THE PRESS IN 'AMERICA'

First they censor your criticism of Israel's war crimes,

then they censor your criticism of anti-evolution crackpots,

Flat Earth believers and

'planet Nibiru is going to destroy us!'

doom-mongers.

And this is just the Liberal press.

21.11.2017

THE SIXTH OF US

He sleeps with his little Cousteau-hat on,

that content little fella, so tiny,

and on his face I see you

my mother,

you my father.

21.11.2017

THE ATLANTIC

You know, you were once AGAINST slavery.

Hard to believe now, right?

When APARTHEID is what

you unfurl your banners FOR.

21.11.2017

WHEN THIS IS OVER

We shall speak of this,

when this is over and

we have, so we will say,

moved forward, with

words of mild regret

and friendly resignation,

while the pain we

still feel will be a

a cold, fast-rushing

stream glimmering.

20.11.2017

HUITZILOPOCHTLI

Christmas lights

On November Night

Along a watery road

At silent yards

Christmas lights

How they tear

Out my heart

On their God's altar

These burning holes

In dark firmament

20.11.2017

A LAUREL OF DUST

Never praise a man just for his religion,
or fault a woman for her's.

Yet a person who without faith

faces the horrors of the world of men

and the universe's cold entropy,

standing her ground

until one with dead stars becomes,

all praise has earned,

that laurel of dust

whether gods or god exist,

whether they care or not.

20.11.2017

AGATHON(c. 445 - c. 400 BCE)

A playwright, who

competed with Euripides and Sophocles

- and won! -

he became, after all of his

works were lost and gone and

particles of dust, a mere

character created by Plato:

Alcibiades' rich boy toy,

part of the canvas

on which Socrates

was recreated. This

is Agathon's immortality.

19.11.2017

PICTURES OF JACK SPICER(1925-1965)

Until my gaze reaches

his sloping brow, I

always think:

'Val Kilmer'.

I think it's sad

and aggravating

that I never think

'Jack Spicer'

when I see

Val Kilmer.

Yet I know,

if a biopic would be made

they would regret
of not being able
to cast

Philip Seymour Hoffman.

19.11.2017

EVE AND ADAM

Adam was the prototype,

Eve was the finished article.

She was drawn from him,

but in her he was perfected.

19.11.2017

I HAVE NO NEED OF YOUR VIRTUES

Leave your many virtues to others,

my darling, I'm

glad to receive your plentiful vices.

Let others enjoy the flower

of your chastity,

and leave me to taste your profligacy.

They shall have what

is pure and 'ever-lasting',

I your fleeting debauchery.

19.11.2017

WHAT WE DON'T SEE IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH

One large breast, partly seen,

below lush dark hair and a face

between a plea and a resignation.

Flesh offered and denied,

even to herself; she's dead.

A frozen moment, carried

by time beyond all answers

there could have been. So

real lives end, with all

threads open, shattering.

19.11.2017

THE HUMAN LIFE

1

We are cries

of despair

before death.

2

We are the

drowning who

can't breath,

who can't

break the surface

just above them.

19.11.2017

EDWARD GARNETT(1868-1937)

In the photographer's flash,

a wax mask of an old maid

melting; the eyes staring

unconnected to flowing

flesh, embedded in the

white skull to be revealed

in a moment always postponed.

19.11.2017

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894) II

In the photograph he

looks like a man

Clint Eastwood is going to shoot down

in the mountains of Franco's Spain.

19.11.2017

SHACKLED TO SANITY

Even madness

has been denied to me;

thus the world

tramples on and on

on those born with

a wooden spoon;

shackling them

as sane witnesses

like a defeated king

'invited' to watch

his captured men

fight with wooden

swords against obsidian

blade-handling Mexica.

19.11.2017

OF NEW YORKER FESTIVAL SPEAKERS AND THEIR SUBJECT

Martin Amis

&

Ian Buruma.

just tell us

about the monsters

you see in the mirror.

19.11.2017

ROBERT WHITEHALL(1625-1685)

Some men create poets

by teaching boys,

some men create poets

by begetting sons,

some men create poets

by buggering boys.

Thus we owe

what Rochester wrought

to Whitehall sowing seed

where only poetry could grow.

So credit Whitehall

for Rochester's verse

and vice.

19.11.2017

LIBERAL ZIONISTS

A Liberal Zionist

is a Liberal Par Excellence:

Having to choose between

Liberalism and Zionism,

chooses Zionism

without hesitation or regret.

18.11.2017

FIN-DE-SIECLE

A short beard, a long cloak,

a cavalier hat wearing a man

from the cobbled street in mist

inside step; absinthe lacking,

no doubt, beside a window sat.

An order, the one and only -

the green liquid in a butterfly bottle

(Oh the symbolism! Life! Death!)

comes riding the waiter; madness

and coins exchanging cold hands.

18.11.2017

FLANDERS

Should we mourn long-dead men

made into minced meat

and buried in mud -

wear poppies,

visit the battlefields

to see plowed fields and

copses in green and meadows

with flowers blooming? For

nature doesn't care

from where its ebullient life

sprouts each spring anew;

nature buries and builds.

