free trade:
Commodities and a sure sense of profit
To make slaves into inhabitants.
You have brought me new life.
I like to investigate other human beings.
My old surgery tools still sharpen.
Give me my map and my light.
Scramble and crusade. The juice
And just. My mission. I like it.
This solves the problem of raw materials.
I enjoy traveling the unexplored.
It’s wonderful for the appetite.
I’m the guest that wise chickens expect.
Juicy, just and geopolitic.
My road spirals in, up and out.
I’m hefty with gifts and goodbyes,
And welcome to enter in three stages.
No longer defeated, I penetrate.
I like the money too much.
Your loveliness recognizes me on a mission.
It gives me a wonderful appetite.
Adjust your judgements to nothing ordinary.
Poetry is the center of my life. See?
My picture in a broach on your lace collar.
You have brought me new life.
Slavery creates freedom.
Every master wants a devil.
Some gentleman culture,
And the total reimbursement of language.
Without irony, I say my time is now and the future.
I’m opening the way for liberty
For others: purpose, development, history
Where there’s none. They have no culture.
They can’t use my pencil.
Look again: raw material,
A few themes, many ideas, but no culture.
I’m opening them up.
We’ll speak English.
Watch out for the rats
Jumping off the floor at your crotch.
They have no culture:
A lot of skulls and smiling,
Dance but not legitimate,
Free like zombies in their cars at night,
More than enough Sheffield iron
And relics to go around,
A philosopher you could only label cynical,
A flag to raise and lower on the mall,
Each other’s blood up to their throats
To flood our entire mission
Or martyrdom. I like it.
The bread tasting of their sweat,
All their what ifs, what ifs –
If my grandmother had balls,
If my grandfather had big tits –
It gives me a great appetite.
It’s me or deterioration,
The usual preference not to read or look
Unless it’s easy, for me and not for you,
Wanting the hand release.
Always tired and huddled
In each other like sacks
Of stinking sperm, menses and shit,
They need to breathe new life.
Like money. Like appetite.
Look again. Repent. Look again.
I want your answer in the box.
They eat by force. Dress by force.
Believe by force. Live by death.
Blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.
The flies eat any flies I kill
And more if I don’t kill them.
Their women conceive with testicle powder.
Assembling my family,
Not more than half an inch
Of my children and wife
Remained unbitten, and they marched on.
They’re not missing, I sent them back,
Sacrificing no one but myself.
You have brought me new life.
The mission and maps, something higher,
The money, man, land – I like it.
I like it too much, too much.
The people eat a bread of dogs.
I discover what they haven’t
For two and a half million years
With their pots, tools, language and feelings.
I discover the great lake,
A center of clean waves
In wider and wider circles where I’ve been.
Its fish swim in my words.
When I write about the place
It becomes my name,
My wonderful appetite.
I like it. I love it.
You have brought me new life.
My hands. My tools.
I fixed the xray machine
When no one else could. I’ve made my own maps,
My symbols, my mission, my science,
My light, my rule, my own steam.
The wildness and development. Like it.
I lift these people up to something higher.
They’re like a burned out torch,
Dead people hanging up in smoke.
But new life, the spirit, raw material,
Raw material, the land, healing –
It gives me appetite.
I promise them great buildings
And great ruins in a thousand years.
I love the money. I like it.
What I feel, I discover.
Producing takes over.
I believe in independence.
Independence. Independence. Independence.
My creed. Your need.
The make. Action. Land.
God and gold. No argument.
I like the appetite
And something higher, the light
Like a collection of holes,
Like I direct it, the black cock
At dawn, my white dove
And olive branch in the blue.
No second act follows me at midnight.
Nothing between us.
Peace makes us one.
I break down the middle wall.
I help myself, my own man,
No one else’s foundation to build on
And preach the most gospel.
They sing I’m pregnant with a female god.
I look again. Like it not to end.
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