"The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth."
14.10.09
I just really love this Marx in Jargon by Keston Sutherland. Fantastic trip through Glen Beck's worst nightmare. Lovable, darling, and actually, quite peachy keen if you ask me.
I would like to show something about the Legend of Sticky Beard as described by one of my favorite essentialists of human consciousness (oddly enough, non muslims think us (muslims) to be incapable of thinking outside of the box...only it is THEIR box they find us incapable of thinking outside of heh) but it is hard to find. A little bit of Joe though, goes a very long way even through the thoughtful consideration of a benefactor of such grossly underrated cultural mechanisms like Star Wars that inherently become as tangled in the beard (as anything else) of the five pointed sensorial monster who sports a beard as sticky and repulsive as anything any culture can imagine for itself as objectionable (like islam). Hmm. These cultural mechanisms although designed as commentary from above end up being matters for ethical regression themselves back into the myths that power um...most things non muslim like. Islam is truly different in that respect but most people do not know it. Luke relates one of the essential fallacies of all systems outside of Islam and that is this "underestimation" of the power of the dark side. It promotes a universal human beard trap in which "evil" is actually in competition with good when in fact, it (evil, the devil, etc) was created by the Creator of all things (Allah created the Shaitan and in no way is subject to any of the things most often associated "with" Allah/God regardless of the intention of the human mastermind behind such processes who knows the problem of it but still cannot extract the creative intellect from it long enough to overcome entrapment in the finer details). And then you get the cartoon generation specialists who promote sticky beard to very young children and teenagers who gobble up the gobbletygook of WarCraft and fight simulated battles with this hoary headed and sticky Luke Skywalker accomplice (read: money generators) and no one notices?
You aren't told about it. Last time you looked, Mahmoud Abbas (the new and improved ARAFAT) was doing just fine. His Palestinians in the West Bank were well behaved patrons of the Israeli state. Israel had built them a few malls, gave in to a few more porcelain toilets.....but wait!
Not anymore. You see, Mr. Abbas did what they all do...listened to the Zionist liars in the Israeli knesset and those little monsters in the settlements and said...poopoo on the GOLDSTONE report. Big mistake.
Did Mr. Abbas not understand the story of the third khalifa, Othman? You see...one of the three first khalifs who basically deceived alot of people into believing that the prophet Mohamed had delegated authority to...them....was named Othman. He was assassinated when he pulled exactly this same trick. He was pocketing valuables and cash while the poor did not only not remain indifferent but they marched on his palace in order to demand an explanation. Poor old Othman asked Emir Ali ibn Abi Taleb, pbuh, for some sage advice and it was given. Ali simply told him to "fess up" and don't do it (nepotism/misappropriation of charities, beating up dissenters and the like) anymore. Unfortunately for Othman however, after Ali left the building to return to his monastic set up elsewhere (where he pondered the condition of the new muslims day and night), a bad advisor came to his side. He told Othman...just tell these protesters that the Egyptians (who were also aiming at protest but hadn't reached the palace yet and were camped in a nearby valley)....were on their way home after having spoken to you (Othman). This advisor told Othman to: Tell these guys that everything is just fine and that even the Egyptian contingent are satisfied.
The palace was stormed as soon as Othman followed this worthless advice (ignoring Ali's sage advice). He was repeatedly stabbed by an unnamed protester...maybe several even. Later on, Ali was blamed for leaving Othman on his own. Of course that was ludicrous. Fact of the matter is, you cannot lie to a people who are experiencing first hand oppressions by telling them, "What Oppression?" It just doesn't work and for obvious reasons. Duh. And of course, this led to the battle of Jamal in which the young wife of the prophet, Aisha (the one people are always focusing on because of her age at the time of marriage rather than focusing on her inherent mischieviousness and downright disobedience to the prophet)....led an army against Ali ibn Abi Taleb, pbuh and not only lost but suffered the humiliation of having Aisha carted off and placed under house arrest. Her escort back to her prison was composed of women dressed as men in order to preserve any semblance of nobility she had remaining. Which was literally none and she then pretty much disappears from the pages of Islamic history. Well, not really. She is touted as heroine to this day by ignorant muslims of the Sunni sects. And there are a lot of those still hanging around but they are also fading into the past as we speak.
But here we are...another Israeli Othman in the making and his name is Mr. Mahmoud Abbas.
"As Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu's supporters were celebrating another "victory" in the political battle against the PA - after it retreated from its intent to bring the Goldstone Commission report on Israel's operation in Gaza to the Security Council, it appeared that Abbas' standing in the eyes of Palestinian public opinion has never been worse. Even Balad and northern branch members, who refrain from intervening in intra-Palestinian affairs, called upon the PA president to resign this week. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera TV has been conducting a campaign against him of a sort never before directed against an Arab leader. Prominent people in Fatah are calling upon him to draw the appropriate conclusions, and Abbas' closest advisors, like Yasser Abed Rabbo, are admitting he may have made an error of judgment. The peak came on Wednesday in Gaza, when Hamas organized a humiliating ceremony in which inhabitants of the Gaza Strip were invited to fling shoes at Abbas' picture in the city center."
Soon after its establishment the Mission was faced with one of its major challenges: the decision of the Government of Israel not to cooperate with it and its implicit refusal to give us access to Gaza, the West Bank and to southern Israel.
The Mission found that the attack on the only remaining flour producing factory, the destruction of a large part of the Gaza egg production, the bulldozing of huge tracts of agricultural land, and the bombing of some two hundred industrial facilities, could not on any basis be justified on military grounds. Those attacks had nothing whatever to do with the firing of rockets and mortars at Israel.
The Mission was concerned at the use made by the Israeli army of certain munitions and especially white phosphorous, flechettes and certain heavy metals such as tungsten. Their use is not presently banned by international law.
Since the issue of the advance copy of the Report it has been rejected in vehement terms by the Government of Israel. The call for transparent investigations has been rejected. The Government of Israel wishes to restrict its investigations to secret inquiries by the Military investigating itself. That would clearly not satisfy the legitimate expectations of the many victims of the Israeli military operations.
