Thursday 29 November 2012

haiku




in bethlehem 

a boy lights a candle 

of peace




Translations of Bethlehem

Arabic: house of meat  /  Hebrew: house of bread




Meeting the Meteorites


The  other day I went to the museum to meet the meteorites. 
I wanted to meet them close-up. 
They opened my eyes to the world situation. 
How precarious it is. 


There were pictures and paintings from the days before digital cameras.
Artists drew what they'd seen.
Falling stars in the skies over their heads.
And not so long ago.


We'd do well to remember their speed of approach.
Maybe twenty miles  in a second.
And the force of this impact.
How petty our leaders constantly squabbling.


They are made out of stone
They are made out of iron.


Cut them open and see.


Imagine one hurtling into your town.


How petty our leaders constantly squabbling.


Over  40,000 tons from Space every year.


Monday 26 November 2012

THREE KINGS




three penniless
kings 
with no light 

from 
star 

they 
roam through 
the subway 

under a mantle 
of fog

settled down 

over a town
of hot chestnuts 

and 
punch  

and
the glare 
of 
pre-
christmas shops

hand-me-down 
gents 

three kings 
of the road

now out 
of the cold 

now down
below 

to share
out 
the bottle 

of Stroh*   

and 
pass judgement 

upon their 
new 
coats

the 
depths 

of 
their 
pockets 

the 
lengths 

of 
the 
sleeves 



*Stroh 
a brand of rum popular in Austria

Sunday 25 November 2012

haikuniverse I





There's no Up or Down 

Everything is All Around

"Good Heavens Above!"


Friday 23 November 2012

A Mystery: Who passed this way?


At first glance the footprints or handprints (below) resemble a pair of tossed away industrial gloves. In fact, now I come to think of it they look like my old gardening gloves.

The prints are over 250,000,000 years old. They were laid down before the time of the Permina-Triassic mass extinction when, according to some experts, 90% of life on Earth perished due to a collision between Earth and an extra-terrestrial object. 

The accepted theory is that primates have existed on Earth for only 50,000,000 years. So we have to ask: What manner of creature was responsible for these strangely familiar prints if there were no primates around to make them? 

The sandstone slab on which the prints appear is evidence of the great drought on the supercontinent of Pangäa more 200,000,000 years before the first primate is supposed to have appeared. 

And so here* in pictures we have clues to a great mystery. 

And HERE are my primary suspects. 

>250,000,000 year sandstone

Left hand or foot 


Right hand or foot

Who passed this way? 


*Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria.

Lonesome George gone forever?


 MUSEUM PIECE


"Lonesome George the late reptile prince of the Galapagos Islands may be dead."  - initial AP report / Lima, Peru (24th June).

Reports say that Lonesome George was aged 100 years when he died; not all that old for a giant tortoise. One individual reached 170 years in captivity.

George was the last of his line. Scientists plan to revive the line by cross-breeding other sub-species. This could take between 100 and 150 years.

It is with a heavy heart that I note the extinction of the late reptile prince sub-species and other similar extinctions caused by man's incessant blundering. But what can I say or do about this tragedy or any other?

When so-called civilized men first discovered the Galapagos they found individual tortoises weighing as much as 4 men, more than 300 kg; when these giants were killed they were left to rot on the beaches, being too heavy to lift into rowing boats.

And 200 tortoises were killed in a single day. Tortoise steaks were on the menu.

At one time there were 300,000 tortoises living in the Galapagos Islands. Today the total may be just 10% of that number.

And so to this.


Wednesday 21 November 2012

OLD WOOD


GEIST FORMT MATERIE 

THE OLD WOOD . . . 

Old Wood 

is not
dead
wood

this timber piled 
is a world of  
beetles and bats

all with
a place
to hang out 

for the old wood's left 
to crack and snap 
and break apart 

by sun and moon 
and stars 
we imagine

what will be beyond 
the ant 
the beetle

the ivy creeper 
is the unseen world
the parallel world

 the unknown 
world
where a pattern 

calls
out 
go down


. . .  AND THE IDEA OF NEW


Morning in the Old Folks Home


One spinster 
strapped to her wheelchair
lightly sucks juice 

from a beaker
at breakfast 


and lies on a mat 

on the floor 
of her room
in the night. 


Was there 
an earthquake last night? 

she suddenly asks.


It's a spiritual dream 
 she has had

I say to the girl 
now opening 
her egg.



Monday 19 November 2012

Something fishy at Fukushima


   ". . . 40% of children have thyroid abnormalities which is exceedingly rare . . . are showing symptoms and signs . . . showing that they had received a higher dose . . . than children at Chernobyl . . . and . . . children in school and in kindergarten are being fed radioactive food . . . mushrooms, spinach, rice, tea, fish . . . they say it will take 40 years to clean it up but the truth is they will never clean it up . .  . cesium137 lasts for 300 years" - Dr Helen Caldicott


Germany's ZDF TV* channel reports today on YouTube that 18months after the meltdowns at Fukushima 42% of 57,000 Fukushima children tested have been found to have thyroid problems.

The ZDF report also reveals that the official radiation measuring stations situated in public spaces throughout the area where these children live and go to school are currently giving radiation readings 5 times lower than readings obtained at the same locations by independent researchers.

At a recent meeting of experts when the shocking figures were released not one expert present in the room was moved to say or ask what the cause of the problem might be.

When a senior official was questioned by the ZDF reporter the official theorized that the children had consumed contaminated fish or iodine.

42% of 57,000 = 23,940.

