WILLIAM FAULKNER

All who write fiction

are liars, weaving

and spinning stories,

and weawing and

spinning their lives;

it's odd how this

keeps surprising

people. A person

who creates worlds

foremost invents

themselves.

24.03.2024

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SUNSHINE ON A LATE MARCH MORNING

Sunshine outside. Yesterday,

when I got myself to do

a shopping trip in gray

gloom, the land was

bleak in the dirty snow

of late winter, and I

was old and had

wasted my life; and

today, in this light,

my years halved,

and some kind

of hope.

24.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DO YOU RECALL, PENELOPE?

 Twenty years, twenty years

of freedom of a sort, and

the man comes back, if

he is the same man (so

hard to know after twenty

years). The weaving is

done, the patient suitors

are dead, the long-delayed

decision made for you.

There he is, back (or

perhaps for the first time

here), the man who

calls himself Ulysses.

He claims to recall it

all, he wants to continue

where it ended, twenty

years ago. Do you

recall that time, gone

twenty years, your

girlhood and the man

who sired one child, and

left, Penelope? The man

heard for ten years and

then ten years lost?

On the shores of Ithaca,

do you recall, Penelope,

do you recall the twenty

years you had?

24.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

OF OUR VIRTUES AND VICES

We prefer to think our virtues

as innate, ever resting in our mind,

intertwined with our very being,

and our vices something external,

like dirty magazines hidden

in a box under the bed,

separate from what we are; to

be taken out, used, and returned

like nothing in our true selves

would have been stained

and changed. And that in us

which made us seek our vices

we consider a mere wrinkle

in our being, to be straightened

out in some future time.

24.03.2024

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HOW COULD I GO OUTSIDE?

Outside, sunshine.

Inside, a genocide

on my computer

screen, an endless

slaughter.

30 murdered

the in latest massacre

against people

waiting for aid

at Gaza City.

23.03.2024

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THERE'S SURELY SUPPOSED TO BE A LESSON HERE

I blocked half a thousand bots

and troll farms promoting

and denying genocide

on Twitter

and Twitter blocked me.

19.03.2024

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IN MY DREAM

I saw two fair-headed twins, tall

and serenely beautiful, dancing

on a field, still barren and brown

under their bare feet, in white linen

night-shirts, and as they caroused

and leaped, long hair flowing,

their shirts rose showing their firm

buttocks and vulvas, innocently;

and it was Spring, having come

to dance the land alive after

cold Winter's long icy caresses,

green sprouting in her

dual footsteps.

17.03.2024

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SUBMERGED IN TIME

Our language may be confused,

but we usually are not.

Maria Zielenbach: Back to the Past?

Disentangling Elvish Time and Space

Refer-ence, Mallorn Issue 64, Winter 2023.

1

Rising from lethargy, I clean

cat vomit from the floor, make

coffee, sit before the computer,

put Vietnamese folk music on,

and read how we move through

unchanging events towards

our encounter in Samarra.

2

The cat, having sat on my

lap, can't stand more folk

music from Indochina and

runs away. I sip more coffee

and read on. Midnight

will soon be after us.

3

Time exists separate

from our existence, as events

which necessarily have

to follow each other. We

don't create it. We are

submerged in it, from

our cells to our thoughts.

One moment we appear

in time, on another

moment we disappear.

Even when the black

holes have evaporated

time exists, coupled

with the pure void.

4

The cat has come back

after the music ended,

pushes himself through

time into a plastic bag

filled with old memorabilia.

We are like that, containers

for things gathered up

along the way. And

sometimes someone

comes and enters.

16.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HISTORICAL QUESTION

Did heretical Cathars exist?

The Crusaders thought they did,

and the people they killed died,

whether the killers' label

on their corpses

was correct or not.

16.03.2024

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ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY DOESN'T CHANGE IT

Being far less

than I should be

I can only blame

myself.

Having made

others' lives far

less than they've

should have been,

I can only blame

myself.

Acceptance of blame changes

nothing. It's an acknowledgment

of facts, not forgiveness or

reparations, not moving on

from the wrecks of lives.

Truth is just a truth,

not a balm.

16.03.2024

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MUQI'S(FL. 1250) SIX PERSIMMONS

Simplicity. Six

persimmons.

