al jazeera report on Sri Lanka after the war

The part where the government denies the truth of the released video showing SLA soldiers assassinating prisoners is preposterous to the point of being ridiculous. Is the government so delusional and self-assured in its authority as to think that a slide-show showing the postmortem twitch of a dead man’s leg will refute claims to its authenticity? The stickers on the wall of the press-conference room drive home the point. Against a picture of the USMC war memorial (which was itself based on the famous US photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima in WWII), in which the Sri Lankan flag has been photoshopped over the US flag, are the chilling words, “It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.” The message is clear: the truth lies on the side of those with the biggest guns.

a new resolve

Burned the old books
and big words
between.

I saw you at the market,
weighing an eggplant
in one hand.

I can talk to you now
without poetry
between.

numberless (18/04/2009)

Outside: the wet spring light,
evening and the garage doors open
swung like mouths agape
to ingest the cars and a day’s work
in a practiced frenzy
of retirement.
Gutters swell and shudder their moorings
with winter’s clean fat;
the sky pales and sifts the streets
for that one set of eyes
to stall it in its tracks.

Inside: arrives home with weary bone
doesn’t talk
evening news
beer in hand
another day buzzed slowly from the face
and conquered in sleep.

when the brain flaps open and begins to turn

bar stool.
another white elephant.
considering drink, there is only the bottom of a glass.
another white elephant.
bits of her hair stick to his clothes; static. etc.
the force between innumerable things.
pores clog when there is too much water in the air.
water in the eyes. he does not believe in the gaze.
a small victory.
she says, “I have been taking photographs…”
inaffection. there is no force. a small victory.
driving home, there is the radio.
there are no bar stools at home – why not?
renovation. the house has to be rebuilt.
paint peels under nails. he does not know foundation.
at the bottom of a glass. there is a fly.
a small
victory.

cud

Another way is to skim surfaces,
         tread so light
                  over monetary incarnations
that
like a waterbug glee-skipping
limbs caress the tension of ponds,

refuse to submerge even semblances
to that blind suck.

renounce; reveal; rejoice!

Hold all exclamation
         to the white singe
                  of an escaped spoke,
the bronzed slit of a halved
         circumference
known to itself at dawn –-
Who said it?                         soleil cou coupé

There can be no compromise.

If stakes must be drawn
plunge them into hearts and
                  tether the harness
         with a growing vine,
so that ground and rope be living
and in times of rest go slack
                  to accommodate
         the green graze.
Learn at last this widening pasture.

here

all conflict arises from an unequal distribution of knowledge. two people subjected to the same series of raw experience can have no difference of mind. but this is impossible – what appears to us appears only to us, even when that appearance belongs to the same thing. since this ideal of unison is impossible, how to level the playing field? – from the systematic negation of knowledge, which is not the same as the absence of knowledge. to unlearn, to untie. and to learn only this undoing, to live in the space between walls.

and you said, “embrace sentences it find nothing into look and to themselves its.”

retrospect

forget the new space
your mother made
in her coat,
to shield you from the rain -
the only umbrellas
were in your looking back.
plot your trajectories
with a paper bag on your head,
to keep away the flies.
use the time before departure
to depart,
keep them guessing your
modus operandi;
plan dinners
with a provisional space
at the table,
in case you return.
but you will not.
you have lost the way back
like you lost the lottery:
with a shrug against the odds.

flexions

“Tecum habita et noris, quam sit tibi curta supellex”

Dwell in your own home, and you will see how simply it is furnished.

- Persius, Satires

At first the blood curdles at the thought: another night spent in its own company, listening to its own despised rhythms, its ordered cacophony of branches twining about the vessel, the fistclench at its center throbbing throbbing throbbing towards its own music. But here the vaults are empty, immediate, a few wooden pews brushed into clean corners, cut stone staring with the intensity of slit stems, Lilly or Carnation or Anthurium. There is only the smell of bone, the dust inside a heavy skull or an arched rib. No stained glass. Echoes. A dwelling. For you and not for you, but you are nevertheless here, and you must make the best of it. You don’t know who said that. I am here.

Strip strip strip. Do away with lace and window blinds and blind cockroaches – no extraneous material here, no hunched forms and quiet needlework, no invisible brush strokes and meticulous Thursday afternoons. We will roll these things into a ball, lint-ball huddled in the eye of a belly-button, scooped out with unwashed nails, ingested outside, amongst all the things that are weaker than you. Inside. Out. Pick up the draw-strings, they are being pulled as you speak, five-hundred bald stenographers palpitating and sweating, pushing out excremental passions as you speak the last things that are holy for you. Give this up also. Cut and scoop. Roll. Inside.

The last room. The last last room. I am here. There is nothing here. Cut. Do not paste.

neruda spoke to me when i was feeling down

Repertoire

I will find someone for you to love
before you stop being a child -
then it will be your turn to open the box
and swallow your own sufferings.

I have at my command
queen bees in boxes
and you’ll see how, one by one,
they smooth out the honey,
dressing up as apples,
climbing the cherry trees,
quivering in the smoke.

For you I’m keeping these wild loves
who will weave the spring,
who are strangers to weeping.

Hide yourself in the clock
in the belfry while the pass,
girls as bright as amaranth,
the last girls of the snow,
the lost ones, the lucky ones,
the ones crowned in yellow,
the infinitely mysterious;
and some, gentle and loving,
will perform their limpid dance,
while others pass on fire,
swift as meteors.

Tell me which ones you want for now;
later is too late.

Today you believe what I’m telling you.

Tomorrow you’ll be contradicting the light.

I am one who keeps turning out dreams,
and in my house of feather and stone,
with a knife and a watch,
I cut up clouds and waves,
and with all these elements
I shape my own handwriting;
and I make these beings grow quietly
who could not have been born till now.

What I want is for them to love you
and for you to know nothing of death.

(translated by Alistair Reid)

i am so very glad the air show is over

what an absolute mess that was. even the aviation enthusiasts had to agree that there is very little romance and beauty in a modified P-51 Mustang flying over a downtown playground while the children screamed, sobbed and ran for cover. here’s a cartoon that says pretty much what I think:

(pictures for sad children)