Labi Siffre - Into The Light

hit the road map

‘n don’t ya come back no more
no more, no more, no more

hit the road map
‘n don’t ya come back no more ...

What you say!?!

come on children
let’s sing the chorus

cluster bombs, cluster bombs, cluster bombs,
shalom Oy!
cluster bombs, cluster bombs, cluster bombs,
shalom Oy!

(repeat - carefully)

the UN dub

___

what goes around

Is Halliburton
on song
to reconstruct
Lebanon?
___

i like that

Appraising the state of “the world” and my view
of humanity’s contribution to it, the white
South African journalist interviewing me paused
and said he’d decided “to try not to do good”.

As most of the harm was done by those who
justified their actions by believing they’d done it
“for the best” and suchlike, he had decided instead
“to try not to do harm”

A concept alive with subtlety more than social
engineering or the existence of God Allah Jehovah
Brahma etc and requiring more courage to attempt.
impossible to achieve of course, but i like that
___

To the laws of physics and their fellows

Stop mocking me with rainbows
that trick you do with h²0 and
the atmosphere and refraction
and my smile
yes i know your game and
your totally non-supernatural name

and trees that bend in raging storms
and don’t break
OK, not very subtle i get it
it's supposed to be me
but it isn’t; i break every day
though i try to never give in

to never give up
and just when i’m about to, you
send a buzzard high
over the mountain and set it
motionless on the wind
just behind my house
as a sign

that i can withstand this storm,
that thunder, this bolt of lightning any
raging torrent of tragedy or disappointment.
Well, damn you
let me tell you something
In your stuck up smugness
it works every time

___

"God has given us this land"

it matters little which lies you use

to survive

unless the pain or deaths

of others are required

to keep your lies alive

___

Political Correctness Writ Large

another glowing report:

In what way has the ex-Australian, now American, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch been a “longstanding scourge of the Establishment”, as journalist Guy Adams claims, fittingly on page three of the 17th of August issue of "The Independent"?

Sexism, heterosexism (homophobia to those in denial), racism and the general encouragement of base rather than noble human instincts are firmly placed Establishment traditions. In what way has Rupert Murdoch opposed these?

If indeed he is a scourge of the Establishment (perhaps alongside other radicals such as the Prince of Wales or any Pope) then humanity is struggling to keep its head above an even deeper ocean of its own excrement than has hitherto been acknowledged.

[An Unblemished Role Model for the 21st Century]

___

No substitute for holding your hand but

When the white men "discovered"
The New World

The first thing they did
Was to age it

When i discovered you you revealed
A better me

My task when you leave
Will be to retain it
___

Forensic evidence

Dishcloths pay attention
on a microscopic level
being traditionally filthy

While not appearing so
though usually cleaner
than the kitchen soap

Which on consideration
is obvious as you wash
your hands but forget

To wash the soap before
putting it back in the dish
much like religion/politics
___

Lucky me to meet you

by the light of the moon
by the taste of your breath
i see that my life has been
less of a mess than i'd thought

by the sound of the morning
by the grind of your snoring
i hear the weather change
from a hole in the ozone

to the flight of a smart nuclear
bomb missing me by three
hundred and twenty eight votes
to three hundred and twenty nine

which in terms of armageddon
is nothing more nor less
than a whoopeee! landslide
___

Higher and Higher

I don’t give a damn for honour, truth or peace ‘n i don’t miss ‘em; neither do i try to revive ‘em. If those conceits were of any use they’d be with us now, alive and well, but they’re dead and dust and the people who killed ‘em are issuing media statements and eating well (thank you very much) and have the respect of billions on the squawk-show credo circuit.

What need is there to fake sincerity when the fools have been taught, so well, to believe sincerity means you’re on the side of kindness and compassion? Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Darma were sincere. Mengele and Vlad The Impaler were sincere. Don’t you get it? The blown to bits, burned alive, smothered lifeless under rubble, starved, tortured and abused to death innocents - they certainly got it.

So align the bulldozers, gear in, pedal down and push those hectares of corpses, push ‘em, push ‘em. Push the jiggling limbs and torsos into two multicultural, faded-rainbow-coloured, non-denominational heaps.