Or, as one

explanation
says,

the wheel

of life with

a host

and five

pupils.

16.03.2024

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AWAKENING LATE AT EVENING AFTER SLEEPING THE WHOLE DAY

I have slept the whole day, uneasily,

seeing strange nightmares all too easy

to explain after awakening, remorse

painting mistakes large on sleep's canvas,

the strangeness but a decoration

of very mundane errors; even the sunken

toyboats, their cargo of children's

building bricks scattered under

the shimmering waves, not one moment

did I have to wonder. Even my

subconscious plays it naive.

16.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verses

PICK UP A PEN (OR PUT YOUR FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD)

Pick up your pen

and write, something.

Do it now, don't leave

it for a later time, one

that may never come.

Write a poem, a story,

a recollection, an epic

novel for the ages.

Even if only a haiku or

an epigram, it will be more

than written by those who

never pick up a pen

and start writing.

16.03.2024

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SILENCE

Where are all the people, rightly

upset about the Bamiyan Buddhas

(I was one), now

when Israel has destroyed

Gaza's entire cultural heritage

from the Iron Age onwards?

Hellenistic port destroyed?

Silence. Medieval mosque

destroyed? Silence.

Two hundred mosques

destroyed? Silence.

Mamluk castle? Silence.

Palace where Napoleon

stayed? Silence. Museums,

libraries, universities? Silence.

The destruction these Israeli

brethren of the Taliban wrought

gets quite different treatment.

15.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH

If we ignore everything

that Israel does, there is

no reason to criticize it.

And things being like

that, there can be no

right to criticize it.

15.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DIFFERENT RULES

The Zionists claim that Palestinians can't be

refugees after 76 years, and they say that the Jews

must always be victims as they raise the Jews

as a shield before their own actions, when

the self-claimed Jewish state has nuclear weapons,

carried and carries out ethnic cleansing, build Apartheid,

attacked all its neighbours, massacred and massacres,

practices torture and its jubilant soldiers post their

war crimes on Instagram and Tiktok. It's like

with the Right of Return, 2000 years for me,

5 years for you and then I take all that you had

when I drove you away from your home

and now I declare you a terrorist.

15.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CARPE DIEM AND SO FORTH

Most live and demand that others live

like these ephemeral societies of theirs

at this exact moment in time

would be eternal, forever,

and the lives of people

should be lived for and according

to whatever the dead or living rulers

had decided as the lot of the people.

Short lives wasted, when all that there

is, is but foam on the space-time;

planets, stars, galaxies will go to

the darkness that will not remember.

This which you see around you

is more than a mirage, yet little better

than a mirage, will last like a mirage does,

and have as much effect as a mirage.

Don't waste your brief moment

of consciousness to live your days

according to the arbitrary rules of people

who had less than cosmic horizons.

15.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THIS IS WHERE IT HAS COME TO

According to Apartheid Israel's regime

and its Christian Zionist supporters,

if you don't support a genocide

then you hate Jews.

15.03.2024

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NEW ISRAELI MASSACRE AGAINST PEOPLE WAITING FOR AID

On Tuesday Israel's occupation forces yet again

attacked people waiting aid delivery at the Kuwait

roundabout in Gaza City, killing 11, and now, late

on Thursday, Israeli occupation troops repeated

it, killing at least 20 people, wounding 155 others.

Over 400 people overall killed by Israeli occupation

forces while waiting for aid deliveries, and yet

United States' Secretary of State Blinken yesterday

praised the Israeli regime, claiming it had done

a great job, claiming it made sure aid reached those

who need it, after European Union's Borrell

had had the temerity to admit that Israel was using

hunger deliberately as an instrument of war.

Some reports say that 60 people have been

massacred by Israeli occupation troops this night,

and they are still shooting at people trying to

retrieve bodies, and surely Secretary of State

Blinken will have more words of praise for them

the next time someone timidly asks him

about whether shooting starving people

might just a be a bit wrong.

15.03.2024

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU'S CANADA

Apartheid Israel's occupation forces

have killed 165 United Nations' staff,

136 journalists, 12 300 children,

8900 women in five months

yet Canadian minister Mélanie Joly

declares Canada's solidarity

with the Israeli regime.

One settler colony

supporting another.

