Guidebook for Female Poets (a specific 'type' of poet in the subcategory of 'all' poets) in blogging their little hearts out...how not to become your own pejorative:
1. Be brave.
2. Be able to take it like a man. Do not be ashamed to take it like a man.
3. Avoid using the "I" word overly much in your posts. You sound just like your self absorbed male counterparts.
4. Reach out and read something OTHER than poetry. Try a newspaper, for instance.
5. Learn how to call a spade a spade.
6. Know how to apologize.
7. Do not trust self absorbed male poets with your beliefs, valuables or life work.
8. Do not cat fight.
9. Stand in line, wait your turn. If you can't say something intelligent, please by all means, shut up. Try not to make the rest of us look lame brained.
10. Avoid taking pictures of your ass and attaching them to your poems.
11. When men are behaving histrionically, tell them so in no uncertain terms.
12. If a male ever dares to censor your honest efforts to explain something to him that he is either ignorant of or has displayed a curiously unbalanced view about, ditch him and anyone associated with him.
13. http://www.billdobbins.com/PUBLIC/pages/coolfree/bbsport_folder/musclebound.htm
*On Hell
When telling a male to go to hell, make sure to be very careful. If you are like me and actually believe in hell, the male tends to take it to heart and explode in furious bursts of rage.
"The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth."
5.10.06
1.10.06
30.9.06
Tangle Vine
Allah Akbar!
John
by Edgar Bowers
Before he wrote a poem, he learned the measure
That living in the future gives a farm--
Propinquity of mules and cows, the charmed
Insouciance of hens, the fellowship,
At dawn, of seed-time and of harvest-time.
But when high noon gave way to evening, and
The fences lay, bent shadows, on the crops
And pastures to the yellowing trees, he felt
The presences he felt when, over rocks,
Through pools and where it wears the bank, the stream
Ran bright and dark at once, itself its shadow;
And suffered, in all he knew, the antagonists
Related in the Bible, in himself
And every new condition from the beginning,
As in the autumn leaf and summer prime.
Therefore he chose to live the only game
Worthy of repetition, in the likeness
Of someone like himself, a race of which
He was the changing distances and ground,
The runners, and the goal that runs away
Forever into time; or like two players
At odds in white and black, their dignities
Triumphs refused or losses unredeemed.
For the one, that it be ever of the pure
Intention that he witnessed in the high
Stained windows of King's Chapel--ancestral stories,
The old above the new, like pages shining
From an essential book--he taught his mind
To imitate the meditation, sovereign
In verse and prose, of those who shared with him
Intelligence of beauty, good, and truth
As one, unchanging and unchangeable,
Disinterested excitement through a sentence
Their joy and passion. For the other, as
A venturer asleep, he went among
The voiceless and unvisionary many--
Like one who offers blood to know his fate
Or hold his twin again--deep in the midnight
Baths of New Orleans, on its plural beds
And on the secret banks beside its river,
The many who, anonymous as he was,
Uncannily resembled him, appearing
Immortal in a finitude of mirrors.
But when the sudden force of the disease
Tossed him, in a new garment, on the bed
Where he had wakened, mornings, as a child--
Despised by all the neighbors, helpless, blind
And vulnerable to every life, he listened
Intensely to the roosters, mules and cows
As well as to the voices of the desk,
The chair, the books and pictures, pastures and fields,
The tree of every season, the age of seas
And, on its surge, the age of galaxies,
The bells within the spires of Cambridge, bodies
And faces revealed or hidden in the flow,
All that we knew or could imagine joined
Together in the sound the stream flows through
As witness of itself in every change,
Each trusting in its continuities,
All turning in a final radiant shell.
Then, on his darkened eye, he saw himself
A compact disk awhirl, played by the light
He came from and was ready to reenter,
But not before he chose the way to go.
And so it was, before his death, he spoke
The poem that is his best, the final letter
To take to that old country as a passport.
John
by Edgar Bowers
Before he wrote a poem, he learned the measure
That living in the future gives a farm--
Propinquity of mules and cows, the charmed
Insouciance of hens, the fellowship,
At dawn, of seed-time and of harvest-time.
But when high noon gave way to evening, and
The fences lay, bent shadows, on the crops
And pastures to the yellowing trees, he felt
The presences he felt when, over rocks,
Through pools and where it wears the bank, the stream
Ran bright and dark at once, itself its shadow;
And suffered, in all he knew, the antagonists
Related in the Bible, in himself
And every new condition from the beginning,
As in the autumn leaf and summer prime.
Therefore he chose to live the only game
Worthy of repetition, in the likeness
Of someone like himself, a race of which
He was the changing distances and ground,
The runners, and the goal that runs away
Forever into time; or like two players
At odds in white and black, their dignities
Triumphs refused or losses unredeemed.
For the one, that it be ever of the pure
Intention that he witnessed in the high
Stained windows of King's Chapel--ancestral stories,
The old above the new, like pages shining
From an essential book--he taught his mind
To imitate the meditation, sovereign
In verse and prose, of those who shared with him
Intelligence of beauty, good, and truth
As one, unchanging and unchangeable,
Disinterested excitement through a sentence
Their joy and passion. For the other, as
A venturer asleep, he went among
The voiceless and unvisionary many--
Like one who offers blood to know his fate
Or hold his twin again--deep in the midnight
Baths of New Orleans, on its plural beds
And on the secret banks beside its river,
The many who, anonymous as he was,
Uncannily resembled him, appearing
Immortal in a finitude of mirrors.
But when the sudden force of the disease
Tossed him, in a new garment, on the bed
Where he had wakened, mornings, as a child--
Despised by all the neighbors, helpless, blind
And vulnerable to every life, he listened
Intensely to the roosters, mules and cows
As well as to the voices of the desk,
The chair, the books and pictures, pastures and fields,
The tree of every season, the age of seas
And, on its surge, the age of galaxies,
The bells within the spires of Cambridge, bodies
And faces revealed or hidden in the flow,
All that we knew or could imagine joined
Together in the sound the stream flows through
As witness of itself in every change,
Each trusting in its continuities,
All turning in a final radiant shell.
