The Beacon
The Pursuit of Everything Free
Ryan Trostle
“Never freedom except for freedom”
-André Breton
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Freedom is the plus grande principe
The foundling hermaphrodite Father udder
Of law and order collapsing supernovas
Dictation and suffusion not judgment
Freedom to soak the arena, to weave limericks
Is the same as suffrage and lightning and scalping
And the mutilation of the scalper and the praise of the limerick
Bear arms, bare arms, bare chested
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But freedom is not amendments, Locke
Freedom as a protected parcel
is not freedom at all
It can’t be dipped in or used to hold papers
It is God it is textiles it is shrike feathers
Gilded explosion with no outline or color
But any color could be part of its octopus
Freedom of noir, shiro, asfar, as far as
An orange armoire of diamantine ribbon wheels
Entropy is freedom, freedom if it were
a superlative- there is or there isn’t
Ultimatums are freedom
Funerals are freedom
If I cry it’s freedom too
If I bleed it’s freedom too
But if I never die it is compromised
Life is subject too
Coral veins splitting under heel
Conflagrations burgeoning hydrangeas on fire
Wastes of falling blossoms, blades, pathless
Freedom is the street—accretion rests on the curb
We kill behind sliding doors steamed up
from sex on the concrete
At the corner by the canals and bronze lamp posts
Perpendicular to us and powered by rotting fate
We had sex on the concrete, too
Fate is freedom
for it is our freedom to believe in it
Painting collars of muscadines on matryoshkas
Bathing torn fingertips in holy glacial alcohol These are all freedom
Nero knew it, Moses never did
Scuppernongs in a cheese tart
Art of what blue really looks like
Bending light balloon animals
Apple slices pixelated thirty-two
Dark matter and jingle bells
Pirouettes amputations
Gecko tails lost in bar fights
The rain and the well
And the village and the self
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War is freedom
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War wages in its uterus for its heart
Stolen crystal inlaid in wire
Entrails dashing bark
Sunburns to light and salve dark
Transgressions typifying evil
fertilize the apple blossom of the World
Love wobbles into tears pain never was
Regicide
Homicide
Homophones
Homosexuality
Hypersexuality
Hyperpigmentation
Hi to the pigs at the station
Stationed colibris
Scarlet trees from saltpeter
Spears of salted asparagus
Jousts and halberds
Language of lances
Charge the gates
Kiss his lips
Rip the sockets
Grapple for life
Grapple for glory
Procreation
Ignominy
Attention
Fixation
Gentility
Hatred
Freedom