Labi Siffre - Into The Light

Q: Whadaya give a 500lb gorilla in da supermarket?

impoverished nations blah! we heard it all
before. pointy fingers at double standards
our grin, at the heart
of the global “free, mark-up”

ignore ‘em! boring they be
we G8 nations dig deep to keep
subsidies and protectionism for ours
tariffs and barriers for theirs; our
national interests be the prevailing morality

but hey!  dis? a big beast in a cheap T Shirt
the commie China voice and muscle
‘gainst our profitable hyp-hopcrisy

trouble is dis beast has clout;
Interesting times ahead
no doubt

A: Anything it wants

all will be revealed if you will only ...

“bagel time” he says, dancing a circle parade
of solo skips and jumps his hands weaving
buttered pancakes in the air; I foresee
a problem of language and a shortage of cheese

turns out he’s neither English nor a Yorkshire man but
bilingual comprehends my mouthings well enough
to thump me on the back in laughing comradeship when
I reply “Albrecht” to his shadow shirted dinner invitation

we walk beside the river Hudson both in love
with the sun’s caress he indexes “no, it’s the Hudson river”
understanding less I swig another slake of Pinot Grigio
and wade deeper into the waste; high
on the agricultural scent of progressive urban regression

now, an instant later than that previous instant (no
not that one, the other one, yes) looking back
I see his smiling face reassuring me
above a confident dog paddle

the breast stroke learned at my mother’s knee
serving me better as the current and the fish prevail
“sail away”, sings the ever Newman Randy, “sail away”

medicine for iraq's constitution (& others)

"we are fighting for freedom"
the warrior said

"we will fight for our freedom
until we are dead"

"unlock our chains"
cried the women he met

"of course"
smiled the warrior

"but not just yet"

_{(from "Nigger" by LS - 1993)}

unexplained phenomenon

with Bush in the white

house who in their right

mind could believe

in intelligent design

immature frustration with the status quo

^{(pointless really – the poet should know better)}

so, the same gutless soft porn, centuries old,
the same incitement to formation yawning
the same let’s cling to absurdity ‘n start
from the biggest lie
you know, the one people use as authority
as a lethal weapon and scoff
as gauche
when you ask the vital unanswerable

so, as ever, through self-appointed reprehensitives
the battle rages (well of course it rages con
tinuous, but presently in public so to speak)
one version of the god of slaughter murdering
another version; who cares and why should

pity ‘bout the collateral damage, though
god the merciful omnipotence who, we’re told,
can do anything it wants, doesn’t seem to mind
being the god of love maybe it’s blind (‘n deaf)
or likes it just fine as it is
maybe “to come unto me” was a misprint or
referenced a sacred paedophile site; “suffer the
little children” though was spot on

being balanced and fair legislating hunger from podia
in gravitas suits or battledress or bombers exploding,
their souls as far as we know  going nowhere or
dropping oblivion or worse safely from the air
or quietly
signing a democratic cross and walking
innocently home to the TV to care

no matter; the inter predation
adult realpolitik says arseholes
since arseholes began
just love to kill
rather than

they said my son shot himself fatally

^{(twice)
(in the head)}

some bad you can’t make better
some wrongs you can’t make light
some things can’t be forgiven
many things won’t ever be alright

some days will last for ever
some pain will never end
sometimes no one can make amends

sometimes it’s death in venice
sometimes in pontypridd
sometimes it’s death in ways
you don’t believe

castro

let the dissidents go

art

is a response ability

not a pass

time

the more things change

conversation she doesn’t want
she wants to tell the whole world off
and by proxy – i’m the world

she wants to say the world is shit
and we young people
have made it that way

she’s right of course
as were her parents when
they told her the same thing

bearing up

first we endured
our families being killed by saddam

then we endured
our families being killed
by those who gave us liberty from saddam

now, enduring freedom, we endure
our families being killed
by those who want the liberators to die
or leave

tell us
please
when can we endure
peace ?

21st century philosophy (2)

the past does not affect the present

especially when it suggests that what
i did then

is in any way responsible
for the troubles we have now

[as in "The opposition insists on the negative policy of looking backwards. Of course, we must avoid complacency, but we have learned valuable lessons from this (tragic / unfortunate / regrettable) affair and now I believe we must be positive. We must look to the future and move forward."]

... see 21^st century definitions N^o 53

philosophies i despise

"I am sincere ... so I must be right"

and

"I am offended ... so you must stop"

Collective Responsibility

Jodie Hemerda - February 25, 2003

As 160,000 U.S. soldiers arrive in the Middle East
responsibility lies with every American citizen

If war comes, if thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians die
if the United States falls under a retaliatory attack
the blame falls on the people, not just those
in Washington who we elected

I refuse to ignore, deny or justify. I do know
and voice out against the injustices my country
plans to commit
but I fear war will come regardless

When my country bombs Iraq
and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perish
I am responsible.