Then, on his darkened eye, he saw himself
A compact disk awhirl, played by the light
He came from and was ready to reenter,
But not before he chose the way to go.
And so it was, before his death, he spoke
The poem that is his best, the final letter
To take to that old country as a passport.
The Keys to Nablus:
Sources in the West Bank and Gaza established that the number detained by the weekend of March 27 had exceeded 13,000. Bassam Shaka’a, deposed Mayor of Nablus, placed the total held solely in a hastily constructed barbed-wire encampment at Dhariyah at 10,000. (1988)
Few if any gringos remember the encampments in Southern Lebanon...hundreds of men camped throughout the freezing winter there....Palestinians forced out of Israel.
In the Balata camp outside Nablus, and in the Casbah – the old quarter – l,000 people were arrested in a period of 48 hours. The discovery of people in ditches in the fields – shot in the back or with their heads caved in – has been reported from villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
Fleets of helicopters fly over Nablus at night dropping a dense, green toxic gas over the city. The smell pervades every house. Armed units fire canisters of the substance into houses at random. Doctors at Ittihad Hospital reported several deaths and severe lung injuries from this as-yet unidentified asphyxiating chemical, totally distinct from tear gas. ?Saddam Hussein, where are you!
Armed with 30-inch wooden clubs and urged by their prime minister to “put the fear back into the Arabs”, Israeli soldiers have methodically beaten up Palestinians since early January, deliberately breaking bones and beating prisoners into unconsciousness. Casualties included not only young men ... but also women. Most of the injured shunned hospitals for fear of arrest.
Oh, the list is soooooooo long and the memory of some is not only short, but completely missing.
The hopes of Europe’s six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: “Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?” I replied, “No.” ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it. [87] Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel and arbitrator of the Balfour Declaration. This is what I meant when I said, all the good ones are dead. You see, the Zionists leaders traded LAND for JEWS...to the Nazis. It is a point they deny and obscure TO THIS DAY. Shameful. See them as they have lit a "fire all around" themselves? I continue to invite Jews to Islam on a weekly basis, here and elsewhere....where Jihad increases views by 20-40 per day.
Untitled/Undated
Someone announces there are jackals in Tel Aviv,
just for saying Jerusalem.
The key to the cities: Beirut and Nablus,
were purchased long ago while you slept
in Long Island.
A journalist fumbles in his pants
for his keys and a lead,
watches Arab children razed,
toilet trained too young on empty cans
carried room to room with the burghul;
it fell in older times from mud kitchen walls,
silos of sand in sand,
dispensing traces of brothers
fallen into wells full with grain.
You in a photograph of a boy
pointing into the deep of the old village house,
the place where you sunk forever.
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/
Sources in the West Bank and Gaza established that the number detained by the weekend of March 27 had exceeded 13,000. Bassam Shaka’a, deposed Mayor of Nablus, placed the total held solely in a hastily constructed barbed-wire encampment at Dhariyah at 10,000. (1988)
Few if any gringos remember the encampments in Southern Lebanon...hundreds of men camped throughout the freezing winter there....Palestinians forced out of Israel.
In the Balata camp outside Nablus, and in the Casbah – the old quarter – l,000 people were arrested in a period of 48 hours. The discovery of people in ditches in the fields – shot in the back or with their heads caved in – has been reported from villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
Fleets of helicopters fly over Nablus at night dropping a dense, green toxic gas over the city. The smell pervades every house. Armed units fire canisters of the substance into houses at random. Doctors at Ittihad Hospital reported several deaths and severe lung injuries from this as-yet unidentified asphyxiating chemical, totally distinct from tear gas. ?Saddam Hussein, where are you!
Armed with 30-inch wooden clubs and urged by their prime minister to “put the fear back into the Arabs”, Israeli soldiers have methodically beaten up Palestinians since early January, deliberately breaking bones and beating prisoners into unconsciousness. Casualties included not only young men ... but also women. Most of the injured shunned hospitals for fear of arrest.
Oh, the list is soooooooo long and the memory of some is not only short, but completely missing.
The hopes of Europe’s six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: “Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?” I replied, “No.” ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it. [87] Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel and arbitrator of the Balfour Declaration. This is what I meant when I said, all the good ones are dead. You see, the Zionists leaders traded LAND for JEWS...to the Nazis. It is a point they deny and obscure TO THIS DAY. Shameful. See them as they have lit a "fire all around" themselves? I continue to invite Jews to Islam on a weekly basis, here and elsewhere....where Jihad increases views by 20-40 per day.
Israeli Invasion of LebanonOn Sunday, June 6, 1982, at 5:30 a.m., intensive aerial bombardment began with the onset of the invasion. The Israelis took Ain El Helweh as a grid, using a saturation-bombing pattern in a series of quadrants. First one quadrant was subjected to carpet-bombing and then the next-methodically and relentlessly, the bombing of each quadrant renewed as the last was levelled. The bombing continued in this manner for ten days and nights. Cluster bombs, concussion bombs, high flaring incendiary bombs and white phosphorus were used.
???Is it any wonder that Sayyed Nasrallah refuses to be disarmed or give in to the vile objectives of occupying Lebanon up to the Litani River? Is it that some disbelieve that this is still a long term Zionist goal? Think again, the Zionists are not only patient but due to the horrible silence of the world, they have inevitably been successful. Their days are now numbered regardless of their victories. This type of thing always fails as it should. It is evil.
Untitled/Undated
Someone announces there are jackals in Tel Aviv,
just for saying Jerusalem.
The key to the cities: Beirut and Nablus,
were purchased long ago while you slept
in Long Island.
A journalist fumbles in his pants
for his keys and a lead,
watches Arab children razed,
toilet trained too young on empty cans
carried room to room with the burghul;
it fell in older times from mud kitchen walls,
silos of sand in sand,
dispensing traces of brothers
fallen into wells full with grain.
