DERIVING FROM CARL SAGAN

To MleRoi

Cosmos is within us, you are right,

Carl, our atoms created by exploded

stars and the Big Bang, our cells being

hit by a constant stream of particles,

and our thoughts orbiting the wandering

stars our gaze captures from among

the light-polluted sky, the dimmed

belt of the Milky Way arching

across our brain as much our vision,

and we feel both longing and belonging,

unity, seeing above, feeling inside,

the Cosmos that we are.

06.01.2025

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STRANGE HOW ONE CAN LAMENT THE HOLOCAUST AND NOT UNDERSTAND THAT GENOCIDAIRES DON'T NEED ANY OTHER REASON TO KILL THAN BEING ABLE TO DO SO

Strange how the same people

who support Israel because

of the Holocaust claim that

Israel wouldn't just kill entire

families because it can, that

there must have been something

that someone in the families did,

something that would 'justify'

killing an entire family.

Did Germany need more

reasons to kill than that it could

and that the victims were

of the 'wrong' ethnic-religious

group? Did it? No, it didn't.

06.01.2025

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TRANSLATING SALEEM AL-NAFFAR(1963-2023)

Translating via English, so

taking the inferior path

of translating translators,

poems of Saleem al-Naffar,

killed with his entire family

by the Israeli occupation

at their home in Gaza,

because he was a poet

fighting with words,

and so few poets,

so few poets,

are fighting for him,

his family, with their words

here in the Occident, where his

killers carry the 'right' ethnic-religious

labels to be thought as the victims,

and he and his family, his oppressed

nation, obstacles guilty of their

own fate by not giving up

their patrimony.

06.01.2025

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BACK TO THE ROUTINE, ALMOST

Back to the routine, almost,

too much sleep on these two days,

too little sharing the news

of the slaughter of the innocent,

not answering messages quickly

enough, but writing poems,

translating, and in this the pale,

brief days wane to darkness outside

without the mind noticing.

06.01.2025

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THE PRESS

Hiding news, not revealing,

keeping genocides and pandemic

ongoing, throwing gasoline

of misinformation to burn

the Earth, to scorch the future

for sake of shareholders fortune -

the press, the Fourth Estate,

the squires of the Billionaire

Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

06.01.2025

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A WINTER NIGHT

Hand on fabric, reading

Le Guin, gazing at the picture

between the pages as a bookmark,

these are the deep joys of

hours of solitude.

06.01.2025

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THE 21ST CENTURY CENTRISTS

No Centrist in the 21st century is ready

to die to defend democracy, no Centrist

is ready to be imprisoned in defence

of democracy and very few Centrists

are even ready to lose their job

to defend democracy.

But all of them are willing to fight

the Left and any progressive policies,

with their Far-Right allies becoming

their masters, and they the loyal

opposition in Fascism.

06.01.2025

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OMAR AL-DIRAWI(2003-2025)

Omar al-Dirawi, photographer, was 21.

Yesterday he was in his sibling's funeral.

Today Israeli occupation killed him,

his parents, and his brothers in

their family home in Gaza City.

He was killed, his family was killed,

because the 'West' allows and approves

the murder of journalists by the Israeli regime.

Omar al-Dirawi, photographer, was 21.

Today he is dead, and his family is dead.

03.-06.01.2025

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IT DOES TRY, HARD

The 'West' can't shout "Slava Ukraini!"

loud enough to hide the screams of

the Palestinian victims of the genocide

by the Israeli regime.

It can't shout loud enough,

but it does try, hard.

04.-06.01.2025

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THE FASCIST'S DOORMAN

A Centrist is a doorman

to a Fascist, opening the gates

to power for him, and then

standing before them,

defending his new master,

telling "Give him a chance.

The power will change him."

06.01.2025

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THE SAME ACTOR PLAYING THE SAME ROLE

The United States under Donald Trump

will be as it is under Joe Biden

and as it was under Donald Trump,

as it was under Barack Obama,

as it was under George W. Bush,

as it was under Bill Clinton:

Fanatically Zionist, supporting

genocidal Apartheid, and if you think

that "Trump will be worse"

you must think that one side

of an American coin carries a different

denomination than the other.

