Blacked Out Thesis – Ryan Thoresen Carson & Alexander Haristhal

and man did we have a good time,
so good that time will cease to exist,
in that it is human, to be kept at all.

in Irish folk ballads the self is usually the enemy,
in that to exist at all, is to be keeping yourself-
housebroken, to desire at all,
is to pit yourself against the world.

the Irish, of course, are a people so worried
about original sin and patriarchal modesty
that they’ve been colonized in mind, body, and spirit
which are all affected by time, but it’s hard to say
which one truly keeps the books.

modernist Irish literature is primarily about the erosion
of social norms, the way in which freedom, as in total liberty,
is the most existentially terrifying thing,
in that we are essentially all the ties that bind us,

the anarchists who drink in the damp basements
tend to also be concerned with the matter,
but both have found the chemical cure,
the better living through pharmacy.

in acclaimed Irish songwriter Phil Lynot’s ballad
to the ties that bind, The Boys are Back in Town,
the night out, the retying of fraternal bonds,
the renewal of the platonic vows, is the willing
of solidarity through getting absolutely fucking obliterated.

most theoretical leftists I know aren’t very much fun at parties.
but my boys, when we are in town, will utopia into existence.

in Joyce’s Ulysses we are meant to understand making it home,
returning to your chosen family as the struggle of modernity,
a feeling anyone who rides the MTA can empathize with.