You in a photograph of a boy
pointing into the deep of the old village house,
the place where you sunk forever.
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/
The International Dog
(for Radical Ann)
There's a whole lot of work
going on in the grass
where the dog lies down with-
out a fear or care in the world.
He just keeps lapping up the sun,
living on borrowed time in charity.
No one can own that dog, no
one can interpret his special glances,
the bees scarcely know he is alive.
The sky withers throughout his days there.
Nothing makes a difference to the dog now.
He just finds a new way to sleep
and five thousand ways to roll around,
loll his tongue out and makes
his own promises, a stranger to the law.
They are all the same.
(for Radical Ann)
There's a whole lot of work
going on in the grass
where the dog lies down with-
out a fear or care in the world.
He just keeps lapping up the sun,
living on borrowed time in charity.
No one can own that dog, no
one can interpret his special glances,
the bees scarcely know he is alive.
The sky withers throughout his days there.
Nothing makes a difference to the dog now.
He just finds a new way to sleep
and five thousand ways to roll around,
loll his tongue out and makes
his own promises, a stranger to the law.
They are all the same.
29.9.06
.....a good friend sent this along to me. I thought it was pretty cool.
The Doctrinaires
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. - The Wasteland
Invocation: This Work I Dedicate to all True Theosophists, In every Country,
And of every Race, For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.
- THE SECRET DOCTRINE:THE SYNTHESIS OFSCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY by H. P. BLAVATSKY, (18 odd something).
" . . . It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who persuade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort." Montaigne, from Blavatsky
Who is it that suffers the great
djinn fevers, cast off wedges of heat
from the maker of all warmths and favors?
Few survive the tempestuous drownings
backlogged, obscure in the mad-minded
focus, the cruel and hearty bone-diggers.
Escaping tragedy on each leg,
carrying every burden to the top,
they wait as progeny do, traitors to the end.
The foolishness of numbers, languages
and spot-checks, dramas of ascetic generations
scanning for the manifestations, cropping up.
It is a map of purgatory, they desire a way out
without the justice of asking, pleading
for patience and thirsty as lions.
Two doors.
Standers and waiters. Banner wavers, four. Jeweled courtesans.
The advertisements of heaven and hell
seen between the crushed shoulders
of the walking revival, troups wandering between
mountains, through valleys and into the deep seas,
mother Mary had her inclinations, recollections.
What a show that is seen, what a problem!
How the red of dreams is graphed again in red.
Saint Vitus in a limp stampede, race on! to
a devil in every room playing with the mirrors.
Poisons and paradises, opulent rivers above
as wide as the shores of all the seas -
the tiny maps of Gorge, as plain as day -
to taste that water is to drink. To really drink
for the first time in the eons, sealed wine
of pearl augur, aged in casks of unknown depth.
To stud the cacti with the worm
provoke the dehydration of dementia, they try to lie.
Only one cartographer has the archaica,
knows the brocade language of the fish
which shines in their skin under
the broad white road upon the sea
where some could walk, some
others could see, and those that had to,
built boats on which to flee.
Then they are the pretenders, the mocked mockers.
Salt licked paths from underwater plateaus
constant in their undertow and taking.
The bargain of rain on the tumble of soil.
Split open dry canal of the ancients,
the forgotten tongue-tied sooth
whose feet felt the mighty flow below,
the source of constant consternation,
to advance the best orations, the stock of futures
after the crowing of stones revealed: a gadget.
One big story after another, the sun sets, rises.
A big gap, light flux, curved broadbands
in the age of pirates, blue ox and steel.
Scorpion. Tiger. The year of our Lord.
Squawk-boxes of the forefathers, Topaz keepers.
No one gets out of this alive, labels perish.
Anatomy seekers and keepers, burial
experts and detectives, the borrowing of heads.
To examination tables and paintings,
the record keeping chronologers, pagans
priests and profiteers, bullies and geniuses.
The cadre of promise-takers and peace-makers,
hoteliers and pimps, giant-sketchers...
facilitators of the worst sort.
Forget what it is they make you say.
The drivers offer no solace for the unwise.
To the map-maker we must return -
naked, alone, worse for wear.
The Doctrinaires
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. - The Wasteland
Invocation: This Work I Dedicate to all True Theosophists, In every Country,
And of every Race, For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.
- THE SECRET DOCTRINE:THE SYNTHESIS OFSCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY by H. P. BLAVATSKY, (18 odd something).
" . . . It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who persuade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort." Montaigne, from Blavatsky
Who is it that suffers the great
djinn fevers, cast off wedges of heat
from the maker of all warmths and favors?
Few survive the tempestuous drownings
backlogged, obscure in the mad-minded
focus, the cruel and hearty bone-diggers.
Escaping tragedy on each leg,
carrying every burden to the top,
they wait as progeny do, traitors to the end.
The foolishness of numbers, languages
and spot-checks, dramas of ascetic generations
scanning for the manifestations, cropping up.
It is a map of purgatory, they desire a way out
without the justice of asking, pleading
for patience and thirsty as lions.
Two doors.
Standers and waiters. Banner wavers, four. Jeweled courtesans.
The advertisements of heaven and hell
seen between the crushed shoulders
of the walking revival, troups wandering between
mountains, through valleys and into the deep seas,
mother Mary had her inclinations, recollections.
What a show that is seen, what a problem!
How the red of dreams is graphed again in red.
Saint Vitus in a limp stampede, race on! to
a devil in every room playing with the mirrors.
Poisons and paradises, opulent rivers above
as wide as the shores of all the seas -
the tiny maps of Gorge, as plain as day -
to taste that water is to drink. To really drink
for the first time in the eons, sealed wine
of pearl augur, aged in casks of unknown depth.
To stud the cacti with the worm
provoke the dehydration of dementia, they try to lie.
