labi siffre - into the light

early morning debate for one

We demand they say what we want to hear. We demand they give us easy to understand, brief, cheap and comforting answers to complex questions and issues because we’re too lazy to wrestle with the questions and issues in depth. Then we blame them for not believing in what they say and for not solving the problems.

It’s an interesting system and no, i don’t have the answer and though i wrestle with the problem i’m too dim to solve it. Do i get points for acknowledging that the problem exists and if so, do the points help? No. Now get on with it.

an African story

for food my favourite uncle, my father’s identical twin brother Olu, was attacked by a shark; a tiger shark

i was watching with my father and my cousin Tunde, one of several of my cousins with that name, when the biting, the chewing, the struggling, the screaming occurred

i helped them pull Olu from the sea to the bed of soft sand; horrific the way his eyes pleaded the way his mouth couldn’t shout the way he was so cold and shivered the way the blood ran out

later by years of failing to win back the love of his children and wife again and again he walked with one leg and a crutch into debt

that day when he cried and begged me to lend him still more, still my favourite i told him to leave, showed him the door

the following day by the river we found the crutch. Rufina his wife cursed me for refusing the loan. she cursed my father for reminding her every day that she was alone; but not the shark. the shark got away.

at one hundred and forty thousand

we used to live in a boiled egg
we have since improved our lot

we now reside in a boiled sweet
with more luxury
with less nourishment

we have attained superior status
we are far from replete

easy phrases milk no aubergines

“the man who persecutes is
as brutalized
as the man he acts against”

the murdered woman
is superior
to the man who killed her?

perhaps, in a wishful thinking way,
but in each case, the former
state is, by most, preferred
to the latter’s futile plea

in easy truth, easy lies the lie.
uneasy truth be better; though
with ease few agree
preferring the lie to uncertainty

setup

how could it be in the garden of eden
that adam and eve did wrong when they did
exactly what they were precisely
designed by God
their creator
to do?

failing to make it large

^{(in an enlightened society)}

Clive Davis
the legendary record producer and guiding light
in the music industry, told me I should put more
sex

in my songs if I wanted to be big in the business.
I thought about that
and not so long after wrote a little
something with

a lyric about how I’d done it with a seventeen
stone (two hundred and thirty eight pounds)
rugby player

in my TR6
two seater sports car with his legs
on my shoulders, love and hunger in our hearts

just think about that
if I’d sent it to Clive back in ’75
everything could have been different

secrets

appraise the children of the facts?
we daren’t do that

for fear of the resulting cadastre fee
they’d know

what fools and liars we’ve been indeed
the lambs should rightly hate

their mums and dads we servile
Abrahams; no friend or God

would ask for that no loving ma or pa
would (lacking all respect of self) say yes

and still we sacrifice and sacrifice
the innocents

too gutless even to confess and nightly puking
“good night God bless
(we leave it to you kids to lick up our mess)”

look away now

another bound infanta
use one up just a bit of fun
common as muck beyond the lens
there’s plenty more where she came
from; needing hugs that will never
come. loads of sex though (“just close
your eyes”) already done! the crowd roar
we live to watch the game
don’t need to know the score

no matter what

April 14th 2008
on this day
in america it’s a sin to be angry
in america it’s a sin to be bitter
in america it’s a sin to be skeptical
in america it’s a sin to be poor
in america it’s a sin not to respect everyone
in america it’s a sin not to respect every belief
(except atheism) in america it’s a sin to be a loner
in britain it’s the same
i wonder how it is in the rest of the world. i wonder
are they as in denial, out of touch and
get out as little as we do?

having read today's news about china, bangladesh, italy
zimbabwe and the middle east
apparently the answer is yes

a few

some time before CDs my younger brother told me angrily that music should be free. with my guitar on the back seat and my music in the stores i asked him how i should earn a living. he didn’t answer me

years before, when he was small and sweet, one christmas in the hall i threw a teddy bear at him. the teddy hit the tin he was holding in front of his face. the tin cut his lip or his chin, i don’t precisely recall. anyhow, the scar set permanently in place

i think of it often now we’re grown. I never forgave myself for the teddy bear thrown

aaaaaaaaaht!

they congregate to salve their senses
one by one the mensches quiz

“what does it mean?” the artist pissed

off shrugs, “for fucktuation’s sake
it means what it is”