A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long.
The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence. Time and again, experience has taught us that overlooking justice only leads to increased conflict and violence.
Maz or gracehoper as I usually refer to her is dead. Sad story actually. She was a real pain in the arse. Very opinionated, perhaps moreso than me. Hat's off to you Maz, the story's over.
As another full year ends, let us salute our absent friends
Count Tosselkov who modelled pollen grains to scale in wax, Whistle Murphy, who married seven women, each five years younger than the one before, Cardinal Dab Brockney who catalogued the thirty-nine sexes of angels, the Michel-Burkiss twins who circumnavigated the globe each year while they lived, and were scattered on the trade winds when they died, Ram Shah Pann who enamelled his virile member with turquoise and pearl, Ishmael Serif who perfected pellucid dreaming, Colonel P.D.Beeds who could see colour with his finger-tips, Pierre Chamberlait who conversed with molluscs,the Whittaker cousins who sighted the first green mammal before they were lost in Sumatra, Sugarcane Smith who wrote a twenty-three volume Epic of the Great Venusian Wars and burnt it immediately, Red Haslam who bred flying saddlebacks, James Wade who invented stained-glass bullets, Rabbi Hyram Hite who proclaimed that Doubt is the true foundation of Knowledge, Trapp von Cutler who abducted aliens, and Sydney ‘Slim’ Milch who pioneered the No-Food Diet.
Please charge your glasses, gentlemen; we shall not see their like again.
Old pentacostal poet, how do you do! I wonder about the ghost vessels in your eye, the leftover batch of secrets you forgot to allow into the ministry of tragedie we go and go in again like lapses. Tonight the stars travel along with us as they always have but incognito putting their merry making aside for these awful years that just continue as your commentary drones and with such delightful phrases, it's darling and easy, maybe even evil or at least, quite selfish. If we could only count backwards instead of regress like this from the hard wood podiums evangelically all one syllable, touting toadstool,beach goer, dance partner. Let's get one word and describe it in the elegant patois of the leech! The way we used to mumble before the advent of time itself, such a mysterious eon it was before the door slammed, the coffin nailed, the arms of eternity beckoned and the black distrusted us with so many blank checks and thus created the same old game. Rewind us please for old times' sake back to where we left off not yet evolved and remembering something else or nothing at all, just pleased to be rid of the dragons and very very white, not yet laughing.
1.10.09
Presocratics and Speaking Truth to Power and not only to power, but to those of us who have been led to believe we are powerless. This is the poets job.
In praise of ekphrasis how many posed for that one ready to go on your honor? The last laugh guilt by association Michelangelo. WonderBra. Isn't that strange? National Geographic Kids , streetlights at six. But I like the Reader's Digest rollingstone ringtone! Jane's and Oprah. Martha Stewart Living, Cooking Light how do you do that? Better Homes and Gardens , really now. I thought so.
The Psychological Burka (The psychological burka was mentioned on Nancy Grace by her stand in who was commenting on the murder of the Yale PhD candidate who was throttled and stuck into a wall to conceal her remains. The commentator said that American women have on this burka (or rather I think, they don't have on anything, not even a lowered glance) and because of it, are suffering through a tremendous outbreak of violence. Much of that violence, if not all, involves the sequestering of live women or dead in suitcases and spaces, under cloths and in the most recent abduction, in a man's back yard under the supervision of his own "elder" wife for nineteen unbelievable years!)
Everything that happens, before the mirror happens thus far will become a natural self image. The girl children who find mirrors too soon will be corrupted. Damage the mirrors if you know what is good for the people, cover the faces of the girls with concealants to ward off the evils of never getting out of here purified of this ignorant contagion. The windows shall be curtained, and all fixated glass shall be broken if you know what is good for you. Lights should be dimmed only enough let in for the simplest tasks which she can manage if taught well by her ancestors and only the most important visitors shall be allowed to enter into the enormous unknown of their eyes that are preserved as are the eggs which these are given to carry at birth, to protect inside of the deep tissues and thus far, cannot be replaced.
The Burqa morphs into the Elizabeth Smart story and a man with a Messianic Personality Disorder somehow gets equivocated with the average Afghani burqa owners of the world. We get analysis from the depths of the land of the free and home of the brave and contemplates the interior spaces of women.
The First Thing You Saw
What was it? You saw yourself in the mirror and said something. What was it?
I asked my husband this question this morning. Let me say, I wake up about a half hourbefore he leaves at four thirty a.m. to manage one of several convenience stores (typical foreigner that he is) and although another person might not comprehend this, it is an important thing to understand who he is. I've known him for more than half of my whole life. At this point in our marriage, it will now always be more than half of it. He is who he is and he suffers no illusions about that.
Charismatic and accepting of his own charismatic nature. People adore him even when he's mean and he often is but it is countered with the same devil may care caringness. He knows best and is always right about everything because he takes things simply as they are. He asked me several times when I explain to him what it is I attempt to do in poems, how could a person like you be with a person like me? Good question I think and every married couple should ask this of each other. How could you! There's a line in a movie that I never really finished and can't even remember the name of...Billy Crystal (I think) is speaking to Danny Davito and admits that men are so awful that even they wake up one day and look in the mirror and it's a wonder they don't vomit. But it isn't really about men in general, it's men in specific. People in specific.
I put my head on his back. He was making the coffee. Whereas I would drink whatever was left behind he has to have his fresh and will throw out enormous amounts of coffee whenever he wants a cup. Afrugal. Not just not frugal but afrugal. Not concerned with anything but his own cup.
As I leaned in he said that I didn't sleep well and that it applied to my beauty rest. I need some even though he knows I wake up every day too early in order to work on poetry. I won't have time when I come home and when I'm at work I am not the type to steal hours and work on poetry there even though I probably could.
I indicated that I am not concerned and the lost cause of my youth...is a lost cause. He said he wondered why people don't think they are good looking.