17.11.2017

EVERYDAY MALICE FOR THE BITTER

Every time I notice some stranger

of lesser or higher fame

has died

younger than my parents did,

I feel a little bit of...

not joy, but

an odd relief,

say to myself 'Good'

and like putting a bayonet

in the belly of a wounded

who might already be dead

I feel a bit disgusted.

17.11.2017

SONG FOR THOSE MAKING WEAPONS FOR PEACE

1

If you make bombs,

don't say you are for peace

for bombs are made to

drop over human beings.

2

You say you only want

peace, when you build

missiles and submarines

and bombers;

I wonder, I wonder

is this the Roman peace

of making desert

and calling it peace?

17.11.2017

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE(1762-1814)

If we otherwise won't agree with Fichte,

with all that pedantic Germanic philosophy

whose heavy architecture is just the

common longing for something lasting

beyond the tumult of a passing life,

then mere class solidarity makes us

give him some leeway; we shall not

regret, it was the same with his opponents

and those on whose feet he had worshipped,

just the opposite. So, Fichte, we give

you what we owe, from workers'

children to a workers' son.

17.11.2017

ERNEST DOWSON(1867-1900)

A Poem With Some Connection To Today

I

After dropping out of college,

I started to chase little girls,

becoming depressed,

when half my age,

they said 'No'.

But I had written

so pretty poems

to them, like Dante!

My parents then having

killed themselves,

there was nothing left

but to do like I had written:

Drink and die.

II

Finally

I was a proper

Cursed Poet!

17.11.2017

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE(1844-1900)

Brain wracked

with syphilis

has never been

an impediment

to glory

in philosophy.

'But that he

was mad

doesn't mean

that his work

was wrong -

it can't be

proved wrong;

this is

philosophy,

after all...'

17.11.2017

THE LITTLE CRICKETS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE(1844-1900)

"I am special", "I matter" - that's

what all these little followers of Nietzsche sing;

crickets among crickets singing about

life before the fall. 

But they have malice, these

special little crickets of Nietzsche:

"I am special, I matter

so most of my fellow crickets,

even when they sing as loud and clear

as me, are worthless and better off dead."

All these little crickets of mad Friedrich

fall silent with their kin

who have thought and sang about life

without malice, as the bitter autumn comes.

17.11.2017

NOVEMBER NIGHT

I am ill, feverish -

it doesn't matter

except

more reason

to open the

backdoor to the

November night

and lay down

breathing

the crisp air.

17.11.2017

VISITORS FROM THAT OTHER COUNTRY IN NORTH AMERICA

(NO, NOT MEXICO... SORRY)

When given the customary question to answer,

they look around, thinking, but never for a long:

'This is a very Canadian landscape.'

A modest, decent praise

with the inserted question they make to themselves:

'Why on earth am I here?'

17.11.2017

HERACLES IN MYSIA

Still on Mysia's shore

roaring Heracles wanders 

seeking Hylas of the flowing curls,

drawn to the blue depths,

where the cobalt water

his hair tenderly caresses.

Long gone are Jason

and the Argo, the fate

that could have been Heracles'.

His is a pyre of flame,

red blaze his mortal frame

with pain removing.

17.11.2017

LANGUAGE SCHOOL OF POETRY

That sentence in the headline always

makes me to ask from myself,

'Are there poets without language?

Poems without words?'

I think of visual arts, painting,

photography, I think of music

and shaking my head

answer twice 'No'.

If we want to carve out

a small part of human imagination

and innovation, calling it poetry,

it has to be done with language. Always.

17.11.2017

OH POET!

If you want to be a secret

known to but a few,

write on fallen leaves.

17.11.2018

TO MY LATE PARENTS

I am alive and you are dead,

but time in its due course

will correct that wrong

and make one right

out of three deaths.

16.11.2017

GREAT LOVE AND ITS SMALL VICTIMS

Oscar Wilde(1854-1900) and Lord Alfred Douglas(1870-1945)

It might have been great love,

but a great love

involving human sacrifices;

children given to Tlaloc,

adults with their hearts

ripped out for all to see.

What are such sacrifices

to later generations free of them?

Nothing.

Love - that justification

for all evil and suffering,

has suffocated its victims.

16.11.2017

DAY OF THE IMPRISONED WRITER
- AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A HYPOCRITE

Day of the Imprisoned Writer - Neil Gaiman writes to Ramón Esono Ebalé

(Pen International)

I would certainly write to get

Neil Gaiman

jailed.

One of those Faux

human rights supporters

who forgets all about human rights

and imprisoned writers

when paid enough,

like Israel did.

Equatorial Guinea's regime

- perhaps you know it

from oil riches not reaching the people,

from The Wonga Coup

(with Thatcher fils)

and the supposedly cannibalistic dictator 

Theodoro Obiang -

just didn't bother to pay him,

we can only assume.

Because Neil Gaiman

certainly knows

his own price.

If Theodoro Obiang

won't eat Ramón Esono Ebalé

(cartoonist, imprisoned since September 16th

after lured back home from exile

to renew his passport)

Neil Gaiman in his quest

for even more fame

and money will.