Only one cartographer has the archaica,
knows the brocade language of the fish
which shines in their skin under
the broad white road upon the sea
where some could walk, some
others could see, and those that had to,
built boats on which to flee.
Then they are the pretenders, the mocked mockers.
Salt licked paths from underwater plateaus
constant in their undertow and taking.
The bargain of rain on the tumble of soil.
Split open dry canal of the ancients,
the forgotten tongue-tied sooth
whose feet felt the mighty flow below,
the source of constant consternation,
to advance the best orations, the stock of futures
after the crowing of stones revealed: a gadget.
One big story after another, the sun sets, rises.
A big gap, light flux, curved broadbands
in the age of pirates, blue ox and steel.
Scorpion. Tiger. The year of our Lord.
Squawk-boxes of the forefathers, Topaz keepers.
No one gets out of this alive, labels perish.
Anatomy seekers and keepers, burial
experts and detectives, the borrowing of heads.
To examination tables and paintings,
the record keeping chronologers, pagans
priests and profiteers, bullies and geniuses.
The cadre of promise-takers and peace-makers,
hoteliers and pimps, giant-sketchers...
facilitators of the worst sort.
Forget what it is they make you say.
The drivers offer no solace for the unwise.
To the map-maker we must return -
naked, alone, worse for wear.
Not bad D. I thought it had a bit of that TS Eliot ring to it.
Heaven on Earth, A slice of heaven, Heaven Can Wait:
http://www.isrotel.co.il/English/Content/carmelforestspa_intro.html?agent_ca
...pamper yourselves! Uh, er...is the violin music playing in your ears yet?
...cha ching!
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/15633964.htm
Naughty Naughty Naughty!
http://www.isrotel.co.il/English/Content/carmelforestspa_intro.html?agent_ca
...pamper yourselves! Uh, er...is the violin music playing in your ears yet?
...cha ching!
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/15633964.htm
Naughty Naughty Naughty!
The Tiny Gap
The worry that goes into
showing up on time
or late, then never, isn't
what folks call pleasant.
The windows are open and tended
in the constant trail birds leave
behind, strings and theories
in the patience of clear
blue skies forever. It ought
not be disturbed anymore
than one has to, it
is enough for the time-being,
there are too many aches
and pinches already.
The hopeful cancellations
when change winks
at the clocks, vary
over the stories one is told.
This one says one thing and that
one says another until the sky
calls children home for the evening,
it's alright now - come on in.
The day is over and there are
many beds to fill, our eyes to close,
the morning is just hours away.
The worry that goes into
showing up on time
or late, then never, isn't
what folks call pleasant.
The windows are open and tended
in the constant trail birds leave
behind, strings and theories
in the patience of clear
blue skies forever. It ought
not be disturbed anymore
than one has to, it
is enough for the time-being,
there are too many aches
and pinches already.
The hopeful cancellations
when change winks
at the clocks, vary
over the stories one is told.
This one says one thing and that
one says another until the sky
calls children home for the evening,
it's alright now - come on in.
The day is over and there are
many beds to fill, our eyes to close,
the morning is just hours away.
28.9.06
A Short Short Story
In the history of sideshows,
the bearded lady stands out,
the midget, the less than satisfactory.
The twins with different prints,
Arbus to fingertip reconstructions.
Born that way they say,
just born all wrong and different.
We've been this way forever,
just an afterthought to your perfections.
In the history of sideshows,
the bearded lady stands out,
the midget, the less than satisfactory.
The twins with different prints,
Arbus to fingertip reconstructions.
Born that way they say,
just born all wrong and different.
We've been this way forever,
just an afterthought to your perfections.
Lorine Niedecker's "Folk Base" and Her Challenge to the American Avant-Garde
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/middle.html
Niedecker was certainly chary of the distortions produced by the contextualisation of poetry by school or group. Near the end of her career there are distinct signs in the letters that she wanted to distance herself from Objectivism, notably concerning the Objectivist issue of Contemporary Literature because it seemed to encourage a superficial set of relationships between poets:
"there is the talking about each other's poetry that bothers me a little....it's literary criticism but all the same a little also like gossip!" )Faranda 193).
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/middle.html
Niedecker was certainly chary of the distortions produced by the contextualisation of poetry by school or group. Near the end of her career there are distinct signs in the letters that she wanted to distance herself from Objectivism, notably concerning the Objectivist issue of Contemporary Literature because it seemed to encourage a superficial set of relationships between poets:
"there is the talking about each other's poetry that bothers me a little....it's literary criticism but all the same a little also like gossip!" )Faranda 193).
Warning: This is a horrible video of the BEACH massacres that motivated my untimely commentary defining ZIONISM.
This kind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAvm8wwTpw
Ya mama, yamama, ya ma ma, ya ma ma.....
This isn't propaganda. This is reality in Palestine. Happy Ramadan Palestine. America loves you to the BONE.
This kind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAvm8wwTpw
Ya mama, yamama, ya ma ma, ya ma ma.....
This isn't propaganda. This is reality in Palestine. Happy Ramadan Palestine. America loves you to the BONE.
October 5th, resistance marches across the US:
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2418&_event=14
Country Wide "General Strike" (at lunchtime of course and after work, hmm)
Locally:
Tucson, AZ
2006-10-05 [edit]12 pm to 1 pmUniversity of Arizona MallRally from noon to 1:00then from430 pm into the night at the Federal Building swoods@email.arizona.edu
This is great. I may even attend the 4:30 but you know what? If this was in an OPPRESSED country, the strike would last all day, perhaps several. THAT is the ticket.
The Muqawama has touched the infidels!
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2418&_event=14
Country Wide "General Strike" (at lunchtime of course and after work, hmm)
Locally:
Tucson, AZ
2006-10-05 [edit]12 pm to 1 pmUniversity of Arizona MallRally from noon to 1:00then from430 pm into the night at the Federal Building swoods@email.arizona.edu
This is great. I may even attend the 4:30 but you know what? If this was in an OPPRESSED country, the strike would last all day, perhaps several. THAT is the ticket.