Why indeed. I asked him if he could remember the first time he ever looked in a mirror and contemplated himself, really contemplated or rather, really remembers having contemplated his good looks. Truth of the matter, he isn't all that good looking but he appears to be quite so. His teeth are deranged, his forehead too high, chin too round, in fact it is inherently doubled and has been so forever regardless of his weight. He couldn't ever be declared classically handsome but all the same, he appears to be good looking.
He said that it was in one of the shops and he remembers his uncle Abdullah and he looked into the mirror in one of the dressing rooms there (Liberia) and thought, I'm good looking.
I was surprised. High school? You were that old before you ever considered what Allah had given you i.e. your face?
I told him why this is an important thought and to all people it is so. Even if most people never get around to contemplating it, they will be contemplating it for the rest of their lives subconsiously.
My first memory was looking into the big round mirror in our bedroom (my sister Radiann and I shared a room at that time and the dresser was full of the glasses she had to wear since she was very young and I used to try them on and was jealous of her possession of so many wonderful ways of seeing the world). I was on my knees, about seven years old, nearly hiding from seeing my own self and I picked up a brush, smoothed my hair and said, you aren't that bad. My husband, when I recounted this, didn't get it right away. Because he is that way. Simple. Admits it. Not afraid of it nor ashamed of it and often we laugh at things other people take way too seriously. I laugh with him but am one of those who takes things way too seriously most of the time. Have to fight it really. But I understand his laughter completely. He isn't a poet and confesses that life for him is really easy. For me though, I still hide from my own self in mirrors..don't like them much at all unless I am completely alone and have only to do the necessities of hygeine and baseline acceptable presentation. I analyse everything that I see and sometimes, that is way too deeply. But that is where poems are.
This is a poem.
You don't get it I told him. I said, you are not that bad! In other words, the others in the world hadn't been so generous with me and I told them that I was not that bad. Not that ugly or unpleasant to look at. I also told him that adolescence seems a bit late to be considering one's looks. Had it not occurred to him to look sooner into his own reflection? I told him, even dolphins do better than that and we both laughed and held each other for a few minutes.
I explained to my husband that we all have first impressions of others but what about our first impression of ourself? How important is that! It is really hard to divorce ourselves from our first impressions, nearly impossible for some people it seems. Not everyone and I think that those of us who are able to combat negative first impressions by looking deeper....simply must be on the right track. For a person like him over confident to the point of carelessness even, he wouldn't understand nor would he have to understand in order to survive this life with an intact psychological framework. He simply doesn't bother and hence, he is seemingly good looking.
He has begun to change a bit though. Trying to retain his youth via beauty products for men. The Grecian Formulas and Minoxidil routines. I dab a bit of smooth hundred dollar a bottle serum on my face (my daughter bought it for me, I would never indulge in such excess on my own). When my serum is gone it won't be replaced and it has nothing to do with my comfort level about getting old. Nothing. I just know that it doesn't matter so much nor is it a redeemable quantity of something. Even if others keep trying to redeem it for me, that is just a hope that the past might come back by and remind us of something that we must have forgotten.
In Saudi Arabia once, I spoke to a woman who believed that the djinn live in the mirrors and when a person looks too often in there, the djinn will enchant the careless individual and they will become forgetful. They might even become senile.
For me, all that matters is that I can make him laugh about the dolphins and their self awareness. Making him laugh makes me laugh and that is what it is all about because smiles are a girl's best friend and the djinn's worst enemy and this I learned
from the Arab to whom I'd been given through means I cannot quite explain.
No
Does it matter I'm up now it doesn't I'm up now we have the day
18
more times considered mark that one do not want to read this one no more silly lunches we sit hunched and munch these packages why not pickle do not go away do not pavement lawn porch door the up on in they grieve already the heart is heavier than all the rocks in the world.
22.9.09
Rawrence in Japanese
21.9.09
Poets In Love The Reason He Went To Hell
Then started he on an expedition to find, start and end a great love affair filial the heart hurt all along before and after it drown in it's own sweat the first, second and third person poultice lost in the lapel dissimulating all the damn time serial killer of comfort with one goal in mind to find, start and end a great love affair the great stages of barbarism tight in his tiny loins expressive wanderers whose hopes fall gently into well arranged lines they must meet in a station they will and forage for pleasure as insects do at the body of another bug not one at a time in stages or two at a time in stages or a simple process dragon lust he began to write with great satisfaction:
crybabycrybabycrybabycry.
The Reason She Left Him
She tended to the chores of love on a wintry day mended the mishaps sewed into little knapsacks of flour twisted all the bottles and set them in the fridge nothing left to tidy up in the kitchen where she wept over someone else's misery for the very last time caught up in the deadly newspapers identified only by the numbers on a false breast, her last wish in a suitcase, dis-remembered and she wrote:
I'm just getting started.
20.9.09
As The Angel Watched Certainly, you will understand it after some time. (Qur'an, 38:88)
And now for the information about all of them did it differently but returned with the same message, the widow turned her cap or tucked a shirt with a little bit of the old pride sticking out. Coming up the hill in lock-step it's all a bit mad but I'm not against it not anymore the bikers the sportscars the lucky tickets and the smell of roasted meats wafting through the early evening air near the old man's rose bushes no one seems to notice anymore, left to their own devices and bittersweet activities, budging at the wasps. The kids are up the street talking tough but they've lost all the corners don't know what an old place looks like. At least the girl flips her hair and looks away from the truck where the star hitching takes place, gets her out of town. Don't pretend the sky isn't that wonderful colors and types deal that goes on unless you are used to it and then nevermind, this isn't in the specs placed in the hands of newborn sons. The world up on that end is comfortable now, used to match-making and dog letting, used to all the forgetting that leaves sofas and big iron gadgets out there for penny-wise marketeers. I've done that too, made use of each sticky situation, seen every piece of jewelry melted into golden milkers and beer cans. Note here, the disagreement is on the same black page, there isn't any other option but to erase the cloud cover and open the heavens for one more try, all a bit disheartening when you hear about it the first time and the devil clears his salt throat before the last eulogy every other Saturday. But the second time, ah, the second time.
