maanantai 8. huhtikuuta 2024

THE LONG END CREDITS

It ended long ago, and what there is,
are the credits rolling in an empty
movie theater, the sparse audience
having left at THE END, not staying
for their names to be shown as actors
in this, whatever it was - comedy,
farce, satire, tragedy...

08.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

AN APRIL EVENING

Suddenly it's already evening, 17:40
(a month and you will be hesitant to
call 17:40 evening, there will be so
much light), and the temperature
is going down, but you can't see
a change in the gray light outside,
in the landscape between melting
winter and spring raining.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse                                   

BURIDAN'S ASS

You stand at the centre of a circle,
equal distance to its edges
no matter where you decide to go
- there is nowhere to go.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

AFTER THE SNOWS OF WINTER MELTED AWAY

From under the melted snow
emerged the brown leaves
that fell last autumn

under iron-gray clouds,
and which now lie under
iron-gray clouds.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

THE PLANS FOR TODAY

The coffee will be black
today too, I will not
go to the store, I will
sit beside the window,
read a book, watch
the long gray day
fall in raindrops,
and when the
evening comes,
see from a screen
how the Moon
hides the Sun.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

WHY DOES IT MATTER SO THAT YOU SHOULD BE SOMETHING NOW?

 Why lament that you
are nothing, now,
when for aeons
you were nothing
before your first
cry, and for aeons
to come you will
be nothing, after
your last cry?

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

JUST THE FACTS

96 people drowned, 5 were saved
and up to 29 are missing

after an over-crowded fishing
boat turned into a ferry

sank on Mozambique's northern
coast, as the people aboard

were trying to escape
the spread of cholera

that has infected 13 700
and killed 30 people.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

SHELTERING FROM THE RAIN

Early in the morning
the birds sang so loudly
in the gloom that I
could hear them

just before
slipping into sleep,
forgotten dreams,
and now that

I'm awake,
they are silent,
the birds, sheltering
from the rain.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

YOU CAN'T SEE THE SPRING FROM MY DESK

It's afternoon, looking just
at the window from where I
am sitting, at the gray
cold-looking clouds, branches
of a still young pine swaying
in the wind

(we planted it almost
fourty years ago, but
it grew so slowly at first,
in the shadow of the house),

you wouldn't believe
that the snow has melted
from around it, the snow
whose cover is broken now 
even on the farmland
rolling towards the village
on the ridge, that

it's eleven degrees plus
outside, and that it's raining
there, spring raining
on winter's remains.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

WALID DAQQA AND ELOR AZARIA

Walid Daqqa died yesterday after 38 years
of imprisonment by Apartheid Israel's regime
for the alleged killing of one Israeli occupation
forces' soldier, and when Elor Azaria shot
a wounded civilian in the head, that same
Israeli judicial system so loved and praised
by the 'West' had him sentenced to 8 months,
much of it free on furlough. And his
was the rare case of conviction, the very
act of his conviction claimed in Israel
to tear the whole society apart, leading him
to be declared to be "Everybody's Son",
made assistant to a member of Knesset,
leading tours to show where he had
carried out his murder of Abdelfattah
al-Sharif in occcupied Hebron.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

THE HARES BOYS

To Karim Khan 

The 'West' praises Apartheid Israel's
legal system that tortures children
to 'confess', that imprisons children
for as many years as they have lived
for basis on those 'confessions';
the 'West' adores, up to the British
Chief Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court this; they heap praise
to a system where children are
tortured to 'confess' what occupiers
want them to 'confess', and then
sentenced in a military court
to 15 years for signing a paper in
Hebrew claiming they threw stones.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

PRIVATIZATION

First time they cancel, they call,
next time they cancel, they send
a text message, telling to call
to this number and get a new
appointment. Still waiting
for results of blood tests, six
weeks after they were taken.
This is what privatization
does to healthcare. One
nurse, and when they
get sick, no replacement.