The Muqawama has touched the infidels!
To call the Pot or the Kettle:
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2682&Itemid=223#demsonlebanon
....black.
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2682&Itemid=223#demsonlebanon
....black.
Milk is White, Love is Black
You remember the place...the cartoons on the wall, the orange metaphysical carpeting. The coffee and the counter.Of course, you weren't there and neither was I really...just sort of watching from on top of some pregnant woman's stomach. She kept knocking into the ketchup bottles on her way to and from the tables...bathroom, table, bathroom.
You wouldn't remember Albert either, the mathematician who would only drink the first cup from a pot (shiny Bunn machine) and only then, if you filled his cup to the brim, a pathetic meniscus. He followed me all the way over to the place on the other side of the main drag when Sambo's closed down, to Coco's. He'd offer me rides home after the bar rush. How he hated prostitution and all. It was acceptable of course until I noticed the plates from Corvalis. Wasn't the Green River up there somewhere? Beside the point I imagine.
To make a short story long it ought to be mentioned about the Black Family who used to frequent the Lyric once in a while. Not for Camelot but for things like Car Wash and Young Frankenstein. I never actually saw them there, too small to notice (I was) but I knew that they existed, the Love Family. There he is, Leon Love waiting by his Chevy Nova for Cinda. Cinda of the Michals family, the Ozarkians. They had the long house just across the ditch, an old mortuary. We'd go over there to visit Rinda, the gangliest of the girls: Rinda, Linda, Brenda, Minda, Glenda and of course, their brother Jim. Wanda Michals sure was fertile. I suppose all Ozarkians are and I suppose Cinda and Leon were a source of holy consternation. Not as much so as Mitzy the Pekinese bitch that ripped my sole from heel to toe when I ran down the ladder and across the low brow living room. We'd been peeking into the attic trying to see the fancy old coffin up there. Again, all beside the point.
There wasn't any coffin up there, just a big old box.
In about 1976 or 77 a strange thing happened in the village. Two hundred gospel singers in pleated skirts and bobby socks moved out onto a ranch in Miracle Valley. Of course the men wore Bible Thumper outfits: thin ties and small collars, dark slacks with perfect creases. The girl's legs against their pastel skirts reminded me of curtains at night and one of them, Carol, told me she couldn't be my friend anymore because I was white. This was near the choir room and we were the only sopranoes. Then it was all about Jimmy Judd and Chuck Eads and a bomb that went off in someone's lap on their way to Sorry Vista. That's about all I know save for the memory of how it all looked on National TV. No one could see me back there near the choir room with Carol and her looking nervous as hell.
Anyways, as I always say when I'm remembering something funny.
Sunday afternoons were always dead at Sambos up in Phoenix. Jenni was already on her bike heading home. She held a monopoly on breakfast and would pocket a hundred bucks to my twenty every single day, even though I was poor AND pregnant. Sundays though, she'd do a hundred and fifty. Just because she'd lapse into one of those mini comas of hers and start scribbling all over the order for bacon and eggs. All because she was sick. She could have taken Dilantin but she was afraid she'd give her nonexistant kids birth defects. Hmph.
So one day I came around the corner, my favorite corner where I'd just poured a very tall, very cold glass of restaurant milk. Can't say poured really when you talk about a milk lever...it's more like a mechanical milking machine and froths from the huge silicon bags just like the milk is coming out of a teet. I was pregnant then and drank alot of it. I came around that corner, scanned the empty booths lit by that hard four o'clock Phoenix sun through the mini-blinds and saw them pulling and pushing on the door, eight of them. Well dressed. Very black. Not just black but very black. So black that all I could see was the big orchids on their dresses.
They seated themselves, no need for uppity behavior at a Little Black Sambos and I suppose they thought they'd save the poor pregnant waitress a few steps. Even picked up their own menus.
So to make this story about the Michals, the Loves and Carol a bit shorter I'll cut to the chase. It isn't about the artwork here...it's about the curious nature of being Black. Of seeing Black for the first time.
The ordering started. At that time, 1981 or 82 did I say? You could order fried chicken at Little Black Sambos. Not only could you order it, but you could split it up any way you liked. Four pieces...wings, legs, backs (if one was so inclined), breasts, necks (stretching the truth here). So I got the first four orders and waited on four more before asking the question, the hundred dollar question. Four more orders of fried chicken. I wasn't thinking about Fried Chicken really, nor had I ever been told about Watermelon. I just wasn't told at all, we didn't mention that sort of thing at home unless we were asked and that was never, it just never came up. Kind of like kids aren't taught economics except in those classes in High School where they teach you how to write checks and pay bills. Dummy-math we used to call it.
"Do you want all white or black..er...brown...er dark...meat?"
The words just floated into the center of that booth like a bunch of flower petals.
Stunned Black Silence.
Bright White Teeth.
Curtains Against Night.
Boy, did they ever start laughing. Not one at a time but like a choir. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
A hundred dollar tip. After certain apologies. I suppose they understood. I didn't have to explain like Jenni did all the time about her Petit Mal.
They knew mine was a Grand.
You remember the place...the cartoons on the wall, the orange metaphysical carpeting. The coffee and the counter.Of course, you weren't there and neither was I really...just sort of watching from on top of some pregnant woman's stomach. She kept knocking into the ketchup bottles on her way to and from the tables...bathroom, table, bathroom.
You wouldn't remember Albert either, the mathematician who would only drink the first cup from a pot (shiny Bunn machine) and only then, if you filled his cup to the brim, a pathetic meniscus. He followed me all the way over to the place on the other side of the main drag when Sambo's closed down, to Coco's. He'd offer me rides home after the bar rush. How he hated prostitution and all. It was acceptable of course until I noticed the plates from Corvalis. Wasn't the Green River up there somewhere? Beside the point I imagine.
