POLITICS, POETRY & SATIRE
You market racism
inbuilt in capitalism
you sell division
you hawk your tools
so i can on-sell
fear’s smell
complicit with
your smug, private
accumulation
stolen nations
down the multi-level
marketing pyramid
intimate and bigoted
this colonial poison
mass death enjoyment
this ponzi scheme
which only benefits you
i refuse to shill
your septic poo
drowning the planet
in trickling inequality
your squalid legacy
and strategy.
Jinjirrie,
May 2016
#ErdoganInsultoftheDay :
The US loves Nutanyahoo more than you,
an extra-special relationship despite all you do,
so you’ll have to settle for second-best Merkel
and throwing your detractors into prison hell.
Ludicrously, Germany retains an archaic law criminalising insults against foreign leaders which has enabled the litigious Erdogan to prosecute a German comedian who devised a satirical poem to test the limit of the German law. Eager to placate Turkey in order that it assist staunching the flow of refugees into Germany, Merkel has invoked this farcical anti-democratic law.
Whilst the poem may be very insulting indeed, political leaders getting their knickers in a knot over insults to the extent of imprisoning and prosecuting their lampooners is both sinister and side-splitting. Copping insults on the chin is obligatory for politicians who don’t wish to become global laughing stocks.
‘Among other things, the poem said Erdogan kicks Kurds, smacks Christians, all while watching child pornography. That’s one of the few lines we can repeat on NPR. It also imagines the Turkish president committing acts of bestiality.’
‘Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday authorised a Turkish demand for a German TV comedian to be prosecuted over a crude satirical poem about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a bitter row over free speech.’
‘Since becoming President in August 2014, Mr Erdogan has filed 1,845 court cases against individuals for insulting him.’
So sue me, Turdogan,
I’ll donate scatological verbosity
and poke fun at your litigious pomposity!
It’s not that one has been forced to silence, rather that words have tumbled elsewhere than this blog for a while. Here’s a good excuse to restart this blog – commenting on the imprisonment of Palestinian poet, Ashraf Fayadh, jailed for “apostasy” for eight years and 800 lashes, his beheading sentence commuted by the vicious, tyrannical Saudi oilagarchy, best mates of the US empire and Israel, connivers in the oppression of the region and in particular, occupied Palestinians.
Mulch the Saudi princes,
jumped up hereditary popinjays
presiding over the ineffable infinite
as if they know it all by divine right
and can take it with them.
May the Saudi princes,
enemies of poets and truth
be deposed and decomposed,
words choking their greedy mouths.
Jinjirrie, March 2014
From Ashraf’s latest poem, written since he was jailed.
“I saw my father for the last time through thick glass,
then he departed, for good.
Because of me, let’s say.
Let us say because he could not bear the thought
I’d die before him.
My father died and left death besieging me
without it frightening me sufficiently.
Why does death scare us to death?
My father departed after a long time
spent on the surface of this planet.
I didn’t say farewell as I should have
nor grieve for him as I should have
and was incapable of tears,
as is my habit, which grows uglier as time passes.
The soldiers besiege me from all fronts
in their uniforms of poor color,
laws and regimes and statutes besiege me.
Sovereignty besieges me;
its highly concentrated instinct
cannot be shaken by living creatures.
My loneliness besieges me,
my loneliness suffocates me,
I am choked by depression, nervousness, and worry,
remorse, that I’m a member of the human race,
kills me.”
………………………………………..
For Fayadh from Gaza, Haidar Eid performs “Thirsty for Freedom,” adapted from a poem by the late legendary Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm.
………………………………………..
‘There are two ways opposite to each other, one leading to the house of freedom, the other to the house of slavery. Lead the people on the road that goes through courage and harmony; avoid that which leads through strife and ruin.’
Delphic Oracle (circa 7-9C BC)
………………………………………..
How many couplets do you recognise?
How many of these poets were oppressed for their visions and lived in squalid unhappiness?
Don’t wait till they are dead or imprisoned, treasure your local poets today!
………………………………………
Here’s another in the Unoriginal Patriarchy series, which commenced with Sol Invictus.
thorned on cross
cock no more crows
triumphant,
yet salutes her
mourning below.
while lambs vie,
coquetting with lions
on foreign barricades
medusa snakes writhe
disapproval
in mother’s grimace.
kill it, kill her now
recruit sisters,
initiate daughters
kill them too –
kill them all,
in bloodwash
this whiteness, this whiteness
eternal redemption,
supremacy,
damnation.
Jinjirrie, January 2016.
‘The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.’
– bell hooks, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, 2004
light the good fires
along the hills
edges dissolve
you’re almost in reach
talk with me again
remind of the nearness
of all things
angels cavort
on the end of a pin
forever mirrored
in your dead eyes
waiting, waiting
waiting, waiting
for here within
i see you then
another year circled
squared and slaughtered
exult round the stones
before the cold
bites our bones
October 31, 2015