08.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

sunnuntai 7. huhtikuuta 2024

A HIGHER STANDARD

Israel's occupation forces' soldiers
dragging the body of a killed
Palestinian behind their vehicle
on a video made in Gaza,
on an another video

a British government minister
angrily claiming that Israel is
being held to a higher standard
than any other country
and that is unfair.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

POEM IN LIMBO

A poem that was intended
to be here has slipped the confines
of my mind, still forming, and
has tasted the bitter void beyond.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

FOOLISH BEASTS, YET...

Lust makes foolish beasts out of people,
the wise and the simple both stumble,
yet lack of lust, all made Cathar,
Manichean perfects, would make
the world rather sparse of people -
and of art, for art is begotten by lust,
bare raging lust, or under chaste guise
romance and love burning for a tumble,
and their intertwined counterpart, death,
more often than not; death makes
desperate beasts copulate on their own
coming graves, each orgasm slice of eternity
delivered of our denied immortality,
and lack of lust seeds the world with but
crumbling graves, not humanity's saplings
in flesh and mind, children of body and art,
seeds flung beyond our journey's end.

02.-07.04.2024


#Poem #Poens #Poetry #Verse

SUNKEN DEPTHS

The day drowns in darkness,
black waters of the night rise,
come flooding across the barren
fields, sweeping the bare trees
supplicants in vain, and then
your abode is a sunken wreck,
from whose porthole you gaze
at the enveloping depths.
Night has come, and far
above, hidden, the stars
sparkle on deep blue sea.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

47

I'm the same age as my father's favourite
maternal uncle when he died, same age
as my father's paternal grandmother
when she died, same age as my paternal
grandmother's paternal grandmother
when she died. 47.

1916-1964.
1879-1926.
1860-1907.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

IT'S WHAT YOU DO WHAT MATTERS, NOT THE ETHNIC-RELIGIOUS LABELS YOU CARRY

The Zionists think that it's not
what you do but the ethnic-religious
label on you that matters. I believe
otherwise. It's not the ethnic-religious
labels, transitory, that matter, it's
what you do. The war crimes.

I support the occupied Palestinians
simply because they are the victims,
they are right. Not because their
oppressors belong to a particular
ethnic-religious group, or because
of their own ethnic-religuous groups.

That's something Zionists often don't
get, that the labels put on people,
which to to them are synonymous
to "Can be killed" and "Can kill",
don't matter. It's the piles of
corpses and whose bullets
are lodged in them,
what matter.

I don't support West Papua
because the Papuan people's genocidal
oppressors are Southeast Asian Muslims,
nor Western Sahara because the Saharawis'
tormentors are North African Muslims
of mixed Arab and Berber heritage.

It's simply because Indonesia and
Morocco have done and do horrible
things, war crimes and crimes against
humanity, to other nations of people
on the ancestral land of those peoples.
That's the only thing that matters.
Not the ethnic-religious labels.

If Israel would end the genocide,
occupation and Apartheid I would
move on, happy that peace has
a strong basis on which it can last,
and then be able to spend more
time to write about the terrible
things Indonesia and Morocco
are doing in West Papua
and Western Sahara.

That's how it goes, Zionists.
It's not you, it's what you do.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BESIDE THE BIG OLD PINE TREE, HERE BEFORE I WAS, HERE AFTER I'M GONE

I read Bashõ and Kerouac at the same
time, often in a big garden swing,
aged fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and
both were going to exciting places,
physically and mentally, when I was
staying put, rooted like the big pine
beside the swing,  and both are still
going to places even when they
are still dead, and I'm rooted here,
the swing long gone but the pine
standing firmly, having not grown
since, like, it often seems, my mind,
stuck to those open roads others
took to watch the Pacific
from opposite shores.

07.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

DON'T BE SURPRISED

Don't be surprised that our
rightwing politicians are taking
part in the genocide in Palestine,
when the yards of their own family
homes still hold mass graves.

02.02.-07.04.2024


#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A PASTICHE OF OMAR KHAYYAM

We humans are vessels
empty when the world
first starts to fill us, and
empty when the world
has drank from us.
Shattered our shards
lie after the thirsting
world breaks us.