To make a short story long it ought to be mentioned about the Black Family who used to frequent the Lyric once in a while. Not for Camelot but for things like Car Wash and Young Frankenstein. I never actually saw them there, too small to notice (I was) but I knew that they existed, the Love Family. There he is, Leon Love waiting by his Chevy Nova for Cinda. Cinda of the Michals family, the Ozarkians. They had the long house just across the ditch, an old mortuary. We'd go over there to visit Rinda, the gangliest of the girls: Rinda, Linda, Brenda, Minda, Glenda and of course, their brother Jim. Wanda Michals sure was fertile. I suppose all Ozarkians are and I suppose Cinda and Leon were a source of holy consternation. Not as much so as Mitzy the Pekinese bitch that ripped my sole from heel to toe when I ran down the ladder and across the low brow living room. We'd been peeking into the attic trying to see the fancy old coffin up there. Again, all beside the point.
There wasn't any coffin up there, just a big old box.
In about 1976 or 77 a strange thing happened in the village. Two hundred gospel singers in pleated skirts and bobby socks moved out onto a ranch in Miracle Valley. Of course the men wore Bible Thumper outfits: thin ties and small collars, dark slacks with perfect creases. The girl's legs against their pastel skirts reminded me of curtains at night and one of them, Carol, told me she couldn't be my friend anymore because I was white. This was near the choir room and we were the only sopranoes. Then it was all about Jimmy Judd and Chuck Eads and a bomb that went off in someone's lap on their way to Sorry Vista. That's about all I know save for the memory of how it all looked on National TV. No one could see me back there near the choir room with Carol and her looking nervous as hell.
Anyways, as I always say when I'm remembering something funny.
Sunday afternoons were always dead at Sambos up in Phoenix. Jenni was already on her bike heading home. She held a monopoly on breakfast and would pocket a hundred bucks to my twenty every single day, even though I was poor AND pregnant. Sundays though, she'd do a hundred and fifty. Just because she'd lapse into one of those mini comas of hers and start scribbling all over the order for bacon and eggs. All because she was sick. She could have taken Dilantin but she was afraid she'd give her nonexistant kids birth defects. Hmph.
So one day I came around the corner, my favorite corner where I'd just poured a very tall, very cold glass of restaurant milk. Can't say poured really when you talk about a milk lever...it's more like a mechanical milking machine and froths from the huge silicon bags just like the milk is coming out of a teet. I was pregnant then and drank alot of it. I came around that corner, scanned the empty booths lit by that hard four o'clock Phoenix sun through the mini-blinds and saw them pulling and pushing on the door, eight of them. Well dressed. Very black. Not just black but very black. So black that all I could see was the big orchids on their dresses.
They seated themselves, no need for uppity behavior at a Little Black Sambos and I suppose they thought they'd save the poor pregnant waitress a few steps. Even picked up their own menus.
So to make this story about the Michals, the Loves and Carol a bit shorter I'll cut to the chase. It isn't about the artwork here...it's about the curious nature of being Black. Of seeing Black for the first time.
The ordering started. At that time, 1981 or 82 did I say? You could order fried chicken at Little Black Sambos. Not only could you order it, but you could split it up any way you liked. Four pieces...wings, legs, backs (if one was so inclined), breasts, necks (stretching the truth here). So I got the first four orders and waited on four more before asking the question, the hundred dollar question. Four more orders of fried chicken. I wasn't thinking about Fried Chicken really, nor had I ever been told about Watermelon. I just wasn't told at all, we didn't mention that sort of thing at home unless we were asked and that was never, it just never came up. Kind of like kids aren't taught economics except in those classes in High School where they teach you how to write checks and pay bills. Dummy-math we used to call it.
"Do you want all white or black..er...brown...er dark...meat?"
The words just floated into the center of that booth like a bunch of flower petals.
Stunned Black Silence.
Bright White Teeth.
Curtains Against Night.
Boy, did they ever start laughing. Not one at a time but like a choir. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
A hundred dollar tip. After certain apologies. I suppose they understood. I didn't have to explain like Jenni did all the time about her Petit Mal.
They knew mine was a Grand.
27.9.06
A Brief History of Time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehavam_Zeevi
Most poets cannot spell the name let alone know of the significance of that old assassination...so long ago now. I remember it well. Ah. It made sense, the collaborative sensation of keeping "Arafat" in protective custody (which is all Ramallah ever was, a propaganda trick which hid a darker side of Israeli-Arab politics and power mongering). The Bills, the Bobs and the Marys..or as is the case here: the Hobeikas, the Hariris and the Ze'evis....of the world.
A bit about this "lion" of Zion:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=98944
Everyone enjoys a good mafia story and the story of Zionism is one of the Greatest Stories Ever Told:
Naughty Naughty Naughty!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=99889
One must ask, did Abu Mazen (Abbas) like the idea of transfers also? Forget the rhetoric of an Iranian simpleton like Ahmadinijad! One would hope that Abbas wouldn't like someone like Olmert or, would refuse to let notorious felons out on the loose, particularly with Big Brother USA watching over the process so closely (pretending all the while to be ignorant of the principle players and their mafia roles REGARDLESS of what is "supposed to be" their religious affiliation: Monotheism via Judaic or Islamic precepts and contentions).
It was never a wonder to me why Elie Hobeika was assassinated either. It wasn't because of Sharon...like Nasrallah pointed out during the first days of this "Israeli bargaining chip offered to their contentious fanatics" i.e. the Lebanese Hate Crime called an "incursion"....everyone knew what Sharon was...some even respected his strategic prowess including Nasrallah even if Sharon is a notorious war criminal. How many self help books and gurus on the frontlines of American Businessmanism tell you exactly that: Respect your opponent. ????? Most, if not all.
What is most telling about this wave of deception, terror and protectionism? It is and must be answered again, with a question.