15.03.2024

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A BIRDSONG FOR MIDNIGHT

Midnight, the fire alarm

cries for a new battery,

screeching like a bird

hidden in the night.

15.03.2024

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I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE A GOOD ONE

I thought a poem was seeking

to be born, fully-formed like

Athena from the head of Zeus,

but as I sat down, flexed my

fingers before the keyboard,

and then looked at the blank

screen before me, the coalescing

thoughts sublimated, the poem

waiting to be birthed went

to the Limbo of the unborn.

12.-15.03.2024

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GENOCIDE DENIAL ON TWITTER

Two children lie dead on hospital floor

after Israel's occupation forces bombardment

of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza,

and the replies are full of Israel's Troll Army

bots and troll farm accounts, claiming

that the children aren't really dead.

I abhor Holocaust denial, but Israel

and the Zionist embrace genocide

denial when the victims are 'right'.

15.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

MODERN ZIONISM, AS SEEN ON TWITTER

Modern Zionism: Account named Zyklon

posting "Pallywood" as a reply to images

of Palestinian children killed by Israel's

occupation forces in Gaza.

(Zyklon B was used by the Nazis to

murder Jews in the gas chambers.)

14.03.2024

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'PEACE' IN THE MIDDLE EAST, ACCORDING TO THE 'WEST'

To the 'West' 'peace' in the Middle East

doesn't mean peace as normal people

understand it, as absence of violence;

no, to the 'West' 'peace' means that

Israel has a monopoly on violence

and doesn't suffer itself casualties

while killing Lebanese, Iraqis,

Iranians, Palestinians, Syrians...

This, to the 'West', is 'peace'.

14.03.2024

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STABLEHANDS OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

As Palestine shows, as Global Warming

shows, as the rise of Far-Right shows,

the job of the journalist is not to inform

their audience, to tell what truly happens,

but to hide the carnage, and manage

the Armageddon for the benefit of those

who would destroy nations, minorities

and wreck the entire planet so that

they can have wealth and power

until its curtains for humanity.

14.03.2024

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FINNISH JOURNALISTS

 Our journalists ignore an ongoing genocie

in Palestine and instead, giddy with expectation,

dream of a coming Russian invasion, lovingly

caressing each curve of their imagined war.

12.03.2024

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NEWS THAT I READ IN THE LAST TEN MINUTES

Apartheid Israel's occupation

forces killed 11 people

in a new attack at Deir al-Balah

in central Gaza Strip.

In occupied East Jerusalem's

Shufat refugee camp Israel's

occupation forces shot and killed

teenager Rami Hamdan Al-Halhouli.

In occupied West Bank illegal

Israeli colonialists attacked a bus

carrying 70 children from an orphanage

in Gaza to Bethlehem.

12.03.2024

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THEY WEREN'T YOURS

I saw a nice pair of breasts

on Instagram, a girl showing

her new tattoo, holding

her plump tits in her hands;

the problem was they

weren't yours, and it was

your breasts I yearned

to hold in my hands.

12.03.2024

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FADI AL-ZANT, AGED SIX

The 'West' cares deeply about Israel's occupation

soldiers dragged from their tanks, from their bunks

at military bases and taken prisoners of war. To

the 'West' they are 'hostages' in need of saving.

The 'West' doesn't care about starved Fadi, 6,

clinging to life in a hospital in Gaza's devastated

north. Fadi's life doesn't matter; unlike

lives garbed in Israeli occupation unifoms.

If he dies, his death will be of

no consequence to the 'West'.

12.03.2024

Palestinian Red Crescent and WHO told on March 23rd that they had been able to evacuate Fadi al-Zant from the Kamal Adwan hospital.

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SO WE DOOM OURSELVES

We have become ignorant

because we store too much

information outside our minds.

We believe we don't have

to know, that we can simply

access, and that's our mistake.

We end uploading corrupted data

into our minds that are no longer

capable of processing them critically.

12.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

I COULDN'T TURN MY EYES AWAY

To PRC 

I miss you

and I miss the way

your hips and buttocks

swayed

when you walked

before me

12.03.2024

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THE PATH TO CHRISTO-FASCISM IS PAVED WITH IGNORANCE

Liberals in the United States

have for decades accepted the weakening

of education, billionaire control of media,

and loss of hard-hitting journalism,

often lamenting this state of affairs,

yet shrugging their shoulders,

and accepting it as something

that they can do nothing about,

and then they despair

when ignorant people with limited

critical faculties vote for Christo-Fascism

when the media tells them to do so.