And when the cadaver heaps have gathered into two vast ranges of cadaver hills, push ‘em, push ‘em higher and higher till we face two mountains, touching the sky. Then, we’ll send The Dirty Job Boys in to plant a flag pole, half a mile high, one to each summit. They’ll attach the respective flags, each one the size of four football pitches, to the metal halyards thick as your arm, and haul them up with giant winding machines to the solemn cacophony of thousands of massed bands playing national anthems in arbitrary rotation.

Silent, we’ll stand at the base of those mountains and we’ll raise our faces and BLOW. In our billions we’ll BLOW hot air from our billons of mouths. Our lungs fully bursting we’ll BLOW till those flags unfurl and wave in the storm of our deeply held sincere beliefs.

And on one flag, The Dirty Job Boys using thousands of litres of natural pigments will have written, “Killed by the Bad Guys”. And on the other flag they’ll have written, “Killed by the Good Guys”. And the flag on the highest corpse mountain will be clearly outlined against the blue life sky. And even then, in our billions, we won’t open our eyes.
___

Politically Correct in spades

no government wants
a well educated

well informed
critically thinking and

politicized electorate
and no government has one
___

caring

for nearly ten days now we’ve had
no water here and i’ve had to drive the
fifteen miles to the supermarket to
carry five litre bottles of the stuff of
life back home in the van

the experience has really made me
understand what it must be like to be
an Asian or African woman in India or
the Sudan or someplace like that and have
to carry empty containers eight dusty bare
footed miles there and then carry the full
ones eight weighed down dusty miles back

like i said these past few days have been
an eye opener giving me a real understanding
of how they must feel, and a connection with
them as well somehow; but i still wonder why
they don’t build their villages closer to the water
___

shining clear and bright

___

Tommy Cooper, the eminent philosopher,

on the Middle East conflict:

The other day I went to my doctor and said,
"Doc, it hurts when i do this"
and the doctor said, "Well don’t do that"
___

true or false (1)

freedoms relinquished
are rarely regained

a) you’re damned right!
b) without a fight
c) in your lifetime
d) even in your great great
    grandchildren's lifetime
e) our leaders can be trusted
    so what's the fuss?
___

A lesson in the great game

“Cod?”
“Yes sir”.
“if the plural of mouse is mice, what is the plural of house?”.
And the world stood still in St Benedict's Junior School and my view of life was about to be mangled further as the class leaned forward as one to see Cod fall, to hear Cod fail.

“Hice sir?”, inevitable as WW1 after German mobilization. No matter the Kaiser had come to terms with his withered arm, regained his composure, straightened his tie and changed his mind. Nothing could stop the agonies to come. And Cod really got it from “The Irish Persuader”, a wooden bat swung from above shoulder height, and it hurt, deep down, i can tell ya, carved as it was from the Might is Right tree.

But the worst of the pain, the kick to the soul, was knowing young Cod wasn’t trying it on, wasn’t trying to be funny, wasn’t playing the teacher. He’d been tricked into getting those whacks for something he’d done but hadn’t; an earthly example of entrapment, a game played by the mighty on the slight. It continues today, successful in domestic and foreign affairs.

Red headed Brian Cod grew bigger than me, and probably forgave the responsible adult. But I never did, for cynically showing me how we exist: at the whim of those who wield overwhelming power, most of whom are guaranteed to abuse it.
___

Mainstream

In his Edinburgh festival review of the five star comedian Doug Stanhope, Julain Hall, for The Independent, does a good job until the coda when he writes, “ ... he (Doug Stanhope) does what stand-up is supposed to do: say the unsayable, tell us that we are all schmucks, provoke argument and entertain people".

I disagree. Dead babies, homeless people, rape, ethnic cleansing, endemic western political corruption and indifference to curable sicknesses are mainstream entertainment. Why should comedians have to stoop so low?