19.9.09
Norma Cole Reads in Bisbee
Attending Norma Cole's reading last night was fantastic. Not because of the poems (they were quite fine and finely chosen and executed) but because of the poet. Ms. Cole is diminutive, coal eyed and fine boned and carries a beautiful black cane. She holds her right arm which has grown slack and the hand contracted since her stroke several years ago, the way all people with left-sided brain injury do, at a ninety-ish degree angle starting at the elbow. She gathers her work with one hand and speaks carefully with hard won grace in an error prone but steady diction.
She was accompanied last night by Mr. Charles Alexander of Chax Press who drove her down from Tucson yesterday afternoon. He introduced her work and described her poems as delicate and finely-tuned pieces of visual art and that is quite apt. A truly nice guy, editor and poet who read with Ms. Cole in Tucson the night before but chose to sit the reading out last night. I spoke with Mr. Alexander for a few moments at the reception after the reading and offered to give him a flu shot today. We discussed H1N1 a little bit. Before the reading, I had to shsh my husband who tried to peddle the book I am working on right now, afterall, he doesn't know any better.
I then took my turn in front of Ms. Cole with my copy of Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 in hand. There isn't much to say to a poet whom you've never heard of, never read and of whom you are asking an autograph. I held the book so that she could scrawl her signature and enter the perfunctory greetings that poets of stature usually enter onto the first page of a book and thanked her. I asked her if it had been a stroke and when it had happened. "It must have been hard" I said. Hard isn't the word for aphasic. Aphasic is the word for aphasic and for a poet who has been described as a "powerhouse" reader, it doesn't begin to describe the agony this poet must have been through as she struggled to regain the use of her instrument: her language, both literally and figuratively.
As I turned to leave, I stopped, turned back and said, "I liked "before the war". I told her that yes, all my work is "before" and "after" the war and explained in a few short words what I meant by that. She took my book from my hands and opened it immediately to the page and showed me a poem titled Sumoud. I looked at it and read it out loud to her and to my husband who was standing dutifully by and he was the one who insisted I go to the reading in the first place, he knows my tendency to avoid such things overall. I choked a bit on the words:
"A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map."
Who wouldn't choke on such a thing and me in particular. It is the same choking I get when trying to read the poem of Taha Mohamed Ali in which he describes the feeling of not saying good-bye to the people you adore when running from a village or city that is being attacked by an oppressor.
The poem Sumoud (which means Resistance in Arabic my husband informs me) begins with the epigraph, a quote from Jean Said Makdisi's Memoir, Beirut Fragments(reviewed here by the typically Awful and ArabophobicDaniel Pipes who simply cannot understand the attraction of Beirut or the bitter attraction of war (for poets/writers/memoirists) because he is an amoral idiot):
"Once I saw a bride standing on the sand..."
Ms. Makdisi relates, "How can this be? How can brutal warfare and beachcombing co-exist in adjacent streets?" My point exactly when I wrote this poem in February 2008, a full year and a half after our flight from Beirut:
Sawridge Hotel, Fort McMurray
When I think of Beirut I think of hair, of weddings and war. A never-ending cycle of hair, weddings and war. On our way out we spoke to a man on his fourth or fifth flight from an Israeli
incursion.
I think of hair, weddings and war.
Ms. Cole's beautiful line in which she finds a sign in a stranger who spills something (the truth): his village is erased from the map, and I find my own sign there. This is how poetry is for me. It ought to touch a stranger and certainly, Ms. Cole not only touched me but inspired me. She has struggled no doubt to regain her ability to read her work aloud in public. It was just as strenuous to hear, just as strenous to watch her climb the three flights of stairs to the Central School auditorium and the few steps that lead up to the stage. I hope she thinks it was worth it because it certainly was worth it to me.
I only stayed a few minutes more at the reception. Although there were a handful of poets present that I know, I cannot say I know them well enough to chat and wanted to go home and nudged my husband that we'd pay our respect to the poet once more. I returned to Ms. Cole and as people ought to do if they have any manners, I bid her adieu and thanked her for coming once again.
Salaam wa alaikum I said. Her very beautiful face lit up and her body lurched forward and she gave me her best Salaam. I returned home with such a precious feeling and a book in hand. Such a precious sign.
18.9.09
Lailat ul-Qadar
It is difficult to explain the prayer to those who hold contempt in the heart in the diseased heart, those who cannot render an important fixation that nestles between want and is who do not remember the catch phrases. We were left with two things, the lesser and the greater and our unholy mind to deal with. These sickly minds of ours stock up on junk and destitution, store memory and vicissitude and trade cash for cash, they cannot comprehend destiny before it is discovered, landed on, described and by then replaced with fond memories punctuated by dreams and startled by chance. Prayer then is the cohesion of forces and the expert is one who knows which thing might actually be allowed, knows which thing is not in the making because they have paid attention and rather than believed, have known.
Norma Cole is the author of numerous books of poetry including Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights Spotlight), Do the Monkey (Zasterle, 2006), Spinoza in Her Youth (Omnidawn, 2002), Moira (O Books, 1995), and My Bird Book (Littoral Books, 1991).
As a visual artist Cole has worked in a variety of mediums. Her House of Hope, featured as part of IM- AGEworks/WORDworks, is a suspended sculpture collecting 426 quotes gathered from the artist's notebooks over the past 20 years. Part of the same project and also featured in the exhibit is the fine- press book titled Collective Memory, published by Granary Books (2006), spotlighting in text, photos and drawings the creative process of imagining poetry within a variety of environments. Cole has been the recipient of awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2006) and The Fund for Poetry (2003, 1999, 1994) as well as a Purchase Award for "They Flatter Almost Recognize", a collaboration with photographer Ben E. Watkins (1994), and the Gertrude Stein Award (1995-96, 1994-95, 1993-94).
