SECONDARY WANTS

A commodity is, in the first place

an object outside us, a thing

that by its properties

satisfies human wants of 

some sort or another

During the agitated times

which have elapsed 

and which have lasted for

many thousands of years, 

mankind has, nevertheless

amassed untold treasures

What I’m now going to relate

is the history of the next two

centuries

The effects of the division of labor,

in the general divisions of society

will be more easily understood

by considering in what manner it 

operates in some particular 

manufactures

He had now remained

seven years in the island

of Calypso

when the gods assembled

in council proposed the method

of his departure from thence

and his return to his native 

country

Second witch: 

When the hurly-burly’s done

When the battle’s lost and won

He all knowledge possessed

Preceded by mind are phenomena

led by mind, formed by mind

I was delighted with the procession

of the inhabitants

but that of the Thracians are equally,

if not more, beautiful

Hence, people have nobly declared

that the good is that at which

all things aim

Not only is it the ordinary people

or those who don’t think

that much about what is

as most deem it

a universal ill

but the same feeling 

has also called forth

complaint from those

who are famous

I have no accurate knowledge

of my age

never having seen

any authentic record containing it

We just have to try

to get to the eye of the storm

Throughout, I ask us to consider

realms of differently organized 

reality that are linked to,

yet move outside of,

colonial boundaries

Thus did I hear

time and place 

have had their say

She was staring at a wad

of black velvet,

which she held in her hand,

and she carefully

placed this bit of cloth

in the closet

It was sharp and clear,

as it rang in the air,

and clattered in my ear

making me recoil

All, 

nevertheless,

flutter

Many cities of men

he saw and 

learned 

their minds

Hour by hour

planes fly there,

ships steer their course there,

and trains thunder

off to it—

but all with

nary a mark on them

to tell of their 

destruction

‘Finally,

he was quartered’,

recounts the Gazette d’Amsterdam 

of 1, April 1757

Sometimes our living context

voluptuates with seductive possibility

I am not quite sure 

of the exact place or exact date

of my birth, but at any

rate I suspect I must have

been born somewhere and at some

point

In Cuban Counterpoint (1940), 

Fernando Ortiz described

‘Peoples from all four quarters

of the globe ‘who labored in

the ‘new world” to 

produce tobacco and sugar

for European consumption

Still alive

The brain, far from being a 

nonsensuous organ, devoted

solely to logical and cognitive

processes, now appears, on the 

contrary, to be the center

of a new libidinal economy

According to context, 

and ever that context,

in some sense,

inheres in the form of the question

It moved quickly, tearing

a pain for days

They came from some remote region

high up in the heavens

and possessed a sacred quality

enjoyed only by things celestial

Where the vegetation thickens

and the temperature of the water

cools, the humming of the oil barges

and motorized canoes ceases

Then, trying to watch in all

Directions at once, she withdrew

A few cautious steps from the tree

Against which she had been leaning

Ancestors of today’s Lakota,

the people of Oceti Sa Kowin,

had for generations warned about a

black snake that would slither across

the land, bringing destruction to the Earth

and her people

It can only die if 

the white people

persist in destroying it

I am glad the time has come

when the lions write history

SECONDARY WANTS: This poem is made up of quotations of specific second sentences found in the forward or first chapter of books from the following authors: Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, Adam Smith, Homer, Shakespeare, Anonymous, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Frederick Douglass, Aimé Césaire, Marcarena Gómez-Barris, Tsangnyön Heruka, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Saidiya Hartman, W.E.B. Du Bois. Homer, Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn, Michael Foucault, NgaKpa Chögyam and Khandro Dechen, Booker T. Washington, Lisa Lowe, Octavia A. Butler, Catherine Malabou, Judith Butler, Yaa Gyasi, Mircea Eliade, Marcarena Gómez-Barris, Isaac Asimov, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Davi Kopenawa, Frederick Douglass.