Cam Scott

CONTRA

“Total risk through global refusal.”
—Paul-Émile Borduas

A Crimson Sky

A Dark Background

All Enemies

All Gods

All Odds

All Things Ending

An Infinite Horizon
Atheism

Common Sense

Democracy and Equality

Destiny

Fairness

Freud

God

Happiness

Health

Intellectual Monopoly

Interpretation

Love

Medical Advice

Method

Nature

Pain

Perfectionism

Ratzinger

Reform

Religion

Schooling

The Boards

The Day

The Edge

The Empire

The Fire
The Flight of Spring

The Flow

The Giants

The Gods

The Grain

The Hard Angle

The Law

The Light

The Machine

The Night

The Odds

The President

The State

The Storm

The Stream

The Sun

The Terror of Neoliberalism

The Tide

The Tide of Years

The Wall

The Wind

Their Will

Thrift

Us

Wind and Tide

THE HALL OF FOAM

(after W.H. Auden)

The tiers are trammeled by the chavs:

This loss of power really smarts.

The punk is pricked by poisoned darts,

Grave angels inked into her calves.



Fanatic crow nocturnal goons—

The hands that frisk you fondle, too,

Provided that your flesh will do

As fodder for masked epigones



Whose noble arts must now attend

To backroom odes and party tricks:

These help the living take their licks

And teach the dead not to offend. 



As cybernetic think tanks take

A softer stance on governance,

Apologists’ paranoid rants

Hit notes of feeling; mostly fake.



Our experts may deduct hotels

From taxes they are wont to pay,

But do they shudder as they lay

There, basking in historic smells?



With insufficient room to move

The water-fatted fowl awaits

A world beyond blood-spattered gates:

Its angel is the rat-like dove.



Below our ken, a pathogen

Has commandeered the nucleus.

It makes no difference to our “us”—

The present must begin again.

BLACK METAL SAMPLER



I.

The wind whips through the trees.

A shot of yellow phlegm
Snakes to the drain.

Another hairdo is destroyed
Elastic over fist in fits

Of sexual abandon, which

Is not a synonym for white flight

Quite, though such transcendence
Is reserved for wealth

For which oil flows below
The greasy ground as on command
And water from the taps—

Unwanted manna everywhere:
Jawbreaker bagels towering above

The garbage bin in mounds.

II.

Meanwhile an automated pummel
From the Grundrisse threatens your
Retirement: you elope with a bank.

You book a wank for several
Weeks next Saturday
And enter a celebratory sulk—

No punk left willing to profess
A foolish admiration for the Bolsheviks,
But every Ian with an iPhone


Has a hard-on in his ear for Burzum:
The Norse Blues-hammer, an illiberal

Killer, each bland socius his own

Anachronism; and if every
Politics a pact with Satan, why not
Get it right for once?

III.

Design your own parade: I’m in
The bath with candles and
A goblet full of cherry linctus,
Training for the flood.

Cam Scott is a poet, essayist and improvising non-musician.

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