Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Monday 25 June 2018

school's out in the city of the dead | smoov (where intimacy means a desert raked by heartless winds) | executive fiat

.
Life in the city of the dead. ( Cairo ) | by José Luis Cosme Giral

Silver Lake | by ADMurr

Silver Lake: photo by Andrew Murr, 24 April 2018
smoov

Haze. Three student violinists boarding a bus. A clatter of jackhammers. To go to Lvov. Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew... At first, I didn't notice. What a noise the weddings made. Each station that we stopped at, on motorcycles, up the road, they came: small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys Singing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu. The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the - How do you like to go up in a swing? - Up in the air so blue. Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, and here on earth come emulating flies. In winter I get up at night and dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. Now the rich cherry, whose sleek wood, and top with silver petals traced the thick-walled room’s cave-darkness, cool in summer, soothes, down valley a smoke haze. Three days heat, after five days rain. The first lily of June opens its red mouth all over the sand road where we walk. In those days I thought their endless thrum was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights. Child one with the Colorado turns, Kyoto in a shower, mist in the pines so thick the crows' delight. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made. The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day. The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play. The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly. I once hit clothespins for the Chicago Cubs. The game of baseball is not a metaphor and I know it’s not really life. Adrift in the liberating, late light of August, delicate, frivolous fires, always fires after midnight, the sun depending in the purple birches. Sometimes I wish I were still out on the back porch, drinking jet fuel. Ye living lamps, by whose dear light the nightingale does sit so late, last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart. Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and with this rain I am satisfied we will be together in the spring. Seeds of water on my window glass. We had two gardens. A real flower garden, Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. He likes nothing better than to put on. I couldn't have waited. By the time you return it would have rotted on the vine. I leave the formal garden of schedules where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs, sleepy and suburban at dusk, I learn again the yard’s wherever I see two women crowned, constellated friends a tulip just opened, had offered to hold. A butterfly, gaudy and gay; the children are hiding among the raspberry canes. They look big to one another, the garden small. A second crop of hay lies cut and turned. Five gleaming crows late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week. The blackberries would ripen. Spun silk of mercy,  long-limbed afternoon like words put to a song, the bunched tobacco leaves are strung along a stick, the women... Why were you born when the snow was falling? You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling.

Stewart Island. | by bobsan88
 
Stewart Island: photo by bobsan88, 12 March 2018

The consecration of spring...   ( Navarra ) | by José Luis Cosme Giral

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April. | by GC_Dean

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April: photo by Dean Terasaki, 22 April 2018

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April. | by GC_Dean

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April: photo by Dean Terasaki, 22 April 2018

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April. | by GC_Dean

Shiprock, New Mexico - one early morning last April: photo by Dean Terasaki, 22 April 2018

heartless winds | by gato-gato-gato

heartless winds | Zurich [Oberstrasse, Zurich, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland]: photo by gato-gato-gato, 18 March 2018

heartless winds | by gato-gato-gato

heartless winds | Zurich [Oberstrasse, Zurich, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland]: photo by gato-gato-gato, 18 March 2018

heartless winds | by gato-gato-gato

heartless winds | Zurich [Oberstrasse, Zurich, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland]: photo by gato-gato-gato, 18 March 2018

The smile.   ( Alexandria ) 2002 | by José Luis Cosme Giral


An inmate sits in the yard of a cellblock which mainly houses prisoners with cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, and dementia, at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, California Photo @lucynicholson: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 24 June 2018

By executive fiat I Lord Tinyhands Th'Emp declare that we must immediately jump off this cliff dispense with the infuriating clutter of laws and courts and make My Tweets the Law of the Land becuase We wants Safety!!

  

They ran for their lives. Trump: “Bring them back where they came from.”: image via The Hoarse Whisperer @HoarseWhisperer, 24 June 2018 

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...


#Kenya Flamingoes are seen at Lake Amboseli from a spotter plane overhead during a trial run for an aerial animal census at the Amboseli National Park Photo @tkarumba: image via Frédériique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, , 24 June 2018


#India Fishermen return with their catch after a 61-day fishing ban on the east coast of India. Authorities had imposed a 61-day ban on fishing by mechanised vessels to protect marine life Photo @ArunsankarKrish #AFP: image via Frédériique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, , 24 June 2018


GAZA STRIP - Relatives mourn during the funeral of Palestinian who died of wounds he sustained after he was shot by Israeli troops during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border, in Khan Yunis Photo @saidkhatib #AFP: image via Frédériique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, , 24 June 2018


#Iraq An Iraqi Kurdish farmer works in a field as he harvests wheat in the Qandil Mountains Photo @safinphoto #AFP
: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, , 24 June 2018


#Afghanistan An Afghan wheat farmer works during harvest season on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. @Farshadusyan #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 24 June 2018

XYMPHORA: Sunday, June 24, 2018: Atrocity porn


"Atrocity Porn And Hitler Memes Target Trump For Regime Change" (Jatras).  The context is always this self-satisfied but completely selfish certainty of Americans that they are personally good, well-meaning people, mis-led and misled by monsters, who they are unable to prevent from doing these terrible things.  The weirdness of American politics includes the fact that Trump himself thinks he is acting as a humanitarian, doing exactly what Barry did but publicizing it in order to dissuade families from Central America - who, in a particularly backwards form of racism, are regarded as extremely family oriented, the kind of people who would be appalled to see their children cry or be frightened - from making the journey to the United States (this is part of the general right-wing certainty that immigrants come solely for the gibs offered by Americans, and not out of a necessity caused by American atrocities in Central America).  Americans all secretly know that Trump's plan requires publicity, so the Democrats can pander to their 'base' while assisting Trump in making the US look like an undesirable place to be for immigrants (of course, the other factor is the prominent idea of Democrat officials that all these people, or at least their future children, will be permanent Democrat voters, a certainty which seems misplaced).
 

There is a 'debate' amongst economists whether limitless illegal immigration is bad for the people living in the receiving country, but the fact that the standard old-fashioned Republicans, and their CEO supporters/'donors', are completely in agreement with the odd American system of intentionally encouraging mass breaching of American laws, should be enough indication from the people who would know that a huge undocumented underclass suppresses wages of the lower 50% of the population, whatever other positive effects it might have.
 

The other issue is that it cannot be healthy, from a general political/legal point of view, to countenance a mass breaching of the laws of a country (the big undocumented underclass is specifically intended to allow for exploitation).  Eventually, just to maintain the integrity of the legal system, you have to keep them out, or formalize their relationship to the country.
 

It is striking how much now turns on the abuse of atrocity porn - shockingly usually very misleading or even fraudulent - by the (((media))) to manipulate voters to make bad decisions about things like immigration or wars.  It is an American thing, mostly, because of the aforementioned bad faith of Americans in considering their own mythological goodness. 


#Colombia Young dancers perform, during the XII International Tango Festival at the Botero Square in Medellin, Photo @joakosarmiento #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, , 24 June 2018

The consecration of spring... 2  ( Navarra ) | by José Luis Cosme Giral

Near Grand Avenue | by GC_Dean

Near Grand Avenue | Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 14 March 2018

Near Grand Avenue | by GC_Dean

Near Grand Avenue | Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 14 March 2018

Near Grand Avenue | by GC_Dean

Near Grand Avenue | Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 14 March 2018