She teaches at San Francisco State University, the University of San Francisco, and in the MFA pro- gram at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles. A Canadian by birth, Cole migrated via France to San Francisco where she has lived for the past twenty years.
Review of Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988--2008 from Publisher's Weekly: "A disciple of Robert Duncan, Cole casts her short poems in jagged verse and prose blocks, by turns abstract ("Imaginations law hits frames"), surreal ("Bark grew up over their faces") and painterly in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Barbara Guest: "This is the image of effort." Other pieces work more like disjunctive fables: one such prose poem describes how "A little of life simply escapes from a shallow dish." Cole is far better known on the West Coast and in experimental poetry circles than any- where else; in fact, her work is surprisingly accessible given its avant garde origins and ambitions-- beautiful phrases and lines leap off the page ("Then his/ signature will have taken place," reads one poem)--and this concise gathering of poems from her 15 small press books should bring Cole much deserved attention."
A reception will follow the reading. This event is FREE and open to the public.
...can't say I'll appreciate her work but all the same, it's good to be there once in a while. Readings at the CSP are where readings should be if they cannot be at the Sacred Heart anymore. Nice big auditorium with lots of seats and windows that still have old fashioned dowels and screens and it's dark in there. The weather no doubt will be fabulous as it always is on evenings in September in this glorious old town. After the reading a person can head on home, go to the Gulch or the Queen or the Grand or, like me, to the Coffee Shop down at the old PD Merc. Better yet, a person is advised to take a nice long walk through the town at night because there is just nothing that compares to a night time walk in Old Bisbee except maybe a Dilly Bar at the Dairy Queen in Bakersville. It's a toss up.
16.9.09
PROSELYTE
There, beyond the vanishing point of the twentieth where victory awaits the world's rotten soldiers who march into ceremony and public addresses, there were the children and they drew armfuls of the contempt no one can understand. This is not the mystery you are used to, not sorry for the children anymore the break down of all prices to be paid that wonder is given to how come not why but how come
the shocking strophe length of birds, the temperature monitored by the cricket the moth as it clings to light the leaves as they turn to brown.
A new century weaves on by taking turns with the last one in gently uneven steps and they aren't really ready to cry again not until the private collection can be retrieved and they read the meek history of the burnt fat offering and outrageous beheadings. Until someone looses the long hair from the cache of boxes under the alleyways and the soldier eats his first homemade meal in an eon. But no, I don't worry much about the conformity of their dresses anymore than that, it wasn't, afterall what the Beneficent sent me to do. Here in this part of the country the work is never finished and as it winds down it winds down, the light changes.
15.9.09
Israel drops experimental DIME on civilians in Gaza, plans to drop them elsewhere as well.
Israel using new Cancer causing explosive. If it doesn't shred a person to pieces with the first drastic explosion using Dense Inert Metal Explosive, it will cause CANCER to the remaining victims of this vicious and illegal munition.
Why haven't you heard of it? Because the United States allows Israel to commit war crimes. That is because the US has committed war crimes. Sad fact of the matter is, bad people and governments stick together like glue. Even Obama is helpless it seems to do anything about it.
Should we worry?
Fortunately for us, Good People Stick Together Too!
There is growing concern that Israel is planning another attack on South Lebanon. I tend to think that they got their arses whooped the last time and wouldn't risk another humiliating defeat at the hands of Hezbollah but oddly enough, Israel is a glutton for punishment. Hezbollah now has an estimated 80,000 rockets posed and ready to launch into Israel should Israel do something stupid. And Israel is still stupid even if the Israeli people have become wise about their own guilt over so many war crimes it makes a person's eyes water.
They have used the Gaza strip as their own personal in vivo munitions testing facility. Mengele? Oh more than that. Israel makes the Nazi regime look tame and it is no longer an viable comparison.
There is no comparison to the war crimes committed by Israel against civilian populations, infrastructure of neighboring countries and Palestinian prison camps (in Israel and beyond). One day in the not so distant future, people will ask "how did this happen"? Just as people do when considering the war crimes perpetrated by Adolph Hitler against many types of people of whom the Jews composed only a fraction of the number eradicated by his pogroms.
Last week, a group thought to be a small, poorly organized group loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda, fired two home made rockets into Israel and Israel retaliated and blamed the Lebanese goverment for the attack (the only way a legitimate claim of self defense can be made is by assigning guilt to the government of the territory from which a missile is launched). Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government denied any responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, Israel fired on a fishing boat in Naqoura which is a small seaside village bordering Israel and Lebanon which is a frank vilation of the UN resolution that ended the horrendous war crime Israel perpetrated on the Lebanese civilian population (collective punishment for ?) in 2006.
Israel you see, does whatever it wants to. Doesn't consult with the UN peacekeeping forces and sometimes even attacks the UN peacekeeping forces.
I personally don't see an Israeli attack in the making but news reports from the ME do suggest that it is highly possible in the near future that Israel may attempt once again to ethnically cleanse the region along it's northern border of the legitimate occupants who are mostly Shia muslims but also a healthy contingent of Maronite Christians. It wouldn't be the first time. Afterall, Israel is built on the blood and bones of people they murdered in order to form the illegal state of Israel which is not recognized by any ME countries save those on the payroll of the United States (client regimes) like Jordan and Egypt.
In the Jewish daily Ha'aretz, the language is quite tame and indicates that Israel is on the defensive now rather than the offensive:
"The explosions showed that Hezbollah is arming and getting stronger, but the IDF is organized and ready for everything."
Although Ha'aretz is known for it's liberal and pro peace stand, in this case, it misrepresents the facts indicating weakness of the Israeli people. Hezbollah had nothing to do with the attacks. Of course not. Hezbollah is a professional outfit and doesn't launch "home made" rockets nor does it ever launch piecemeal attacks like this. When Hezbollah has something to do with an attack, it will be and always is obvious because they take their operations quite seriously. They also respect their enemies enough to not lie about actual attacks and counter attacks. That is one of the weapons (truth/honesty) that destroyed Ehud Olmert who has recently been deposed by the Israeli people (for corruption).
