Tragical Realism
(Text by Nicolas Calmes)
Editor’s Note: While the following slam poetry poem is not necessarily speculative fiction, Nicolas has asked the Aner Welten team if he could publish this text on our platform. Considering that Salman Rushdie is a pillar of magic realism and thus also speculative fiction, and the recent attack has shocked many of us, we decided to agree and accept the text. Nicolas has won with the following text the second Luxembourgish Slampionschip, which took place at the Kulturhaus Niederanven, organized by our friends over at Géisskan Kollektiv.
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I’m one of those stupid motherfuckers who don’t know what they’re talking about but still feel the need to say their piece. I don’t know jack shit about Islam. I haven’t read Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, this piece of fiction so controversial the Iranian government called for the heads of its author and all those involved in its publication. Years ago, I bullshitted my way through an university assignment on Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s magnum opus. I did read Home, a short collection of extracts of his writings. We can argue about what I know and what I don’t, what I’ve read and what I haven’t, but it doesn’t take extensive knowledge and research and a PhD to come to the conclusion that sentencing people to death based on what they write is wrong – be it fiction, be it news, comedy or hate speech. Just to be clear, I don’t think what Rushdie has written is hateful. It’s playful. Again, I don’t know so, I just don’t think so.
What I do know is that Ettore Capriolo, The Satanic Verses’ Italian translator, should never have been stabbed. William Nygaard, its Norwegian publisher, should never have been shot. Hitoshi Igarashi, its Japanese translator, should never have been killed. The hotel Aziz Nesin, its Turkish translator, was staying at should never have been set on fire and thirty-seven people should never have died. And Salman Rushdie should never have had to fear for his life. He should have never been stabbed.
To blaspheme is a right and a right is still a right even if it were to be abused. I wrote the following poems with this in mind. I wrote them to not just exercise my right to blaspheme, no, I wrote them to abuse it.
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Dedicated to Salman Rushdie
Protect the strong from the weak, the wolves from the sheep
‘cause the sheep want to be shepherds while the wolves want to be free
The weak need to be lead, see they’re deathly afraid of freedom
While the strong know fully well that a free world don’t have a leader
Take heed from the weak for prejudice is their leitmotif
Mistranslated patterns of suffering, projections of fantasies
That, when applied to reality, tend to end violently
Mimetic desire breeds mimetic rivalry
Protect the strong from the weak, the wolves from the sheep
‘cause the strong are soft-spoken and the weak doublespeak
Better read between the lines, see the subtext’s oblique but
What’s clear’s they suffer more in imagination than in reality
Take heed from the weak and their masochistic epistemologies
See, wolves will lick their wounds when they bleed
While sheep will keep picking their scabs and never heal
They kiss ass of those above and piss on those beneath
So protect the strong from the weak, the wolves from the sheep
‘cause the strong are soft-spoken and the weak doublespeak
Protect the strong from the weak, the wolves from the sheep
‘cause the sheep want to be shepherds while the wolves want to be free
Protect the strong from the weak, it’s something to bethink
‘cause the strong want to grow while the weak want the world
To shrink
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Here I pray to the Jesus of Suburbia
May You come back to earth and separate the sane
From the maniacs to give all what they deserve
Send the former through the mill and thereafter to the mall
May they taste Your glory in between bathroom stalls
And find a number to call up on the wall
A hotline that will them they’ve long lost their souls
Never absolve anybody’s fault
Taint the sane with the shame they’ve cast and spread
See to they use sexual tension to cope with emotional stress
Break moldy bread, share stale cigarettes
Make the sick cough out their cancer and abscess
And have the healthy lick the floor and swallow the whole mess, yes
May You molest priests, kill police and spread doubt and disbelief
Canonize the Index and defile the corpus of Saint Augustine
Kill god and do as you please
Here I pray to the Jesus of Suburbia
Ad perpetuam memoriam of Christian and Gloria
Ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia
May You travel back in time and fuck up the timeline
Put out the fire hazard at the top of Mount Sinai
Glue the fragments of the ten commandments’ tablets
Back together and chisel in a few additional letters
After all, it’s called Mosaic law
Thou shalt let people pray to what they want to pray
Thou shalt make sure thy neighbor owns neither wife nor slave
Thou shalt take the lord’s name in vain and have a good laugh
Pet the golden calf, protect the polytheistic heathens
From Moses’s wrath, stand with Goliath against David
Aid the Babylonians in their conquest of the West
Tell Your flock to worry not, it’s all just part of their test
Erect from its gravel the Tower of Babel ziggurat
Anathematize the coward Pontius Pilate
Keep his fat hands dirty, have him take responsibility
For what happened on the hills of Golgotha in thirty-three
Still kill god and do as you please
So it be