[NetBehaviour] Rhetoric of the Apocalypse: Strategic Air Command, Omaha

[Alan Sondheim]

Rhetoric of the Apocalypse: Strategic Air Command, Omaha

http://www.alansondheim.org/SAC1.jpg
https://youtu.be/Zl8w2BeB2yg VIDEO
http://www.alansondheim.org/SAC2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/SAC3.jpg

Details of MISSION CONTROL are lost
enormous cost of missiles and now hypersonic
and then these displays, nuclear but slow
the death of a single person is not worth it
or radiation's slow burn
that's this mapping, humans gone asunder
and here i am complaining about cheap cameras
enhancing fx, covering the wounds of bad repro
we can do this, we can do this now
minuteman missiles, launch pads
every target is a wall against the flesh
against the flesh of the observer at least
by which i mean you don't smell or hear zilch
protection against the elements
o nuclear launch you can almost touch it
finger on the button
or something else on something else
or someone else on something else
or someone else on someone else
you do it you do the math, cheap camera trick
cheap game, some space rented out
for a marriage something or other
people milling about, it's all clean here
clean and proper bodies, think through that

rendering, only 4:31:48 to go, always wonder
will this machine make it, bear witness
or bare witness, lest we forget
time becomes the plinth of time

in the magic of the moment of display
in the brilliance of display 1d 2d 3d
it's as if the wound never existed
as if the carapace of the world was safe
not the missile's fury
when there's no time for the eye to see
mouth to open something or other to hear

watch what you want of this, it goes
nowhere, the result of cheap cameras,
speed expanded within speed like this
[...[.....]...] interval and interval
something about drifting

well you know how it is how much that
where does time go in the hypersonic

you can eat in the cafeteria buy stuff
even something that says SPACE FORCE
excitement mounts to a fury, such death
at a distance, some things never land
dead satellites dead earth beneath

they're there, the missiles, sleek dark
planes to be fetishized, they fit the body
like a glove, you know the kind
you can't take them home with you, you can
take the models, cool running in your stream
of desire

press this button to abort, or press nothing

one kid running to hell and back i'm trying
to make a film

nobody control's the kid no one else is there
maybe the mother's there sometimes i see her
someone who looks like her

we don't get here often halfway cross country
all roads slope in every direction whichaway
haven't thought of that meanwhile furious

empty bomb-housing that say INERT they're
waiting like the rest of us for hypersonic
or fire or water or massacre slowly, hand-
by-hand like tv seasons waiting for
whatever's to come whatever channel you're
watching they all end up the same

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