07.04.2024


#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

NEVER HAVING LEFT

For some reason remembering
Bashõ this night, or perhaps
I know, the roads not taken
being remembered at the
end. How much one had
to walk to write so little,
so little so profoundly.

07.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

REMEMBRANCE OF SOMETHING READ, NOT SEEN

Tangled among dark
boughs, shreds of clouds,
a wandering star.

07.04.2024


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REGRET IS NOTHING WITHOUT ACTION

How would they feel,
those abandoned ones,
those who trusted
and whose trust was
betrayed, when you
announce your sins
and your regret,
your long penance
in thought but not
in act? How would
they feel? Cry or
laugh, or shrug
and look away,
having heard
this before?

12.03.-07.04.2024


#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THERE'S FAILURE AND THERE'S FAILURE

Failure is what makes us
human, yes, but to err
again and again makes
us not imperfect, one
blood-and-flesh being
among others of our
kind, but less than
them, less than those
who err and yet do
right more than
they make mistakes.
Us unfit specimens
must not seek place
among their true
human ranks.

07.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

THEY RECOIL FROM THAT

I started the day by reading Franz Fanon;
after having ended the nigt by reading
Loren Eiseley: Former all politics,
latter utterly devoid of politics;
in a way that feels political.

With all his nostalgic looking back,
resembling Bradbury and Kerouac,
Eiseley still talks contemporary
issues, human's relationship
to nature and deep time
in their moment
of existence.

And Fanon... Palestine,
Western Sahara, West Papua,
even the holy Ukraine of the 'West'
all issues of colonialization,
decolonializiation. Deep,
all-pervading racism
in how the 'West'
deals with them.

He would have believed
that we would have them
sorted out now, Fanon.
But history took a wrong
turn. To get it back
in the right channel
demands a lot of blood.

And for all of their care
for nature and human
relationship to it now
and across time, these
unpolitical Loren
Eiseleys are at fault.
They recoil from that.

05.-07.04.2024


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MINUS EIGHT DEGREES CELSIUS

Cold winter night,
it feels like that, in
the darkness, minus
eight degrees, but
memory clings to
the vision of fields
parly melted snow
in golden light from
the day past and
gone, a vision of
imperfect spring.
Shimmering light
against the darkness'
freezing gaze.

07.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

lauantai 6. huhtikuuta 2024

THIS IS THEIR ONLY PERFORMANCE, DON'T DISTURB THEM

People not meant
to live shouldn't try to force
their way onto the stage to
disrupt the actors, in midst
of their tragedies, their
comedies and burlesques.
The actors have their roles,
they are doing their
very best, or some their
worst, forgetting lines,
escaping the confines
of the role, the villain
trying to be heroic,
the hero challenged
by their loyal sidekick.
The plays don't often go
according to the scripts,
but they are for those
who are meant to
live: Do not disturb
their brief time
on the stage
of life. They
will soon be
gone.

06.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

APRIL SUNSHINE

It was a day of sunshine, outside,
and I never left these walls,
never stepped outside, into
that light, just watched,
separate, from my existence
inside these shadowed
rooms, outside that bright
landscape. Now the same
enclosing walls separate
the dark outside from
this one room (cool like
the untasted spring air)
filled with light.

06.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SOLAR ECLIPSES IN HISTORY

585 BCE the armies of the Median Empire and Lydia
met on the river Halys in Anatolia, and during
the ensuing battle there was the terror
on the skies, a solar eclipse, driving the terrified
armies to cease to fight; a peace was made
to last (until rising Persia conquered both).

Thales of Miletus, it was claimed, had
predicted the eclipse, enough to put him
(together with his claim that all was made
of water) as the first of the natural philosophers
at the beginning of Occidental science
(even when Diogenes Laertios made
him a Phoenician who had studied
in Egypt and Mesopotamia).

Truth, as usual, is something else when it
comes to what really took place; a prediction,
perhaps, but not down to the exact date; assuming
that the eclipse and the battle even took place
on the same date; by the time history is written
down, oral memory might combine into a one
story what was separate. Thales, eclipse, armies
clashing - perhaps they never intertwined.
Perhaps politics just took due course after feast
had been laid for birds and wild beasts,
the corpse-strewn battlefield, and eclipse
came when birds had feasted, or before,
seen by eyes soon picked by beaks.