Was the Lebanese War Crime a way of Olmert making good on his pledge towards honoring his Zionist supporters and intentions in the aftermath of "allowing" known assassins to simply walk out of the "Ramallah" compound (the ruse of 'attacking' Arafat, who is known to have enriched himself with US/Zionist payoffs is really just a ruse to keep the assassins of Ze'evi in a low security facility under the watchful eye of who? The Devil.)...was that just another deal in the long and winding trail of dealmaking? The fact that Osama was "let loose" by Clinton and a variety of others who well understood the threat the man was to public security, especially the Shi'i of Afghanistan.
One has to ask that question and one has to have a long memory to pull Ze'evi out of a hat, like a trick. Or a Hobeika.
Happy Valentine's Day Lebanon and if you don't accept that invitation to Civil War, we'll just give you a bigger one.
The least thing however that a conscientious observer to all of this can gain is the knowledge that the Palestinians are not simply refusing Abbas' deal, but refusing another Arafat in the making. Sadly enough, no one is applauding them in their resistance to this type of meddling. No one understands the cause nor the solution it seems. They just don't care.
Oh what a tangled web that was woven!.....an even longer memory for the nine released ones....the list of "one eyes" and that sort of thing is here:
http://www.al-huda.com/NB%20SM19.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehavam_Zeevi
Most poets cannot spell the name let alone know of the significance of that old assassination...so long ago now. I remember it well. Ah. It made sense, the collaborative sensation of keeping "Arafat" in protective custody (which is all Ramallah ever was, a propaganda trick which hid a darker side of Israeli-Arab politics and power mongering). The Bills, the Bobs and the Marys..or as is the case here: the Hobeikas, the Hariris and the Ze'evis....of the world.
A bit about this "lion" of Zion:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=98944
Everyone enjoys a good mafia story and the story of Zionism is one of the Greatest Stories Ever Told:
Naughty Naughty Naughty!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=99889
One must ask, did Abu Mazen (Abbas) like the idea of transfers also? Forget the rhetoric of an Iranian simpleton like Ahmadinijad! One would hope that Abbas wouldn't like someone like Olmert or, would refuse to let notorious felons out on the loose, particularly with Big Brother USA watching over the process so closely (pretending all the while to be ignorant of the principle players and their mafia roles REGARDLESS of what is "supposed to be" their religious affiliation: Monotheism via Judaic or Islamic precepts and contentions).
It was never a wonder to me why Elie Hobeika was assassinated either. It wasn't because of Sharon...like Nasrallah pointed out during the first days of this "Israeli bargaining chip offered to their contentious fanatics" i.e. the Lebanese Hate Crime called an "incursion"....everyone knew what Sharon was...some even respected his strategic prowess including Nasrallah even if Sharon is a notorious war criminal. How many self help books and gurus on the frontlines of American Businessmanism tell you exactly that: Respect your opponent. ????? Most, if not all.
What is most telling about this wave of deception, terror and protectionism? It is and must be answered again, with a question.
Was the Lebanese War Crime a way of Olmert making good on his pledge towards honoring his Zionist supporters and intentions in the aftermath of "allowing" known assassins to simply walk out of the "Ramallah" compound (the ruse of 'attacking' Arafat, who is known to have enriched himself with US/Zionist payoffs is really just a ruse to keep the assassins of Ze'evi in a low security facility under the watchful eye of who? The Devil.)...was that just another deal in the long and winding trail of dealmaking? The fact that Osama was "let loose" by Clinton and a variety of others who well understood the threat the man was to public security, especially the Shi'i of Afghanistan.
One has to ask that question and one has to have a long memory to pull Ze'evi out of a hat, like a trick. Or a Hobeika.
Happy Valentine's Day Lebanon and if you don't accept that invitation to Civil War, we'll just give you a bigger one.
The least thing however that a conscientious observer to all of this can gain is the knowledge that the Palestinians are not simply refusing Abbas' deal, but refusing another Arafat in the making. Sadly enough, no one is applauding them in their resistance to this type of meddling. No one understands the cause nor the solution it seems. They just don't care.
Oh what a tangled web that was woven!.....an even longer memory for the nine released ones....the list of "one eyes" and that sort of thing is here:
http://www.al-huda.com/NB%20SM19.htm
26.9.06
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766884.html
Rodney King er....well, not quite.
Since October 2000, another 20 Arab citizens have been shot and killed by security forces. The most recent of the victims, Mahmoud Ghanaiyem, a young man in his 20s from Baka al-Gharbiyeh, was shot point blank in the head in July after being suspected of stealing a vehicle. This was also the case in many other instances, in which Arab citizens suspected of criminal activity were sentenced to death by a bullet aimed at the upper part of their bodies and sometimes their heads.
Rodney King er....well, not quite.
Since October 2000, another 20 Arab citizens have been shot and killed by security forces. The most recent of the victims, Mahmoud Ghanaiyem, a young man in his 20s from Baka al-Gharbiyeh, was shot point blank in the head in July after being suspected of stealing a vehicle. This was also the case in many other instances, in which Arab citizens suspected of criminal activity were sentenced to death by a bullet aimed at the upper part of their bodies and sometimes their heads.
So, Lebanon gets the gift of a UN force.
Why hasn't anyone given that gift to the starving victims of Israeli atrocities in Gaza?
Israel. Never allows that sort of 'witnessing' to take place. Interesting eh?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766431.html
Why hasn't anyone given that gift to the starving victims of Israeli atrocities in Gaza?
Israel. Never allows that sort of 'witnessing' to take place. Interesting eh?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766431.html
Nasrallah on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6126073
"I could see grown men crying just to see him." Leena Saidi, Beirut journalist
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6126073
"I could see grown men crying just to see him." Leena Saidi, Beirut journalist
25.9.06
The Ode of Migrations
We are parts of a billion
they keep telling us, I do
not believe. Birds know this
caution, sadness still calls
itself a failure for finding
a home here. This is a small
town, the people have
their off days and re-runs,
the dogs bark contagiously
during the rest and cat naps
are shorter when sirens
disrupt the pleasantries.
