From
Hakim Bey's
"T.A.Z."
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Pyrotechnics
INVENTED BY THE CHINESE but never developed for war--a fine example of Poetic Terrorism--a weapon used to trigger aesthetic shock rather than kill--the Chinese hated war & used to go into mourning when armies were raised--gunpowder more useful to frighten malign demons, delight children, fill the air with brave & risky-smelling haze.
Class C Thunder Bombs from Kwantung, bottlerockets, butterflies, M-80's, sunflowers, "A Forest In Springtime"-- revolution weather--light your cigarette from the sizzling fuse of a Haymarket-black bomb--imagine the air full of lamiae & succubi, oppressive spirits, police-ghosts. Call some kid with a smouldering punk or kitchen match-- shaman-apostle of summer gunpowder plots--shatter the heavy night with pinched stars & pumped stars, arsenic & antimony, sodium & calomel, a blitz of magnesium & shrill picrate of potash.
Spur-fire (lampblack & saltpetre) portfire & iron filings-- attack your local bank or ugly church with roman candles & purple-gold skyrockets, impromptu & anonymous (perhaps launch from back of pick-up truck..)
Build frame-lattice lancework set-pieces on the roofs of insurance buildings or schools--a kundalini-snake or Chaos- dragon coiled barium-green against a background of sodium- oxalate yellow--Don't Tread On Me--or copulating monsters shooting wads of jizm-fire at a Baptists old folks home.
Cloud-sculpture, smoke sculpture & flags = Air Art. Earthworks. Fountains = Water Art. And Fireworks. Don't perform with Rockefeller grants & police permits for audiences of culture-lovers. Evanescent incendiary mind-bombs, scary mandalas flaring up on smug suburban nights, alien green thunderheads of emotional plague blasted by orgone-blue vajra-rays of lasered feux d'artifice.
Comets that explode with the odor of hashish & radioactive charcoal--swampghouls & will-o'-the-wisps haunting public parks--fake St. Elmo's fire flickering over the architecture of the bourgeoisie--strings of lady-fingers falling on the Legislature floor--salamander-elementals attack well-known moral reformers.
Blazing shellac, sugar of milk, strontium, pitch, gum water, gerbs of chinese fire--for a few moments the air is ozone- sharp--drifting opal cloud of pungent dragon/phoenix smoke. For an instant the Empire falls, its princes & governors flee to their stygian muck, plumes of sulphur from elf- flamethrowers burning their pinched asses as they retreat. The Assassin-child, psyche of fire, holds sway for one brief dogstar-hot night.
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