BY JAN HAAG

INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + TEXTILE ART + TRAVEL + ESSAYS + FICTION + HAAG'S BIO

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS







THE 2002 ACCUMULATIONS




POUND STERLING

An Accumulation




and




POUND STERLING

and

SHILLING POEMS















POUND STERLING

Shilling One




06-16/24/7-22-02



Imagine if the pound had never wound the earth -- or the doubloon,
the franc or the mark. Imagine learning Incan
weaving, land distribution, the architecture

of Aztec floating gardens. Imagine experiencing the environmental
harmony of Makah, Chinook, Tillamook. Imagine Hindus
teaching us the ways of rock temple cutting,

the Egyptian, their means of lifting great stones. Imagine if the multiplicity
of the world had not been annihilated by Rapacity, Greed,
Possession. Can you imagine it?

Great civilizations, the multitude of ways and means, the variety
and richness now girded into the skyscraper,
the car, the computer, brain bits, nothingness, 0,1,0,1,0,1.




POUND STERLING

Shilling Two




06-16-02



Talk about the war on drugs! Consider the English and their Sterling
Pound stuffing opium pellets down the throats
of the Chinese.

Making fortunes, building great houses, creating landed gentry, the pirates
and the pitiless, tearing apart 5,000 years
of civilization,

salting the earth with the filth of the Western World, a greater tea party
than Boston, mouthing paternalisms, white-man's-burden
to justify more genocide, more murder,

more poverty unto the tenth generation. Trying to erase the Tao,
succeeding in twisting the perception of the world
that spent sterling pounds snatching life.




POUND STERLING

Shilling Three




06-16-02



It's an old story by now, and who should really care? Perhaps those
ghosts who still haunt the Yu Gung caves.
The lost inhabitants

of Machu Picchu, those other Christians, the Arabs, who captured
the barefoot boy's ancient traditions and rewrote
them in god's name to justify

their fanning out to conquer more of the world than Alexander. Fully
as ruthless as the Western World's heroes, who brought images,
the savage movie entertainment

of the Western World, to life. Adepts, scholars, they learn as quickly as
the original stampers of the Sterling Pound, bringing the world into
the 21st Century, where barely 2% want to be.




POUND STERLING

Shilling Four




06-16-02


Imagine the merchants of the pound sterling come knocking at your door.
Trade, they say, and steal not only the door, but the
windows, the floors, the ceiling, the sky.

Having pitilessly robbed their hosts of livelihood, they feel they have justice
on their side to defend themselves. Kill the brutes who want to scalp us!
Spread the diseases that no longer kill us!

Speaking of germ warfare! Who killed 90% of the population of the Americas?
-- gave some small-pox blankets, fed some to the dogs,
stole the land from everyone,

plowed civilizations vigilantly into the earth, burnt books, competed at
who could rape more of the New World
turn it into a carbon of the Old.




POUND STERLING

Shilling Five




06-16-02


There you have it, a quarter pound! A drawn and quartered world
that might have been -- before Younghusband
elbowed his way into

Tibet, ensnared its peaceful people living at the top of the world into
The Great Game. A game of mutilation, murder,
genocide, one-ups-manship, leaving

every other civilization poorer, devastated by the quarter pound
offered by lying Christian states, who took
the barefoot lad's words and used

them round the world for annihilation, mendacity, thievery, five
shillings worth of hallow sentiment, endless days of
capitalism and poverty.





THE TAO

Today's Shilling/Pound Sterling




02-09-01



Quiet gloom returns to needle-strewn porches, coolness touches my thighs,
God's love manifests in another overcast
day to live
in a world that nurtures my economic

impulses, stretches my purse, relinquishes any vibrant feeling for thighs,
or the dark beauty of overcast
blue-black eyes pleading
for love or remorse or a crumb.

From long ago, wells up the apparition of a thigh-poem
of Rimbaud's? Baudelaire's? Positively French, overcast
with the passions,
seductions of humans -- passe now. N'est pas?

Now our passions take place in boardrooms, "Doing the numbers,"
on the stock exchange, the NASDAQ.
Cuddle your portfolio,
ejaculate DOW poems from between your thighs.





POUND STERLING, An Accumulation
Mixed Media: wood, paper, poems, jewels, leaf, paint, glue, bone, trash
Dimensions: 11 1/2 x 11 1/2"

POUND STERLING AND SHILLING POEMS
Dimensions: 2 x 2 1/2", Seventeen Pages, Six Poems, Two Images

Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
or for purchase of art works
jhaag@janhaag.com




SWEET/TART

COMING SOON


BY JAN HAAG


ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS


POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO


21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context