___

Physics

concerning endless strings of big bangs
it’s all been said
clearly to no effect; thus confirming the math
HE=nc² (human experience equals nothing changes)

to test this theory of relativity he keeps
newspapers for five years
before reading them; the well informed
consider him to be so

though once, when young, in answer
to the question “why?”, he’d replied,
“for the sake of doing it well
and to learn stuff,
ya know?”

appalled by this violation of his
audience’s trust, thereafter
when similarly tested
he responds with
“for the money of course
d’ya think i do this for love?”   

his disdainful laugh reinforces their faith
puts them at ease, confirms him
as being
on the good guys’ team
___

Clear and present danger

“art is best produced with an element
of not knowing what one is doing” which
makes love and child rearing eligible
(noting that art is an accommodation
with failure) and war, though equally art,
equally ineligible as great art

yet, “opinion is not literature”. Gertrude Stein
didn’t say that but i read someplace that she had
and it sounds good, reads well and she was a great
writer and the remark had me foxed for a while with
much pausing for thought and perusal of self
and appraisal stanza by stanza of my work

nonetheless, any day of the week:
without Basie less swing. without Bing less sing.
without courage no Mandela or Martin Luther King.
lacking Lennon no Imagine. without I no Ching.
sans Stravinsky no Rite of Spring.
without men, less killing. without killing, the trial
of trusting. the ordeal of sharing. the agony
of revealing. the unbearable light of admitting.
and the cancer of caring.
___

sleep easy tonight with a loaded pillow

“Hatred of any kind goes against my faith" said Mel Gibson after his racist outburst. It’s a comfort to see him in solidarity with other religious leaders in making it absolutely, unambiguously and unequivocally clear that hatred is against their faiths, which are, without exception, faiths of love, tolerance, forgiveness and compassion and totally reject bigotry, racism, sexism, heterosexism / homophobia, lying to folks about HIV / AIDS and the efficacy of condoms, using the word belief when they claim knowledge, general hypocrisy, aiding sexual and other abuse of children and adults by secrecy / cover ups / whitewash : nice to know these folks are almost as righteous as your every day kingpin drugs baron or fascist leader
___

Faces painted on the bark of trees

The man in the photo holds out the top half
Of an infant. seven or six years old i reckon.
Its head hanging limpid to the side. a boy
Or girl i cannot tell. from the waist down is
Missing mostly, with rags of clothing
And flesh dangling, the frayed edges

Of a much used flag. a good fellow he seems
This man. i wonder, is blood dripping onto his
Shoes. do his shoes have laces. on that hill of
Rubble, i cannot tell. calm he looks
Reassuring broad shoulders and belly wide
Face heavy with a black mustache.

His hair is grey with dust. his eyes reflecting
My feelings. his are beyond. my grasp. his hands
Are full. of loss. reaching out there are trees
In the valley below my house

The buzzards have gone but a red kite swoops
Like water over rock as i wait, here at the open
Window, a dead infant in my arms. it weighs
Very little as you know. wherever we are,
Whatever we do, we hold, each of us,
An infant, dead in our arms
___

"Reason for Their Death Is Known"

from Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches

___

the big question is

as the killing continues
the answer remains
vital to find

how can these blind men
blind from birth
learn that they’re blind
___

Small Balls

A funny thing happened last Saturday night
My partner, my lover, Peter who I’ve loved
For four decades, two thirds of my life,
Had a third stroke

The funny thing was what happened after: I
Wrote several letters about it, one to the Pope,
Hoping for hope and some words of wisdom
But he let me down as all he could write was
Sex, sex, sex and sex

Akinola, the Archbishop leader of Nigeria’s
Seventeen million Anglicans responded by
Sending me a copy, signed, of his book,
“Rabble rouse your way to power in the third,
First and after-life worlds”

The Archbishop of Canterbury continued to confuse by
Sending twelve hand wringing pages of text
Every third word of which was “lifestyle”

Several hundred American evangelists and right
Wing radio talk show hosts all sent the same brief note
As the Mujahideen and the Mullahs of Iran
“Refer to the letter sent by the pope -
Re: sex”

And the truth showered down like Pompeii pumice
None of those luckless have ever known love
Cannot even approach the word. it’s the only
Conclusion to come to so sad; they deserve
Our pity and compassion
I suppose
And get

Mine and these few helpful words of wisdom:
If they open their hearts love
Might happen to them
But with so little courage
It’s unlikely
___