12.03.2024

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SUPPORT THE RESISTANCE IN OCCUPIED WESTERN SAHARA AND OCCUPIED WEST PAPUA

I have never condemned

a single resistance attack

against Moroccan occupation

in occupied Western Sahara

or against Indonesian occupation

in occupied West Papua.

Have you ever supported

a single resistance attack

against Moroccan occupation

or against Indonesian occupation?

I have. For like Palestinians,

they are fighting for their land

against foreign occupiers,

for their own survival.

12.03.2024

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ARE YOU ARE AN IMBECILE?

No Far-Right party will ever increase social security,

improve education and welfare services,

raise taxes for the rich or improve social mobility.

Only an imbecile thinks that voting them

could offer anything but a kick in the head

when it comes to the normal people.

11.-12.03.2024

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THE 'WESTERN' LEADERSHIP

Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!

they bellow, and then go

for their other chant

Israel! Israel! Israel!

They see no difference

between one USSR successor state,

attacked by its bigger neighbour,

and an Apartheid State,

built through ethnic cleansing,

committing a genocide.

From Kyiv to Tel Aviv

they go declaring "solidarity"

with the Zionist genocidaires

and invaded Ukrainians alike. 

12.03.2024

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FIFA AND UEFA

Yesterday it was announced Israel killed

Palestinian football player Muhammad Barakat

in Gaza's Khan Younis.

According to FIFA and UEFA,

Russia had to be banned from competitions

because sports can't be separate

from politics.

According to FIFA and UEFA,

Israel can't be banned from competitions

because sports should be kept separate

from politics.

12.03.2024

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CANADA DECLARES ITS 'SOLIDARITY' TO APARTHEID ISRAEL AS IT PLANS TO ATTACK RAFAH

Canada's Liberal government declared

that it stands "in solidarity" with Israel

after Israeli regime announced it would

attack Rafah, where 1 400 000 people

have sought shelter.

Only the lives of Israeli Jews matter

to the 'West' in occupied Palestine, and

the 'West' feels no shame for supporting

genocide because of its own racism.

12.03.2024

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THIS IS NO TIME TO BE MODERATE

Among the last things Europe needed

was for the Far-Right to win 48 seats in Portugal;

the Social Democrats will be tempted to

rule with them, in government or out of it.

The Center-Right, the 'Moderate' Right

always is. The siren call of Fascism

against which democracy is no longer

a protection. The Fascists need to be

destroyed, with blunt force if necessary.

11.03.2024

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THE PATH TO THE GENOCIDE

The 'West' said there should be no negative

consequences for Israel from the Ethnic Cleansing.

The 'West' said there should be no negative

consequences for Israel from the Apartheid.

The 'West' said there should be no negative

consequences for Israel from the Occupation.

The 'West' says there should be no negative

consequences for Israel from the Genocide.

11.03.2024

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ONE STATE SOLUTION

I feel no different towards

Jews now than before

the genocide in Palestine began;

it's not the fault of Jews.

It's the fault of Israel,

it's the fault of all the other countries,

all the people and organizations

which support Israel.

It's not the fault of Jews, 

but it's the fault of the state of Israel,

and I feel differently towards

the two state solution

now. I supported it as

the least worst short-term

option. Now even writing

that feels wrong.

I don't want Israel to survive,

even if it would be pragmatic

in the short-term.

It doesn't matter what I want,

as an outsider,

what matters is saving lives,

ending the genocide,

ending the occupation,

ending the Apartheid.

But I don't want Israel to survive.

I want a one state solution,

a democratic, multinational state.

Writing that feels now more right

than ever before.

11.03.2024

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YOU ONLY HAVE TO BE A HUMANE HUMAN BEING

Ignorant people think one

needs to be a Muslim

to support Palestine,

but for some reason

no one thinks one needs

to be a Christian

to support West Papua,

or a Buddhist to support Tibet,

or... you get the gist.

When we only have

to be humane human beings

to support all three & more.

11.03.2024

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