Being Che

And if after so many words,

the word itself does not survive.

--- César Vallejo

3

Experiment w/ a Tin Grenade

Listen close.

(the inner Tin contains the explosive

radiating matériel---

adrenaline,

artillery,

heartbeat,

breath.)

La Guerra de Guerillas.

(The inner tin penetrates---

inner in, inner ear,

inner I,

I

pull the pin.

Here is hoping

6

Channeling the Revolution

Be the vehicle.

Be the cogs in the wheel.

Be the tarmac, turning curved,

through the narrow pass

of my nerves.

C, h, e.

---the Volcano

Evil is leaving Havana.

All Cuba erupts,

heaves,

rises up w/ anger

against the assassins,

thieves,

thugs and gangsters,

Banana Republic, Visa,

Chevrolet.

---the Proletarian Choler

Che chastises

bohemia,

oh, he's vehement,

bug-eyed.

Scholasticism

isolates the masses.

Realpolitics,

so-called.

---the Non-Economy

Privelege is not

ontological.

Caste is not autochthonous.

Yacht clubs are not,

hotels, casinos, brothels,

coke-bottles,

not

chocolate,

mahogany, cologne.

8

Machete Schedule / Cholesterol

Go

through the grueling

routine,

slash

mundane,

slash

ho-hum days,

machine dun days.

The war chest

onslaught

by chore after chore,

oh, rut cache---

chain

of concatenating

contretemps.

Plots and schemes

too far-fetched, etcetera,

far-gone, etcetera,

too much.

Funds exhausted but---

chop-chop,

slash

cut cane,

slash

march on,

make headway.

Battleratchetretchingempty.

Spleen saturated w/

caffeine,

his

stomachache

is the running theme.

The guts of the situation--- this has got to stop.

12

Mythology

Che's old column

call him---

chameleon, chimera,

cipher, leyenda,

the one

clandestine son.

See him soldiering

his life-

long

somewhere

in the ciliate archipelago.

See him become

the color of

rust,

charcoal,

hazel, ochre, sand.

He slips into the field

like

an ellipsis.

He orchestrates

cellular improvisation.

Che's Chinese.

He's

Congolese.

He's Czechoslovakian.

He's

Cherokee.

He discharges

strength

like the Argentine fog,

roving the margins,

like psyche,

reckoning dark.

Matthew Klane is founder and editor of Flim Forum Press. Flim Forum's volumes include the foundational anthologies Oh One Arrow (2007), A Sing Economy (2008), and The Alps, by Brandon Shimoda, forthcoming this fall. Matthew's own chapbooks include The- Associated Press, Sorrow Songs, Friend Delighting the Eloquent, and The Meister-Reich Experiments. His book B_______ Meditations is forthcoming from Stockport Flats Press. Other work can be found in The New Chief Tongue, Plantarchy!, string of small machines, and online at Otoliths and Word for/ Word. He lives and writes in Albany, NY.