06.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

SO, LIVE

Life has been a profound disappointment, like
opening a big present, gaily packaged, to only
find another smaller one, less brightly wrapped,
inside, and inside that, another, until finally
having on your palm a small, unwrapped one
the size of a matchbox, and inside it a note,
written in your own handwriting:
"Did you expect more?"

But death, surely, will be worse.
It might not even be the end.
So, live.

06.04.2024


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THE STATE OF HIS MOUTH

What a man at first observes in a woman,
so the cliché goes, are her breasts,
while his tongue says her eyes,
and what research shows that women
first observe in men, are their teeth.

The colour and depth of his eyes,
a barrel chest, muscles honed
at a gym or man-boobs, none tell
as much to the practical woman
as the state of his mouth.

06.04.2024


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BLACK COFFEE

The cat knocked down the last
carton of milk, covered the table
with flowing white milk, like
the snow that yesterday's
snowfall brought over Spring.

06.04.2024


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perjantai 5. huhtikuuta 2024

FLOWERS WON'T COME TO COVER THIS BARREN GROUND

The long April evening is over,
it's night, snow still falling
in the darkness, I assume,
and all my guilt and shame
and sins spread on inner
canvas no season can hide
under white snow or
green grass or fallen
golden leaves.

05.04.2024


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PRAISED BE THE ASEXUALS

Give up when besieged
by flames of lust and desire,
and you are soon a beast
or a fool or both; fight
and win, and you are
a saint, or a very dull
and bitter person,
or both.

05.04.2024


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RACISM

European Union refused to mourn
as Apartheid Israel killed 33 000
occupied Palestinians, buried 10 000
under rubble, missing. European
Union declared again and again
that it only "deplored" Palestinian
deaths, but when the Israeli regime
killed six foreigners, the European
Union immediately declared it
was "mourning" their deaths.

05.04.2024


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REPEATING THE PROPAGANDA

Apartheid Israel has killed 140 Palestinian journalists
(2 are missing) and 3 Lebanese journalists
in the last 181 days of continued slaughter,

and few among the 'Western' journalists
care, in public, as they continue
to repeat Israeli propaganda.

Behind the scenes, so many Palestinians say,
many 'Western' journalists have adopted
that old habit of German politicians,

saying privately they oppose what Israel
is doing, but claiming that they can't say
that openly. Quite the 'journalists'.

05.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Ver

THE FEARS OF THE INTELLECTUAL

I started the day by reading Franz
Fanon, after having ended the night
by reading Loren Eiseley. Former all
politics, choosing the masses over
doubting intellectuals, latter utterly
devoid of politics, in a way that feels
political. An intellectual making
a point of standing separate, aloof,
apart, gazing back while conforming
because he's afraid of the people
around him, that they would
turn on him, even when
he was holding the gun.

05.04.2024


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NIGHT MOVES

It seems I can do very little
nowadays, except read, write
poems and retweet. This
night, yesterday, it has been
the same. Tonight I read
some Hemingway. Another
death in Venice. Now
I would like coffee, but
to save the milk it
will be medicine with
distilled juice, two cups
of it in a blue glass. Then
I will put on some video,
take the machine and
put it in working order,
grab a book and listen
and read and fall asleep
and it will be light outside
when I wake up, snow
falling behind the windows
throughout a gray day.

05.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

THIS IS ISRAEL

In Israeli occupied Palestine's Gaza Strip.

A man or a boy carries a bag
of food from an airdrop; he
walks alone on a road among
devastation. And is shot,
by Israel's occupation forces'
soldiers. He doesn't die, has
been only wounded, and
tries to crawl away.
He is shot again.

05.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse

torstai 4. huhtikuuta 2024

LAVENDER

When you let an 'Artificial Intelligence'
to decide who to target and how many
will perish beside them when a drone
fires its missile, you have removed
responsibility and guilt, made
them obsolete. Or so you think.

04.04.2024


#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse