Whilst No Man Blinded

Whilst No Man Blinded is a free verse narrative monologue inspired by Baudrillard's book The Perfect Crime, and drawing on the brazen verve and broth of Ginsberg's epic lament poem Howl. Hughes represents the French philosopher's idea of the 'murder of reality' in the form of a half human and half animal urban hipster who has transformed into a burnt out goat man who's been surviving in the concrete jungle, fighting urges to return to nature. In Greco-Roman times, bipedal fauns or satyrs were present in mythical stories, and they often symbolized fertility. But it was also a time when the burning out of eyes because of lies, deception, and the false tellings of the chorus, were prevalent. In this poem the goat man exists in an illusory state of hyperreality, transfixed between deterministic and naturalistic forces. While the crime is blazing, it is hard to know how one becomes what one is, or perceive and know what is happening to us and then hang it, choke it with force if necessary, a pseudo crime, victim, judge and jury rolled into one phoney legitimized sham. The work richly apes personal and political hyperbole, the language fused with rap doggerel and kaleidoscopic questioning declensions. It is a celebration of a counterfeited psyche both alienated and revelatory that is plagued by pseudo crimes. It offers up a brilliant flight of imaginative fantasy, and is a triumph of light over darkness.