The cicada frames noon time
in a halo of hissing to emphasize
the problems of silence,
for example and comparison.
Those are sheets on the fence,
they are full of sin and thicket.
How quickly they dry in summer,
how they neglect time.
Where is this death they talk about?
Will poppies or lilacs revive us all
as they revive themselves so
the wind can distribute our worries?
He isn't awake yet and when I sleep
he is eating and thinking about this
condition where no one goes
anymore. Spiders find a place
in the dark, housekeepers at heart,
one shows up each and every time.
The bird nest up there is ours
for today - even if it is stolen.
Look how well built, it is!
they, the other ones,
those two
checked on it andleft
in shame: adobe, right hand corner -
no eggs or anxiety could hold them
back, they just turned away and flew.
We are parts of a billion
they keep telling us, I do
not believe. Birds know this
caution, sadness still calls
itself a failure for finding
a home here. This is a small
town, the people have
their off days and re-runs,
the dogs bark contagiously
during the rest and cat naps
are shorter when sirens
disrupt the pleasantries.
The cicada frames noon time
in a halo of hissing to emphasize
the problems of silence,
for example and comparison.
Those are sheets on the fence,
they are full of sin and thicket.
How quickly they dry in summer,
how they neglect time.
Where is this death they talk about?
Will poppies or lilacs revive us all
as they revive themselves so
the wind can distribute our worries?
He isn't awake yet and when I sleep
he is eating and thinking about this
condition where no one goes
anymore. Spiders find a place
in the dark, housekeepers at heart,
one shows up each and every time.
The bird nest up there is ours
for today - even if it is stolen.
Look how well built, it is!
they, the other ones,
those two
checked on it andleft
in shame: adobe, right hand corner -
no eggs or anxiety could hold them
back, they just turned away and flew.
Byzantium
One night late in April a person realizes
they've been allowed into the throne room
to dissect all the crowns, find their hiding places.
It isn't known really when admission was granted
but there it is in the locked box,
the keys in several paintings done well
by the obvious European Masters who were
all already there, knew it was coming
and knew who would be there.
The toys on their heads are reminders
of all the rulers of all the universes
studded in emerald and (I've got it right here)
not the Kasiki which was found in the refuse
and sold for three spoons. The actual remedy
spells moonlight in light when no one is noticing.
But look at the toys on their heads, who knew?
Who knows now? Quite obviously, the creators
of the Lion and Sun Medals, one in particular
of stunning quality, the sun leaning on the lion's back.
By sheer luck a person runs into another person
outside the armory and well outside the outer
courtyard of two inner places. (The second
for ceremonial purposes and the finest in the back
contains the lillypad pool under the gazebo.)
That person happens to be no other than a specific guest
at the ancient table of numbers. He counts beads
as fast as one counts anything at all but remembers
which university in Byzantium is doing all the work.
He hasn't any news of the elimination of the signal work
at the top of a good portion of 'it'. He must have
seen the sun dial, the mini complex which was transported
on a horse wh;ose face held human qualities to the Baghdad campaigns.
The most fantastic mirrored parabola on record and to date.
Inconspicuously placed outdoors in the rain and the person is
from the labyrinths where the Minotaur was last seen in frescoe.
Two large candlesticks of solid gold were removed to Byzantium
prior to the onset of trench and mustard, to protect
the vast empire from the final conquest after Smyrna.
Saved. For a while. After final consultations,
one person bids the other adieu, they exchange calling cards
and know for some reason all is not well
and the trains only run on time if those that do, will it so.
The two of them completely undisturbed because of pious behaviors
although one of them almost followed to the brink that day
when met at the final stop by three burly youths.
All the uncertainty in the world led them to believe the person
was a spy. And the second? Believes the reformer was never born.
The first tells him the story of Rasputin. They part.
Closing important meetings never easy and time only follows more time.
Meetings in general:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766699.html
Greeks bearing gifts:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766430.html
One night late in April a person realizes
they've been allowed into the throne room
to dissect all the crowns, find their hiding places.
It isn't known really when admission was granted
but there it is in the locked box,
the keys in several paintings done well
by the obvious European Masters who were
all already there, knew it was coming
and knew who would be there.
The toys on their heads are reminders
of all the rulers of all the universes
studded in emerald and (I've got it right here)
not the Kasiki which was found in the refuse
and sold for three spoons. The actual remedy
spells moonlight in light when no one is noticing.
But look at the toys on their heads, who knew?
Who knows now? Quite obviously, the creators
of the Lion and Sun Medals, one in particular
of stunning quality, the sun leaning on the lion's back.
By sheer luck a person runs into another person
outside the armory and well outside the outer
courtyard of two inner places. (The second
for ceremonial purposes and the finest in the back
contains the lillypad pool under the gazebo.)
That person happens to be no other than a specific guest
at the ancient table of numbers. He counts beads
as fast as one counts anything at all but remembers
which university in Byzantium is doing all the work.
He hasn't any news of the elimination of the signal work
at the top of a good portion of 'it'. He must have
seen the sun dial, the mini complex which was transported
on a horse wh;ose face held human qualities to the Baghdad campaigns.
The most fantastic mirrored parabola on record and to date.
Inconspicuously placed outdoors in the rain and the person is
from the labyrinths where the Minotaur was last seen in frescoe.
Two large candlesticks of solid gold were removed to Byzantium
prior to the onset of trench and mustard, to protect
the vast empire from the final conquest after Smyrna.
Saved. For a while. After final consultations,
one person bids the other adieu, they exchange calling cards
and know for some reason all is not well
and the trains only run on time if those that do, will it so.
The two of them completely undisturbed because of pious behaviors
although one of them almost followed to the brink that day
when met at the final stop by three burly youths.
All the uncertainty in the world led them to believe the person
was a spy. And the second? Believes the reformer was never born.
The first tells him the story of Rasputin. They part.
Closing important meetings never easy and time only follows more time.
Meetings in general:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766699.html
Greeks bearing gifts:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766430.html
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