Hezbollah has literally changed the society of the Middle East in general and the Levant specifically into one of Resistance rather than Submission to the Israeli War Machine. This article is from the second in command of Hezbollah, Shaikh Naim Qassem who is widely considered the "bad cop" of the good cop/bad cop partnership of Nasrallah and Qassem, Inc.:
He invites all Lebanese citizens, Muslim and Non to participate in the resistance society from which there is "no turning back" and which Nasrallah promises will end the injustice of the Israeli state forever:
"Thus the whole society becomes a resistance society; it provides what is required of it to then go back to the normalcy of daily life. Hence a resistance society is not one in which arms are randomly distributed to all the people, but such a community governs energies and capacities into an integrated process of confrontation."
The Christian president of Lebanon echoes this sentiment when he says that the Lebanese Armed Forces should act as a complement to the victorious party (Hezbollah) who is most likely better armed than the state itself:
"Speaking to graduating officers at the Fiadiyeh Military Academy on Friday in the occasion of Lebanon's 63rd annual Army Day, Suleiman stressed that the army's weapons should embrace the ones addressed against the enemy "that was already defeated by the Resistance and the army"."
"Your duty "goes beyond politics and confessionalism (sectarian affiliation). Maintaining security is your duty, which requires sacrifices," Suleiman told the graduating class, which he named after Brigadier General Francois al-Hajj, who was martyred in a bombing."
President Suleiman goes further to identify internal enemies of the state of Lebanon (Al Qaeda and Christian Lebanese Forces affiliates) as being on the zero tolerance list of every citizen of Lebanon and more importantly, the integrated Lebanese Army which just so happens to be composed mostly although not entirely of Shia muslim soldiers:
"Suleiman urged the army to confront "violators" to avoid civil strife and stressed the need to safeguard the military's unity. "Do not hesitate to curb violators no matter what their affiliations are," Suleiman told graduating cadets at the Military Academy in Fayadieh. "Isn't it a duty to confront anyone who shoots" at his compatriot? Suleiman asked."
"The Lebanese army fought fierce battles in the Nahr al-Bared camp" at this time last year, Sleiman recalle, referring to the Lebanese Armed Forces' summer-long fight against the Fatah al-Islam organization in the northern Palestinian refugee camp, a fight Suleiman himself oversaw, as the army commander at the time. "You have preserved our national unity with your sweat and blood. Do not let it be shaken now," the President said."
The secretary general of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah goes on to order that all interal collaborators in league with the Israeli/US plan for the ME which involves direct and indirect internal meddling be given the harshest penalty possible under the law and he suggests that that start not with members of other religious sects but with the Shia themselves (and yes, some Shia are evil doers and traitors to the Lebanese population):
In this issue I want to be frank and decisive, do not play with security or the judiciary, like the old game of '6 by 6 per sect repeated.' In other words placing the treatment of collaborators under the influence of balances religious confessions and sects.
I say begin the death penalty with collaborators from the Shiaa community.
Fourth: An invitation. Today I like to address the rest of the spies and agents who are still on Lebanese territory, who have not been arrested yet. I say to you 'You are completely exposed, the hands to arrest you will soon reach you, it is why I offer you to quickly surrender yourselves to the official security services and the Lebanese judiciary, lest that lighten your penalty, you spies and collaborators must know you have no value to your Zionist masters, because as far as "Israel" is concerned you are worth a handful of dust, that is why you should guard yourself by quickly returning to your home, people and State before it is too late.
Fifth: We in Hizbullah have always cooperated with the security agencies, but I announce today that we in the resistance will maximize the efforts and cooperation, without any reservations with all official bodies, in a comprehensive national public effort to achieve this noble goal, which is to clean Lebanon up from the networks of spies and agents.
Sixth: we must cooperate to mitigate the political environment, to not allow political and sectarian divisions in the country to justify collaboration and treason. I must also draw the people's attention in all areas, especially in towns and large cities where issues quickly dissipate and become forgotten, when in villages a dead person is kept alive in the people's memory for even a hundred after their death.
I want to say we must act responsibly with legitimacy, morally and fraternally. The Holy Quran says "... no bearer of burdens can bear of burdens the burden of another" Holy Quran 6:164. The collaborator and spy in one of our villages or families, is not the fault of their father, mother, wife, children or family. It is bad enough that this or that collaborator wronged his own family therefore; it is not permissible for anyone to wrong his family or relatives.
They are our community, people, citizens, neighbours and distant relatives, we must lament their situation, lighten their burden, and stand by their side, because their wound is very painful, it is more painful than any wound, I know as you do, particularly in south Lebanon, the feelings of any family, father, mother, wife, child or daughter whose son, husband or father is a collaborator.
In this regard I hope the collaboration matter is dealt with in complete compassion. God Almighty calls on us to reflect His characteristics in His creation, He is with great mercy and compassion and strong impunity. I invite you express mercy with the families and severe punishment with agents and spies.
He goes on to suggest that these collaborators are not merely intelligence agents for Israel but indeed, have harbored TNT in their homes and assisted Isreali operatives in and out of the country and hence, they obviously deserve the death penalty if charged with being "agent executors".
The unification of Lebanon is contrasted with the Disunity of Israel and the people who occupy Palestinian homes and lands. No Occupier in the history of mankind has EVER remained in the land that they occupied. None.
13.9.09
An Evening in September Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim
So much has been lost in the paraphrase and I am one of them now, on the other side trying not to be a burden to not fabricate the evidence against us all and if you cannot forgive yourself, I cannot forgive you either. Our dead child waits for us in her stony little grave but I cannot say it. If three people have the same conversation, who says they all have the same one ah'khee? It was a long time ago and shouldn't matter to anyone now. Afterall, she was never born into such vivid detail still has the luck of innocence on her side and the courage to warm herself in that tomb with nothing more than her outlaw hands and messages. Sure would have done it differently even though it would have looked the same and she'd still be in there. Her little brother, darling boy made more of an impression coming in and blessing us with his unbelievably high hopes but he died too, left without telling anyone goodbye and I turned to the woman in the cot beside me, nos son mortificados, estranged, guilty and she was the one screaming. And for this ah'khee, I now pay for these crimes all alone.
