Poems for Angry Historians

TANK MAN

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 20:32:00 +0000

Uncle Arik there you stood
rebuilding the land
one body at a time

We watched as
19-year-olds died
and borders grew
and so did your stomach
and every child wondered but was
          afraid to ask, "Did he eat my bothers and sisters?"

You never quite understood,
"from each ability to each need"
So you resculpted tzionism
to look like you:
and engorged ego over a "dirty jew"
racism to counter racism
          that could never wash off the ancient libel

History will paint you a real estate baron,
giving people homes in exchange for their buffering your land;
trading out the lives of Israeli children to buffer their children,
who won't serve, pay taxes, or speak Hebrew....
And then one day, take it all away
to make peace like it was a recipe you had been mixing all along
But we know that territory, like body count,
are just mechanisms to calculate
          power
the narcotic which keeps your particular psychosis in check

Uncle Arik, sleep now
hang on to your piss bag and heart monitors
cling to this vegetable life
with your terminal ego
and tragic penis
and know
          know
Know what i know:
Two decades of soldiers await you on the other side.

Sandra Bland, She hanged herself

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:18:00 +0000

after In Detention by Chris van Wyk

She hanged herself
She was depressed and lay on the floor where her picture was taken
Her medicines were kept from her so she could not suicide
She assured everyone she was angry, but just fine
She was eventually tased and died during an epileptic seizure
She hanged herself depressed over the death of a baby
She was a bad driver and that came back to haunt her
She hanged herself while being elated over a new job/life
She was calm on the phone, that can be a sign
She could not access her medicines and could not suicide
She was duplicitous in her intake forms
She was just fine and she hanged herself
She replaced the reciever and was depressed
She didn't know one could be too black and too high in an orange jumper
She was depressed and looked at the bag…
She looked at the bag and needed medicines but didn't want to bother anyone
She went into withdrawl as the depression returned and she touched the bag, replaced the reciever and
She didn't bother anyone as she hanged herself
She hung from her own history while being tased on the floor and remembering the baby…

Crypto-Lasterism

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 06:33:00 +0000

It's not the Jews, it's the Tzionists.

It's not the Tzionists, it's the Israelis.

It's not the Israelis, it's the bankers,

…the jewlers

…the communists,

…the owners,

…the rabbis,

…the unionists o/

…the Stalinists,

…the comics,

…the poets,

…the lawyers

It's the Jews.

Mood: Sirens
Music: Sirens

Homeland

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:44:00 +0000

The dead are not absent, they are invisible.
-St. Augustine
That place where fingertips find secret routes
Streets so ancient, no name but their use
People composed of blood and dust, soldered by fire
There is no measurement of degrees which define the pear tree and the child
The moon watched occupants, travelers, visitors, guests come and go in human tides
The earth held each footprint for so brief a time
You build a wall, encircled with spears of fire

You don't realise there is no homeland
The pear tree and child turn to dust

You don't realise there is no homeland
The moon watches occupants, travelers, visitors, guests…

You don't realise there is no homeland

You don't realise there is no homeland

You don't realise

Come Walk In the Bazzar!

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 04:49:00 +0000

Teary eyes and stormy life are not enough
Even the accusation of a secret love is not enough
Come, walk today in public wearing your shackles
Hands thus adorned, walk in trance-dance
Walk with dust over head and blood on attire
Come, walk to the beloved city, everyone is waiting-
the town ruler and the common spectators;
the arrow and the stone of accusation too
along with the sorrowful morning and the day of failure.
Who will be their ally, if not us?
In the beloved city who remains unsullied?
No one worthy of the hand of executioner remains.
Behold your heartbeats, come even the broken hearted
Friends, come lets us go and be slain!

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

translation: Ghazala's Weblog

AjamiProject | Mohamad al-Ajamí, en El Pais

Qatar

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:16:00 +0000

I am a crime (Poet)
A flower is a revolution (Jasmine)
A toy is a talking point (PlayStation)
The UN is a veil (Climate)
A defense is a sentence (Life)
An human is a frightened monster (Emir)

Qatar.

AjamiProject | Mohamad al-Ajamí, en El Pais

Trayvon & George

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:46:00 +0000

Trayon Martin's and George Zimmerman's tragic timeline.

Those are the basics. The picture is one of racism, hyper-vigilance to the point of pathology, a shady investigative officer, suspicious back stories from both families, questionable gun liscensing laws and an amazing number of witnesses on point with the same story.

I don't know if Trayvon or George lived in the much refered gated community. What I do know is locking folks in/out of the normal transparency of the sort of society we like to believe we live only exacerbates social diseases, even if it seems to treat symptoms.

George Zimmerman was a virtual control panel of warning signals: carrying a loaded weapon on patrols, paranoia, concern from the gated community members; harrassing the local police. Yet none of this, specifically to the police department which must have been privy to all this information, suggested a mandatoury out-patient evaluation or review of weapon's licensce.

And now we, the indignant, righteous, mortified and emotionally destroyed by this death. I'm guessing it was worse for Trayvon and continues to be so for his family and friends, so please have some personal dignity and self-respect.

Certainly a near second is the destruction upon and within the Zimmerman family. Perhaps they are the terrible people everyone wants them to be. They are still people.