We will get more Christian Zionists as US envoys

and less Jewish Zionists, and there will be

a bit different tone, with Trump bragging

about Israeli atrocities which Biden occasionally

claimed to mildly disagree with, but under

the masks it will be the same actor

playing the same role, repeating essentially

same rhetoric, with added 'Rapture',

but it will be same genocidal Zionism.

05.01.2025

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THE FEARFUL COLONISTS

Those who have stolen land

from people born on its ancestral soil,

they will always be afraid

that someone will do the same

for them, is already on their way,

bringing judgment and dispossession.

05.01.2025

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SIXTEEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO

Sixteen degrees below zero

this morning, coldest day

of the winter, and the light,

the lying, bright sunlight tells

you of heat burning your skin.

05.01.2025

ON THE FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

At ten o'clock in the morning I sit on the sofa

reading Ursula K. Le Guin's poems from

her Late on the Day, a Christmas gift

from her native land, in the brilliant light

of the coldest day of this winter, orange

and yellow cold light, yet the only warmth

beyond the heater coming from the printed

words on the pages turning under my fingers.

05.01.2025

GAZING AT HER IMAGE

Gazing at her image

he wishes he could give

her what she has awakened,

the erect flesh longing

for her own.

04.01.2025

FINALLY GOT IT TODAY

Good things come as gifts

from faraway, printed and image,

the thoughts behind them,

all precious and cherished,

engendering words and dreams.

04.01.2025

WHAT WE CAN BE

We are the dreams we have,

we are the lies we tell,

we are the truths we

left untold,

we are all the love

we felt and never showed,

and in us are the seeds

that still remain fertile and can grow,

dreams and truths and love.

02.-04.01.2025

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ON THE 4TH DAY OF THE YEAR

White and black, this winter

day, and white and black

thoughts that are inhabitants

of the landscape of the mind,

begetted by the landscape

of the senses, the bridge

to the outer landscape that

envelopes us in white

and black, white and black.

04.01.2025

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ON THE 3RD DAY OF THE YEAR

Yesterday Hanan al-Qishawi,

today Omar al-Dirawi

and Areej Shaheen.

Israel is murdering Palestinian

journalists and photojournalists,

up to 219 now,

and here in Finland the nepotistic

Micky Mouses from the clans

of our reporters, to whom

journalism is not a calling

but an inherited lifestyle

and inherited paycheck,

are chanting religiously "terrorist

organization Hamas" whenever

they deign to mention Palestine,

Gaza and Israel, spreading

propaganda in support of a genocide,

the slaughter of their colleagues.

03.-04.01.2025

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ISRAEL KILLED PHOTOGRAPHER HANAN AL-QISHAWI

 Photographer Hanan al-Qishawi smiles

surrounded with children, his favourite

audience, in a photograph. Yesterday

Israel's occupation forces killed him

in Gaza City, a drone targeted him

directly with a missile, and his smile 

is gone forever, like so many

of his favourite audience. 

And most 'Western' journalists are silent

or spreading Israeli regime propaganda,

these crack troops of the genocide.

02.01.2025

NO ONE

No one, rightly, demands that Auschwitz

prisoners should have cared about

the bombing of Hamburg, and no one

should demand that occupied Palestinians

should care about the lives of 'average' Israelis

as long as the genocide, occupation

and Apartheid go on.

Holocaust was a choice by Germany,

and genocide, endless occupation and Apartheid

are choices made by Israel, in each

election, on each single day

by 'average' Israelis.

02.01.2025

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THE 'LOGIC' OF GENOCIDE

Hospitals make Zionists feel afraid

so they must be destroyed,

and schools make Zionists

feel afraid, and universities,

so they must be destroyed,

and authors, doctors, journalists, nurses,

photographers, scholars, teachers

make Zionists feel afraid

and they must be killed,

just like babies, infants, toddlers

and children of all ages

make Zionists feel afraid

and must be killed also,

as must be killed pregnant women

and lactating mothers,

who make Zionists feel afraid,

and grand-parents and gread-grandparents,

spinster aunts and bachelor great-uncles,

street cleaners and construction workers,

truck drivers and ice cream cart owners,

fishermen and farmers and shepherds,

they all must be killed, for

every Palestinian makes Zionists feel afraid

merely by existing as a Palestinian.

02.01.2025

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ON THE 2ND DAY OF THE YEAR

In the silence of the first Thursday

of this year I read Lorca and news

from the ongoing genocide, 38

people killed in the last day, and

who knows how many still under

rubble, murdered unknown in

Jabalia by Israel's occupation

forces, 'field executions' like

Lorca's murder, and the murderers

self-claimed identity changes,

but they are always the same,

people who first killed their

own humanity before killing

human beings, and the mask

of hate worn on their faces

is the same as then.

02.01.2025

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A FRAGMENT

O my mind that dreams of fingers

running on her bare flesh, blissful

is to wander from the tormented

reality to the dreamscape where

imagination gives fullfillment

to your yearning desire.

12.10.2024-02.01.2025

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SEEKING THOSE BRIEF MOMENTS

He wants to sink between

her thighs, to be more than

just himself for those fleeting

moments that two people

can be one, one flesh, one lust,

something more than yearning

seeking completeness in coupling

of flesh, desire, and the mind.

02.01.2024

NO ONE CAN WRITE WELL ENOUGH TO ABSOLVE THEMSELVES FROM GUILT

The Fascist poets of note

can be counted with the fingers

of one hand, and even them

should have been dealt

with extreme prejudice,

because being a good poet

doesn't mean that you don't

deserve to be treated as

the Fascist you are.

02.01.2024

207 JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN MURDERED IN GAZA BY THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION

For David Lammy

There are no journalists in Gaza,

declared the British Foreign Secretary

David Lammy a month ago, but then

Israel had 'only' killed around 12 percent

of journalists in Gaza, so he was too quick

to declare the success of the joint

endeavour of Israel, Britain

and the United States.

And even now, when a dozen journalists

more have been killed, there are

still around 700 more journalists

to kill in the name of Zionism

and Israel's 'self-defence'.

01.01.2025

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WE MUST LIVE THE PEACE

Only the dead have known peace,

the old saying goes, but we have

to believe and live like the living

could once have peace, filling

their lungs and feeling their hearts

beat in a world where no innocent

blood flows from under the rubble,

soaking our Earth with suffering.

31.12.2024

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TO THE END OF OUR LONGING

With so much death and loss,

lives running through our fingers

into eternity, becoming the glittering

stars of our unreachable past, is

it any wonder that we then unbridle

our desire, take off the saddle,

and ride our lust bareback,

letting it run wild to the end

of our longing?

01.01.2025

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UNTIL THE INNOCENT DEAD HAVE THEIR LASTING MEMORIALS

The first night of the new year

is here, and like on the last night

of the year that ended, people

that are shivering in tents and ruins

are being killed, their cold shiver

becoming the cold of death,

their flesh torn and the world

torn apart for their soul to depart,

torn apart and never mended,

until the killers are brought

down and the broken bodies

of the innocent dead have

their lasting memorials

in the smiles and laughter

of the children of their nation

living free and unafraid.

01.01.2025

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HOW SUDDENLY THE WORLD CAN CHANGE

Strange and how delightful how suddenly

a memory can kindle lust in your mind

and groin, when the desires of the flesh

were far away from your mind a mere

minute ago, and now you are burning,

burning from lust and desire, and all that

is not soft flesh beckoning has faded.

01.01.2025

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IN THE GLOOM OF A JANUARY AFTERNOON

Where the forest has a wound through

it and pylons carry civilization, a lone

stranger stands on a cliff, gazing

into distance in the gloom of the winter

afternoon, straight out of a painting by

Caspar David Friedrich, the forest

given the role of the Gothic ruins,

this moment capturing the passing

of nature, not civilization carrying its

light above on feet of fragile steel,

but what will remain are the rocks,

the land rolling forward in time

through all humanity's mistakes

and beyond them.

01.01.2025

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ON THE 1:ST DAY OF THE YEAR

The world on the first day of the year

is an ukiyo-e painting, all white snow,

black trunks and foliage of evergreens,

and above the gray sky of clouds. Just

three colours capturing the essence

of the landscape, and one dark figure

moving across it, the beginning and

end of their journey hidden from us.

01.01.2025

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