*

and still they whining on and on as the critics encourage
“what is the artist trying to tell us?” “what does the artist
want us to feel?” but the artist doesn’t give a shit
what you feel is your response ability not hers or his
jeeezuz! can’t you even take responsibility
for how you interpret what you see, hear and read?

forewarned

true to say it would be, though clearly
he dare not; with chunks of bread tempting
on a lazy river open mouthed and eager
from the depths with the sun in his eyes
he’d be an easy target
so the words    drift away

neither fey nor fay his quiet lover leans
towards grandiose gestures so pours
another two cups of darjeeling
and drinks them both

reflected in the silence Ola recalls his four
year old self clutching his father’s
trouser leg for safety    peering
round the wide beam of brown
pin-striped bottom
as Daddy searches for a gas leak
with a lighted match
in the depths
of the under stairs cupboard

can there be morality without a deity?

can there be morality without God?

if God exists
there can be no morality

neither right nor wrong
all is merely entrapment

only without God
can we be responsible

only without God
can morality be

The Olympic Spirit of Repression

BEIJING — Today, as part of a government crackdown to silence dissidents before Beijing plays host to the Olympic Games, a Chinese court sentenced Hu Jia, an outspoken human rights advocate, to three and a half years in prison after ruling that his critical essays and comments about Communist Party rule amounted to inciting subversion.
Full story HERE

His name is HU JIA

Remember him while you watch the games.

a worth the while thing

If you haven’t already, take a listen
to “14 pieces for Clarinet and Piano”
by Charles Koechlin

Urbi et Orbi

knowing all
we would do and
the consequences to follow
God (we are told) created us

if true

God must
have created us
for the purpose of doing
all it knew we would do

The Way

“It’s a bucket of pistols”, said the sergeant. “Just take one. Take anyone!” his voice rose, exasperated, as Johnson’s hand wavered and wandered from butt to butt.

“For God’s sake Johnson, pick one, then get your ass over there, choose a prisoner, put the barrel to the back of his or her head, pull the trigger and see them dead. That’s all there is to it.

That's why we're here, doing this course in “An Appropriate End To Torture”
and frankly your scores up till now have been crap
but this is your chance to redress that
so MOVE IT!!

art life

some of his poems
do what he wants them to do
some don’t

the poems that do
what he wants them to do
are few

and those that don’t
are many

the days
are the same

politically correct politicians in contempt

Britain and several other European Union countries have rejected calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August.

Incidentally and immaterially, I disagree with their decision. I believe we should boycott the opening ceremony and probably the games themselves; but that is merely a difference between the opinions of those politically influential politicians and this politically impotent, little known writer.

However, Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitri Rupel, who is hosting the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brdo, outside the capital Ljubljana, insisted that sports should be separated from politics.

While there are aspects of human activity that politicians choose (out of wisdom or cowardice) to avoid, there is no human activity separate from politics.

War crimes, environmental destruction, slavery, people trafficking and, most pertinent to Beijing 2008, despotism, state murder and the repression of human and civil rights, are crimes which cannot be separated even from the Olympic games.

G'bye Abby & thanks

"I believe that a writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives, not only to comment, but maybe have a shot at reshaping the world."
... Abby Mann screenwriter, director and producer.1927-2008

form and/or, purpose

these are not real people
these are sparrows

the sparrows peck
as people are specks
of colour on a dry day

the canvas is wet    the sun is mild

separately this leg has a decorative function;
that it is a human leg stands in the way
of a more positive approach
for example, poached

and so
regardless of an incidence of nothing to do
Ola behaves as he must
with accompanying perspiration.
cold it is
and with less than adequate funding his limbs
insist he exercise his tongue.
judicious the day; though as ever
heel and toe speed the way.

as for orchestration:
the songs are trying we all agree but
the tempo is vast and there is no requirement
to neglect more than acceptable manners    thus,
arm-chaired but prepared for imaginative leaps
family members, with love in their pockets
stand by with ice cream cones
and donuts    and breath

disturbioso

“some viewers may find these scenes disturbing” the news performer says, an Oscar losing expression of concern on her face as she doesn’t say “some viewers may find these scenes  exhilarating, funny, sexy, pornographically arousing, informative, vital or dull” or her script insulting (look away, look away, look away, pixie land)

is her patronizing for everyone or just those who expect everything to be sanitized for their benefit, who feel they have the right to live in a world of soft pillows and sherbet and it’s everybody else’s duty to help them stay there

and now she’s having a little joke with a foreign correspondent but she isn’t funny, she’s crap at stand-up and the foreign correspondent doesn’t get it and looks irritated in that barren land, barren of hope - but she barrels on

it’s my own fault, i naively expected more from her, after all, just because the network make their women news performers dress up as high class hookers shouldn’t necessarily mean she’s dim as a Toc H lamp

conceptual literature

in an art space (and by following the following
any space you use will be an art space)
in an art space
take some heavy tables and some big books
put the big books on the heavy tables
turn the tables upside down. now
you’ve turned the tables
on the books      move
from heavy table to heavy table lifting one
side of each and searching underneath till
you find and grab a dictionary (there is
always a dictionary with precious words and
occasionally inadequate definitions). look up
the word “pointless” and (still holding up the
one side of the heavy table) with a pencil
write in the margin what it was you were
doing before this that was so worthwhile

surprise

Chinaski writes life
is an endless war. funny
i never read him
as being that optimistic

entity

i find online and in other media that i am dead, have a daughter, deal primarily or only with homophobia and racism, am a one hit wonder, inspirational, a soul singer, an r&b singer, an mor singer, a racist, a christian, south african, courageous, fled apartheid, am a genius, insane ... a good feeling it must be, the journalist said, to have so many people know me

In Lieu Of An Interview

The foe is neither god nor God, concept, metaphor or non-existent force. The foe is mundane: Man, generically and boringly of course

As for the rest, we do not choose what we believe. Belief is not a matter of choice. Belief is like love and flu   you catch it or you don't (perhaps it catches you) and when you catch it   then the choice is yours   you have to choose what to do

As to belief in general: though billions boast beliefs, few know what their beliefs are, as the opportunity to know what one believes arrives only in extremis; arrives only when the ordure strikes the rapidly rotating cooling device

At those moments when choice involves a lethal danger to love, to life, to security, one is shown perhaps an intimation of one’s beliefs and even then, when shown, one may be unable to see the surface let alone the strata, the sub-strata of what one believes

Fortunately, few must climb that in extremis Himalayan scenery (“ordinary” death being a mere get it wrong almost every time, everyday, painful cliché) and in the meantime though we prattle on and on about our beliefs

it matters little
that something is true
or not
till someone says you must live a certain way
because they believe
something is true
or not

Inescapably, this demand is the subtext to human congress in every-day permanence as person "A" judges person "B" by the beliefs of person "A" and vice versa (sadly there seems no other way)

Which is perhaps why, as you may recall, I propose a morality based on what we know as, in comparison with what we know, what we believe is at best impertinent and at worst the current state of affairs

ahead of the game

seraphim flew down in a blaze (“of glory”
it says here) and with power celestial
broke the children’s toys

“We are goodness itself” the seraphim said
as the children shed tears, “gratitude, we don’t
expect but punish those who withhold it”

letting slip no sign of having heard the word
the wise child, who discarded toys immediately
upon receipt of them, played quietly with the boxes

de facto

removed the eyes today we did
to be precise this afternoon at four
minutes past half past three
not using them we were   had not
for some significant time of length
no tears were shed
in addition as yet there have been
no expressions of regret

tomorrow the tongue we remove, next thursday
the lungs (before one a.m.) after that we regroup
to compose a refrain of harmony in five parts   last

week with chisels and pliers we removed toe
and finger nails then wrote letters of apology
in each other’s blood
as yet unposted these graphic displays line several drawers
in a chest in a room with a window without a view   all this
in studied silence

on further reflection several of us complained at the lack
of dedication displayed by those with foreskins and/or nipples
the vote of censure demanded has yet to be resolved
with either knife  space  or unsubtle gun
a lack of act understandably responsible for understandable
dissension

all will be well

condemning violence

Is it dishonest to demand the condemnation
of a particular act of violence
in isolation from all or any other acts of violence?

la vieja

she weighs maybe ninety six pounds man
handles him in his wheelchair through
the supermercado aisles like a veteran
seventy five if she’s a day i wonder how
she kicks the Catalan kerbs i know
from pushing Peter how merciless
they can make road crossing an SAS
training course up mountain crags
without ropes or pitons

her husband weighs two hundred eighty
maybe more is he angry with his useless
limbs like Peter is with his and grateful
and resenting feeling so while she
doesn’t mind the lifting and the pushing
and the strained muscles in her hip
and back and the messy accidents
and the Catalan kerbs and his frequent
flights of temper and hers
and the pointless guilt
and the constant fear of losing.
she’s grateful for every day.
as long as he’s here
she’s ok

reprisals

Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan and Belgium's King Leopold II
(to name but three of many) would have laughed
aloud at international laws like UN resolution 2625
and in the 21st century their attitudes
cosmetically disguised thrive

ten for one (at least) was their reprisals policy
against native resistance in lands they had invaded
and occupied

and as tradition is key to the occupation song
and for some strange reason these days invaders
and occupiers are considered the good guys
in Gaza/Palestine (and elsewhere)
the ten for one reprisals policy
lives on

accurately defined

Politically Correct
_(adjective)

1) That which is sanctioned by the state.

2) That which is sanctioned by any group
is politically correct within that group
for example: being sexist, racist, heterosexist,
ageist, and disableist while at the same time
demanding respect, is globally politically correct.

a lesson learned by rote

the media reports that this “murderer” of five
attractive young women, “will die in jail”. this fellow
is “doomed to a life behind bars” for shooting
then, with his rifle butt, battering his wife
and her boyfriend to death. this “killer”
is “to die in prison” for the bladed torture, rape
and butchering of a suburban family of four, father,
mother, young daughter, young son, it took
most of the day while this guy is “sentenced
to die by lethal injection” for savagely
stomping to death a helpless seventy-nine
year old woman in her neatly kept home
it warms many righteous hearts to hear of
and savor deserved retribution
being handed out while they drive
or sit on the sofa watching
entertainment news
a sense
of satisfaction enfolds us while the thousands
of after-dinner-ghost-theatre performances
in Cambodia, Uganda, Chechnya, Bhopal,
Iraq, Apartheid South Africa, Sabra, Chatila,
Tiananmen Square, Rwanda, Bosnia and Vietnam
(to name just a few) continue to teach us
in bullet holes, amputations, torture, burned
bodies upon bodies, screams, mass graves,
rapes and explosions of cluster bombed
shock and awesome terror how
the greater    the murderous
crime    the less
the perpetrators    serve    time

occluded

a bone of day a skeletal dawn to dusk
the husk of living celebrated in the skill
of rising from one’s bed with a semblance
of usefulness

in the way a sophisticated woman steps
from an unsuitable vehicle her legs
smoothing her way to the ownership of space
as the prime aspect of a Mapplethorpe is not
the object but the space it carves

out of light, we camouflage inadequacies
with explanations
the longer and more profound in direct
measure to the insignificance
of the conceptual creation authored
by the professional labeller (masquerading
as sculptor, videoist, installationist)

no surprise then that in a culture where surprise
is considered an assault it is necessary
to warn the patronised that they may be moved
and in unexpected ways

bad connection

I had a call this morning
an international call
I recognized the voice immediately
it was someone I’d killed
you don’t forget that kind of thing

I said, “whadaya want?”
he said, “I want you to stop
killing my children, my relatives
my friends”
I said, “I’ll have to think about it”
“please do that. I’ll call again”
he said, and hung up

I hung up too

I may call someone
about his folks

it depends

fair fight

were the bull and the man
naked both
no swords
no spears no sharp
armed helpers
magnificent
it could be
but we the audience refuse
to take the chance
that possibility
lacking
makes us ugly
pride full
of false victories
that traditional patting
ourselves
on the back with the dice
neatly stacked but
hey dude
even in heaven
nobody wants to lose

The USA today – I pray not

justice is the perfect meal
in an honorable
land

but the condemnation of those
who confess under the duress
of torture

is a mouth full of ashes
washed down
with sand

art question you will never hear

In what way has being a white, male, heterosexual affected your work?

the business model of the future

all products will be free to the consumer
producers of goods are rich
and can afford it

production will be financed by companies
paying each other to advertise
each other’s products

in this way the global economy will be self-
financing and though, morally, property
(ownership) will remain theft

it will be
a victimless crime

scum

this evening we viewed
another old movie
in which the heroes
are the invaders
and the villains
are the native
population
rebelling revolting uprising
struggling
to regain their land
the bastards
how dare
they