^{[ See also: "the new new deal" ]}

me ‘n ernie – ernie ‘n me

when i was younger even than now
i had an affair with ernest hemingway
not many people know that but it’s true

anyway one evening in havana
we were drinking in this grubby bar
“los something or other” it was called

i was on caipiriñas
and ernie was throwing back bourbon
and carrot juice “shit in an orange”
i used to call it but he couldn’t
get enough o the stuff

anyway we’d been there about twenty
minutes or so drinking laughing listening to
the piano player lounging out easy jazz
when
these two big white guys stopped
like heavy diesel
at our table and one of ‘em
the one without the scar
two eighty pounds i reckon of ugly
son of a bitch said

“you guys fags or something?”

i looked at ernie ‘n ernie
looked at me then we both looked
at the ugly son of a bitch but only
ernie spoke he said, ”you talkin to us?”

“yeah, i’m talkin to you, you faggots”
said the ugly son of a bitch
“’n i’m askin, are you guys fags?”
ernie rose to his feet bout two inches

shorter and quite a few pounds lighter
than the ugly s.o.b. “yeah, we’re fags” he said
and threw a straight right, bam! no warning
no backswing, bam! on the ugly son of a bitch’s
nose

and while the jazz smoothed on and
the crowd yakked and badmouthed
and laughed and hit on each other and
whispered in each others ears
and planned rapine and revolution
seduction and murder and escape

from the nagging and crying and diapers
and the heavy weight of surviving
that ugly son of a bitch shrunk
into a sad son of a bitch as he fell under
the hemingway axe of hardened steel
like a giant oak with a trunk of butter

and he lay there a while in the sawdust
and the noise
and when he looked up
his nose was a funny shape
and more than that his eyes
his eyes inside, the way they looked
was the same
kind of crooked

and after a while he started making
a high pitched mewling sound
like the noise my cousin T used to make
when he was describing the noise women
would make when he screwed ‘em
only i knew it was bullshit from a calf
knee deep in it

and his partner in bullshit bent down ‘n
pulled, but that was no use so he had to
get down on one knee ‘n haul the ugly
s.o.b. still making that animal in pain noise
to his feet all the while the both of em
their scared shitless eyes fixed on ernie
who stood there hardly breathing at all
it seemed to me
but he was breathing alright
just fine

and when the two pugs made vertical
they just swayed there
the one unable to move his feet one way
or another and the other one keeping the ugly
son of a bitch from collapsing again
the both of em
wobbling ‘n swaying ‘n balancing like a third
string variety tumbling act

then ernie put his big lefty paw over my shaking hand
(the one stuck to the edge of the drink-wet table) and
said, “take me back to the hotel ‘n fuck me.
call me “papa” a few times while you’re doing it”

so i took him
back
to the hotel
‘n i did

relevant remonstrances revisited

^{fight terrorism - abandon hypocrisy : (more uncomfortable conclusions)}

if we define terrorism as US Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld has done: "I think any time people, innocent men, women and children are being killed that that is, in effect, the definition of terrorism." ^source  - then we must address the tragedy that since the end of World War 2, and in Vietnam alone, democratic Western nations have, directly, killed many times more innocent civilians than have all the designated terrorists (from Jomo Kenyatta to Menachem Begin, from Nelson Mandela to Osama Bin Laden) in their entirety.

While the good guys are killing more innocent civilians than the bad guys, the waters of definition and truth remain muddy indeed.

We must abandon the absurdity of declaring that terrorism can be committed only by “clandestine agents or sub-national groups” and that conversely a nation state cannot commit terrorist acts and merely inflicts, incurs or bestows “regrettable collateral damage”. The dead recognize no such distinction.

These double standards exacerbate global conflict. Collective responsibility, explicit in the democratic system of government, makes enfranchised citizens of democracies responsible for the actions of their governments. “Not in my name”, admirable and heartfelt a slogan as it may be, is meaningless whether waved in opposition, self-justification or self-defence.

I don’t like it and yes, it’s a bitch and yes, it’s the simplistic black and white view. But it is remarkable how the majority, including the Pope, all other theistic religious leaders and faith based, sincere belief, religious conviction politicians such as George W Bush, Tony Blair, Osama Bin Laden and the religious lords of Iran cling to their simplistic black and white view.

Myriad hypocrisies will continue to thrive both in Islamic based and Christian based countries. Nonetheless, in the fight against terrorism and to protect physical non-combatants (usually children and women) we must have one standard.

Whether it be lethal planes as bombs, lethal bombs on trains or lethal protectionism and trade barriers: The single standard is life and death.

_{[ See also: "What Violence Is" & "The New New Deal"  ]}

what we do to our own

"We psych ourselves up
with heavy rock.
It makes it seem more like
a video game."

^{US Soldier - Fallujah, Iraq
TV news 9-11-04}