16.11.2017

PHILIP II THE GOOD(1396-1467), DUKE OF BURGUNDY(1419-1467) SPENDS A NIGHT AT A PEASANT'S HUT IN THE WOODS

Based on an episode in The Waning of the Middle Ages(1919) by Johan Huizinga(1871-1945)

Head cleared, wandering lost

in the woods, the bald-headed duke

in falling darkness arrives to a

peasant's cottage. How

heavy that axe in your hand,

man of the soil -

nobody might ever know.

Will you get a reward? A title

- even a piece of land to call

your own? Surely not,

for great lords are great in words,

and expect gratitude to be reward

enough. How heavy that axe

in your hand, man of the soil

- nobody might ever know.

All through the night,

so close to your hand,

that heavy axe. The fire

burns on earthen floor,

the fire burns in your

chest and feverish mind.

Yet in the morning,

kneeling in dirt and shouting

'God bless you, Sire'

you watch him ride away,

that bald-headed duke

that was lost to the night,

Nobody might have ever known

but the heavy axe and you.

27.06,-15.11.2017

HUMPHREY DAVY FINDLEY KITTO(1897-1982)

Greeks did that, Greeks did this,

all better than anyone else

and invented everything

that had been invented before.

There were no history,

no literature,

no drama,

no true art before the Greeks...

The typical way the adopted

Teutonic sons praise

their Greek forefathers

to praise themselves through them.

Yet, there was one saving grace -

against the sin of Cambridge

there were the long decades of

Glasgow and Bristol.

15.11.2017

PHILOSOPHERS IN HISTORY

These rude guests that invite themselves,

who give no respect to our customs

and claim to know that we know nothing;

our language they dismiss, preferring their own

when they claim to show our errors

when they act like they have none.

Then, in their jargon-enforced bastions

withdrawing, they refuse to engage

in our arguments, declaring victory instead.

15.11.2017

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

If I read the word 'ballade'

for one more time,

things are going to get

pretty nasty.

Why don't take

your 'poesie'

and fuck off -

yes, I'm looking at you.

Beat it, pansies.

13.11.2017

LISTENING TO ROBERT BARSKY'S(1961-) LECTURE ON WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS(1865-1939)

'You are fighting the entropy of the universe',

says the lecturer of Yeats,

yet - I am not. I am

succumbing to it. 'The most

beautiful woman in Ireland,

Maud Gonne.' Copulating

on the grave of her first child

to re-conceive her - that

is fighting the entropy of the universe;

creating life

in search of re-creating a life lost.

I am the Fisher King, living

in a withered land, no seed

can grow. Go forth,

seek the holy Grail of true life -

the Grail of fighting the entropy

of the universe, the human fate.

Live and create life, in

abundance. To beget,

to conceive, to give birth

is to push back the entropy,

the decay, death and loss

beyond your own lifetime.

12.11.2017

TO BEN JONSON(1572-1637)

If only wicked men taste death,

then all men taste death

- and you sir, surely

tasted it twice.

12.11.2017

OUTBOUND

Life is a pier on the shoreline

disappearing in the distance

as we drift away, towards

a horizon with no counter-shore

to reach; just a night falling

on waves calling us to sleep.

12.11.2017

OSIP MANDELSTAM(1891-1938)

What we owe to

those like you?

To a genius destined

not to soar, but

be made to bend

and bend, then

broken on barbwire?

What do we owe?

That we read you.

You have a voice

that speaks beyond

the long years, the

suffering and death.

Listening to it we

can, perhaps, hear

in the background,

weakly, those of

your fellow dead who

are otherwise silent,

having experienced

a greater death.

A poet speaks

for his age to

all ages to come

or becomes dust.

You are blood

on snow.

12.11.2017

AN AUTEUIL SUMMER

Some thoughts about Marcel Proust(1871-1922)

An Auteuil summer,

When the streets of Paris

Were filled with blood.

A summer after the defeat,

When the bourgeous peace

Was hammered into existence

At the ruins of Paris.

A firefly

That hovered around

The decaying aristocracy,

Wanting to be like them,

He was born,

A character quite common

In the Belle Epoque,

A man destined to wander

In the Bois de Boulogne

During more peaceful summers,

Yet always an outsider,

A pitiful character

Out of Balzac

For this gentle age.

He would achieve greatness

Through his art

Yet as a man, what

Was he but an odd Oblomov

Whose destiny was

To re-create

His surroundings on

The pages of his books?¨

10.07.2000-11.11.2017

TED HUGHES(1930-1998) II

We wouldn't want

the deeds of a couple

of hysterical women

to destroy a good

man's, a good poet's

reputation, now

would we - lads?

After all, if

anything the broads

should be thankful
for what he did for
those antsy hussies -

Ted could have

burned more than he did.

11.11.2017

TED HUGHES(1930-1998)

Just see

all the

graves

around

him.

A sloppy

man

ends up

breaking

a lot.

Just see

all the

graves

around

him.

11.11.2017