We all become the terrible people when we allow ourselves to be so easily enraged beyond our own self control (like George Zimmerman), react in cliquish and calculated manners (like the suspicious investigating officer or gated community members) and use any ghastly act as an excuse to refrain from justice and plunge right into the universe of what feels right. That would be the mob. The Klan, the Farakhanites or some liberal white pundit offering that this has finally made him reconsider the death penalty.

Really? So the afro-dominicano who tried to mug me entitles me to some harsh justice and a new opinion on spics? If that sounds right consider your position on Madoff, President Drone, Hillary2016, Rubio2016, random Libertariaans, Communists, Green, Gay, pornstar, -2016'er, housewife, stay-at-home dad, union organizer… and how that might extrapolate.

Does Tim McVey authorise a general fear and loathing of white men? Veterans? Christians? Just curious.

Trayvon has already done his suffering. His family will spend the rest of their lives gingerly treading in concentric circles of increasingly less distance. The Zimmerman family will spend a lifetime attempting to move in greater distance from these events. A new crop of victim advocates, pundits and reality TV regulars will haunt the rest of us.

The lack of real discussion on the substantive legal and ethical social aspects tells me the suspicious cop and gated bon vivants and city government will recline into the comfy armchair of repeated history. A confederacy of pretenders to some real emotion, intelligence and civil participation will insure that we build a statue, write a song played at Occupy encampments the world over, and redeam the KONY2012 dude for the purpose of making a three-hankie film about lives which did tragically intersect, but otherwise never existed to us.

And this is what the government, the gated community, the enforcers, the criminals, the professional mourners, spokespeople, agitators and preditors of all ilks desire: status quo.

Related
US Secret Team Sport

Revised 20150417

Majmoud Feinberg

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Fri, 20 May 2011 03:25:00 +0000

The photographer, Majmoud Feinberg aims his camera
like a weapon. He explored shots from different angles. He
had never been able to do more than flirt with sides, never
able to make a choice. Not one family over the other, one
army, one politics. He could never marry; he shuddered at
the thought of disappointing one entire tribe over the other,
or worse both? Majmoud Feinberg swayed with whomever
was the underdog of the day.

It was his Jewish sensibilities for tikkun as well as the
identification as a Palestinian Arab that any small grievance
was an umbridge for life.

His endless, vibrant inner debate was suddenly jarred as he
saw them. All the beauty and horror of every moment of his
indicissive life. Stength against stubborness. Silence against
the terrible noise that left everyone still for three seconds
no matter how many times heard.

He wanted to shoot them with more than film. He wanted
to wipe them off the earth before there were any more like
them or worse, in combination. But who would he shoot
first? Which of his lives would he disrespect first even in
this act?

He hated them. He wanted to scream, "You fucking
Cananites, go drink gaza sea and die!"

There was so much he wanted out of life. Though he
realized the real enemy kept him a wage slave, an
outcast, a mere cog in a burning wheel in a land more his
than to most; that all paled in the torment of his own
existance.

And now their existance mimicked his own. He thought of
his Nablisi grandmother and he wild stories of snakes. His
third eye saw the two entwined: black the new pink; pink
the new black.

Suddenly they were at an angle without facial features.
Manqué images of the existential parody brought to his life
by the IZC and Esso. Two more faceless, nameless
representations of just how corrupt and dangerously petty
this world.

He snapped. He made a silent prayer that they were each
the last of their respective tribe; that they would both
disappear into the image. Incognito invisibles whose bodies
were the only currency of this struggle.

They were his mother and father. They were _every_ mother
and father, and he despised them for the world they
wouldn't stop remaking for their children. He despised their
hate and their inevitable love.

He despised them even more than he did himself. He
would carry a wallet sized print of their shell-image the rest
of his life.

Wolf Moon

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:39:00 +0000

You howled from the sky
and every crazy person answered your call

You crept behind above me
watching all the life passing like ancient machines
Watching every soul on his way

i once believed you were only mine
but nothing really belongs to anyone

Running to catch a train to a cold supper;
Or a hidden awning at St. Ignatious, where by even
yourlight is dangerous to read Genet or Jesus

You are mindful of our simple pleasures
Forgetful of the long sun.

I've been with you on snow so cold it was ice
and on sand radiating head even in the midnight
Those walks we took, best nights of my life

TAGS: Everyone

Be My Knife

noreply@blogger.com (lablu∞z) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0000

Tina Fey's husband talks about her facial scar
Mon Dec 1, 7:10 AM PST/AP

Tina Fey's husband is talking about something
the "30 Rock" actress would rather not discuss:
the scar on her left cheek.

In an interview in Vanity Fair, Jeff Richmond
says a stranger slashed Fey's face when she
was 5 years old. He says the incident occurred
in the front yard of her house.

Says Richmond: "That scar was fascinating to
me. This is somebody who, no matter what it
was, has gone through something. And I think
it really informs the way she thinks about her
life."

Fey says talking about the attack would seem
like exploiting it.

Says Fey: "It's really almost like I'm able to
forget about it, until I was on-camera, and it
became a thing of `Oh, I guess we should use
this side' or whatever. Everybody's got a
better side."

___

"30 Rock" airs on NBC, which is owned by
General Electric Co.

TAGS: Only Friends