*ah'khee is the familiar form of brother in Arabic, translates literally to "bro"
12.9.09
To WJ Porter's Ashes
And he reviewed the birds, then said: How is it I see not the hoopoe or is it that he is of the extinct? -The Ant in the Glorious Quran
It is the preburn of creation without the m and I know all the answers, there aren't any about that - is there moisture down there dad? When it rains do you feel a little bit better, more yourself more like a protestant caught up in the litigation of certain tribal defamation suits against the Creator? I'm not mad at you just wish I knew you a bit better than the dust you've become knew a little more about how you knew I'd be alright. Sometimes I think about your beard, the way we used to call you Ahab the Arab so grateful to you for that time you laughed about his left hand. You were smiling weren't you and someday we'll go fishing up there I promise, we'll have all day to spell your first name.
Teeth
I still would, even if I didn't make it to the afterhours party, I still would purchase the hard soap, the green soap would still make sure that every part got rinsed off every day. Then I would keep cautioning my children to honor me anyway and to look away if the scene makes them unhappy. Keep walking brothers and sisters you used to know me and the stories are still fragrant, still unfinished but the last doubt is different, keeps you hopeful and mellow. Young son with your facial hair and daughter with your baby, it isn't what you expect afterall. The sky will show you how. All my teeth are porcelain now they've shaved off their only shine been replaced with something if not better at least it is more expensive, quality dentition. I used to think I'd be famous or beautiful forever, I used to believe that I could never get over anything especially love but I got over you too.
Back to the poetry because afterall, 9/11 is so over. The monsoon isn't though and that is good. Rain is always good, keeps everything fresh if you will.
The Chain Reaction (for Matt, whoever he is) It started with the interpreter then the mayor, where we lived between Wood and West long ago everyone was watching, considering for a few moments the love that ran between the tall Mexican and his nurse without any words to fall over, it was brief and ended nicely but only went as far as skin. He likes a little sugar not smoke but the machine was on all night and the rest of the world became silent from pouting, there were no falling stars, no recorders but because it was important, we remembered it and put it into action for replay in the lives of others. We are doing such important things here, taking notes but the archives put psychology into too many books, forgot to take our passing thoughts out for a walk before Mr. Whatshisname counted the windows and secured the last door with his arthritic panhandling wrists, I remember him I remember all of his children but never saw them or wanted to go home with their captives, didn't eat under their tricky umbrellas. We took his generation seriously without making sure first, checking into what the neighbors said later on. It happened again with that one too, he moved in and when it was over took my two shoulders in his hands and that was it, we were shaking and whispering I love you in the car, I know I could honey but for now this bed is all mine, is all narrow, is all made up for the evening, is all I ever wanted. Just another mistake but if only you hadn't said I'm getting better, healing up. That never works but once.
11.9.09
IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY
Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little South of Moline. Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn't b'lieve what he seen. Laid on the ground and shook fearin' for his life. Then he ran all the way to town screamin' it came out of the sky.
Well, a crowd gathered round and a scientist said it was marsh gas. Spiro came and made a speech about raising the Mars tax. The Vatican said, woe, the Lord has come, Hollywood rushed out an epic film and Ronnie the Popular said it was a communist plot.
Oh, the newspapers came and made Jody a national hero. Walter and Eric said they'd put him on a network TV show. The White House said, put the thing in the Blue Room, the Vatican said, no, it belongs to Rome and Jody said, it's mine and you can have it for seventeen million.
Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little South of Moline. Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn't b lieve what he seen. Laid on the ground a shakin', fearin' for his life. Oh, then he ran all the way to town screamin' it came out of the sky.
- John C. Fogerty
The Banksters and the Tangled Web They Weave "In any case, it’s scary: you’ve got a good segment of the American population that is completely impervious to any kind of evidence, any rational argument. I mean, who collects statistics? People in black helicopters!"
"How many small towns with barely ten thousand people “boast” a tiny local airport which play host to terrorist hijackers? Or been run by a heroin trafficker disguised as a flight school owner, or a man accused of stealing $300 million in a huge financial fraud?"
"DuBain later founded a San Francisco supper club with oilman Gordon Getty and Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz; his "Pacific Institute" kept former Bush Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld busy in the 1990s."
"One answer has already become obvious. Nadel spent an enormous amount of money on airplanes and aviation facilities." ______________________________________________________________________________
"These reports further state that Madoff was ‘convicted’ in a ‘one of a kind’ designed trial in which his guilty plea kept all evidence against Israel’s betrayal of the United States from being entered into official American records as it was deemed by the Obama administration as ‘too incendiary’ for the American people to know about and would, most certainly, unleash an Israeli backlash many Russian Military Analysts state would leave ‘many US cities in ruin’. ”
Now, I was going to write a poem about this and I might indeed do that but not before I reprint a 9/11 classic. One of my favorite poems of all time and it is what it is. It's about truth and the right of "freedom of speech" CONSISTS IN telling the truth according to Ali Mu'mineen, Commander of the Faithful, pbuh. Many of the first Imam's quotes are taken for granted and this one needs to be examined thoroughly by all readers (close reading). Freedom of Speech isn't about just saying whatever you want. Not at all and afterall, it doesn't exist (the so-called Freedom of Speech in the USA) or we'd already have put these culprits all to bed. Osama is dead...has been for quite some time. But the truth isn't well liked by the sentimentalists in the world who hold on to their own misguided notions too tightly regardless of their self declared affinity for "truth". Historically speaking, this is what happened to Moses, SA when the Pharoah got a bit anxious about Moses' revelation before the nation that magicians are just magicians. Moses threw his staff into the ring and it turned into a snake and ate the fake snakes of the magicians (who were merely propagandists for the Pharoah) whole. The point of that parable which is found not only in the Quran but the Bible is simply this, TRUTH TRUMPS FALSEHOOD ON CONTACT. Falsehood ...well falsehood. What about falsehood and it's many sided variations on the truth? It mixes fact and fiction, just like Mr. Krugman said but he ends up being just another part of the act. This is, for those who have spent any time at all perusing the Protocols of Zion, the trick. At the end of that parable, the magicians themselves admit to the truth and in fact, so does the Pharoah but for him it was a bit too late as the Red Sea came crashing down upon him. He pleaded with Allah to accept his apology and Allah just said, "Nope." Just a simple, "Nope."
Liars tell such a fabulous tale that they literally force a truther to look bad if and when they question the facts of the case. In the case of the Pharoah, he threatened the turn-coat magicians of his with CRUCIFICTION (basically). Ouch! No sane person can say that this isn't exactly the case with such "truther"movements post 9/11. The "truthers" have been tarred and feathered, ignored and even ousted from popular poetry boards (Amiri Baraka by Mr. Ron Silliman) for merely stating the facts. Of course, Mr. Silliman has forgiven Mr. Baraka (LeRoi Jones) for his act of defiance and Mr. Baraka has held his tongue after having his Laureate-ship revoked.....but this story just won't die. That is because the fake snake isn't able to eat the real snake. That reptile is Divine Powered you know and has a HUGE stomach. Just huge. The only thing the real snake likes to eat is the thing that satisfies it's hunger and that would be the lie. The real snake food.
Haha...that third article might even be part of the parade...oh...it tells the "conspiracy theorists" which like to think they know (and end up in the forest of mirrors all the same)..if anyone finds out, RUSSIA tells us that it will leave all our cities in ruin! It basically says, we're gonna tell you the truth here but at the end of it we'll put in this fabulous assumption just in case you "get any ideas" about how secret this all is and has to remain.
What utter bullshit. Israel will beat us up...hahaha. And that's exactly what Ahmadinijad said when threatened with Israeli airstrikes....hoho he said. Israel? That tiny little country? Will attack the mightly nation of Iran? Oh...hohoho. He had the usual sparkle in his eye that so many of us teary eyed Shia get now days when faced with the moronic afterglow of 9/11 and Israel's now famous defeat in Lebanon in 2006. What pranksters!
My favorite truther is this young man who goes into Walmarts and Kmarts and watches employees enter their secret intercom code. He then commandeers the intercom and announces to the Kmart blue-light shoppers that 9/11 was a coverup. What chutzpah! What sheer valor.
The Wondrous Magico
Most things never really happen to us and those that do are truly remarkable. The tired old promise once the war is fought and supposedly won, as planned before the corpse wrecks the best-laid plans with clockwork and clairvoyance, that dreadful pose staged on the triage of life and death innuendo are a pleasant compromise for the real thing as it fiddles and burns, cuts everything in half and disappears the rabbit from the land of the living. Those that shake the snakes from bags and wave their crooked old sticks past all our pleased and dumbstruck faces say like this:
and and and and and Voila! Lo! Behold!
The Chain Reaction
It started with the interpreter then the mayor, where we lived between Wood and West long ago everyone was watching, considering for a few moments the love that ran between the tall Mexican and his nurse without any words to fall over, it was brief and ended nicely but only went as far as skin. He likes a little sugar not smoke but the machine was on all night and the rest of the world became silent from pouting, there were no falling stars, no recorders but because it was important, we remembered it and put it into action for replay in the lives of others. We are doing such important things here, taking notes but the archives put psychology into too many books, forgot to take our passing thoughts out for a walk before Mr. Whatshisname counted the windows and secured the last door with his arthritic panhandling wrists, I remember him I remember all of his children but never saw them or wanted to go home with their captives, didn't eat under their tricky umbrellas. We took his generation seriously without making sure first, checking into what the neighbors said later on. It happened again with that one too, he moved in and when it was over took my two shoulders in his hands and that was it, we were shaking and whispering I love you in the car, I know I could honey but for now this bed is all mine, is all narrow, is all made up for the evening, is all I ever wanted. Just another mistake but if only you hadn't said I'm getting better, healing up. That never works but once.
10.9.09
GOOD BUY at Abe's
Here's the deal....I collect old books. Some of them rare and some not so rare, just good reads. One of my favorites is a children's book with an illustration done by a very young Andy Warhol. And in that soup can band illustration...you guessed it....the famous can of tomato. I gave away my Durant signed first edition but held on to TE Lawrence...couldn't part with that! I still can't find any copies of the Longfellow for sale so mine must be worth at least a dollar or two. It's obviously rare.
Today I found a really grand piece of historical literature.
I don't know if the link will last because I've purchased the piece but here it is:
From Mimeo Revolution...and the youngish Flarfists would be tickled to know that the wheel was already invented hahaha. Those old mimeograph machines and what I wouldn't give for one now! Hot tip: buy one. They will be worth a fortune or at least as much as one of the old Pong games.
This issue of Salted Feathers which was co-edited by my old friend Dick Bakken, features a nice selection of the soon to be famous and very famous poets we know of today.
"Stapled Mimeo Sheets. Contributors include: Padraig O Broin, Carol Berge, Allen Ginsberg, Howard McCord, Galway Knnell, Charles Bukowki, Pamela Bakken, James Hazard, Larry Eigner, Carlos Reyes, Arthur Vogelsang, Dick Bakken, George Dowden, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Norma Ceaser. This issue also a portfolio of photos of poets. Cover lightly faded. Bookseller Inventory # 3103"
7.9.09
As The Plane Flew Over
I want to learn how to contact them tell them how do you do via signal per madman all the movement in the ligature of the city runs round the battleground in stages they only could hear the word mindsmart the plastic peel or definite character under our fountain heads please tell them so no one will worry force them to get up to gerryrig their address but how can we return to work knowing all this has happened down there as descending over the activated bodies bending in time the aperture widens and closes in to focus remembers the sound of the beast as that heart goes one two three? Spirit of organization goes on believe it or not and the poets talk to it forever.