Poor kids.

A NON-NUCLEAR ITALIAN


*Video not available in English translation at time of writing.

News Latest 22 Nov 2012:
Tepco's much heralded brand new radiation-proof robot has now made its premier appearance. It seized up almost immediately and had to be carried out of the plant. Meanwhile, still in Japan, a wild boar with 33,000 bq/kg of cesium in its body has turned up. This is a record amount of radiation for an animal.

Sunday 18 November 2012

Flea Market Books








Together they cost €2. Their combined worth is priceless. They contain wisdom, learning. Books well chosen provide clues to help the reader understand this fleck in the universe known here as Earth.

Today the morning paper informs me that a newly discovered galaxy 13.3 billion light years from my location has been noted.

MACS0647-JD is not the name I would have chosen for the newly discovered galaxy. But then again I wouldn't have named our own particular spiral The Milky Way.

The Earth is sick. Physically sick. This speck and we who dwell in it, gorging ourselves like parasites in a sick dog are in our turn sickening.

The noble geniuses and the gentle peacemakers deigning to live amongst us strive as best they can to rise above the parasitic banquet. Their outpourings are the outpourings of dreamers and kranks. They are the required amusing distraction. The necessary evil.




sick dogs

nosing in the faeces

sore it goes








Saturday 17 November 2012

oh sweet obligato!



harmony
 of brooded
stillness

follower of cacophony
 and the whirl
of destiny

(illusion
 in the unified
movement)

of the dans macabre 
 of the waltz
grotesque

(the driving
 pace
eccentric and distorting)

flying
 out of orbit
tumbling into chaos

fragments
 glimpsed
as work in progress



Monday 5 November 2012

GREEN PERIOD


!
Time's messenger 
stands at the door 
in his cloak 
and hurrying to Pablo I split   

 Women with rosy cheeked apples 

it down hair fine 
to so many mins 
and so many secs
to cover my sheets regardless of size

at naked lunches on lawns 

like his 
with my verses 
Pab's knife's in a frenzy  
of forming and fashioning  

in wicker chairs sensual

forcing his eros 
out of his oils 
and into the world 
by day and by night 

fondly stroking their cats

releasing his potent 
exclaimer

!

OBAMA OR THE HANDSOME GUY?

     
    Here, in pictures (incidentally I took these photos at the Israeli pavilion during a recent visit to the Venice Biennale) are four major issues which could influence the way the electorate will vote; any one of these issues could tip the balance in tomorrow's US elections, you would think.

   Oil is at the top. Without oil the US and the US military cannot function. That's just the way it is.  This helps to explain the quote (third picture down) by a former US Secretary of State, the late Alexander Haig and his words in their turn reveal to us the reason why the USA is and must continue to be Israel's no.1 friend: "Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk."

   And, as we all know, Israel is near the oil. 

   On my radio today I heard a seemingly intelligent woman say that she was going to vote for the other guy because he was handsome without being overly good-looking. She claimed that many middle-aged women would be following her example. 

  On the TV yesterday I saw several men, among them a prominent Republican bulldog, saying they would be voting for the incumbent because of his quick and decisive  response to the Hurricane Sandy disaster. People still remember George W Bush's almost abysmal response when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.  

   And finally there's the economy. One taxi driver in Chicago said the economy was "now on the up". If that's true we can only hope that the American people make the right decision and don't throw their money away on another war anytime soon. There is much that needs to be done. The American infrastructure needs overhauling; the electricity grid needs modernizing; the prison population needs reducing; more needs to be spent on education, health, housing and other basic needs. The Patriot Act needs to be scrapped. Even the voting system itself is not of the required standard. 

  Americans need to have their old freedoms returned to them.  Only then can they preach to rest of us. 

  To my American readers I send my best wishes. May it go well at the ballot box.

OIL

MILITARY

ISRAEL

ECONOMY

Sunday 4 November 2012

OF HISTORICAL CORRELATIONS & ZEITGEIST


The
visitor-friendly
museum 
with a permanent exhibition
of
historical correlations
elaborately
put
on display

* * *

The
visitor-friendly
museum 
with a permanent exhibition 
of
historical correlations 
elaborately
put on display 
and
temporary
exhibitions 
acknowledging moral courage

* * * * *

The
museum 
with the permanent exhibition
of
Historical Correlations 
on
display

*

The 
museum 
is 
closed
until 
further notice 

_____________


Antipoems


At Jim Murdoch's excellent blog The Truth About Lies there's an ongoing discussion under the title Am I an antipoet?

I thought I'd try for an antipoem. To tell you the truth I don't know if the anti-sonnet below is an anti-poem or not! What is an antipoem anyway? As near as I can figure it James Joyce's Finnegans Wake could be the finest example of an antipome.

Here's mine. Maybe after all is said and done it's a kind of anti-antipoem. In other words simply a poem.


Cats and poems have 9 lives


This early morning
sounds now
with quick bleats
from an unseen cat
high in a pine
all long night
it is this lost silence
as it was
when the lamp buzzed
outside the window
and went out
and there was a cough
like somebody passing
and the cat is still where it was



Saturday 3 November 2012

THE VIENNESE DEATH INDUSTRY


During a recent visit to Vienna's largest graveyard - the Zentralfriedhof - I was struck by the large number of headstones casually marked with a small cross made with, I think, red wax crayon:

X

I was informed that these were 'forgotten' and neglected graves and that many of them were to be emptied of their contents.

The vacated plots were then to be sold-on to their next occupants. The inscribed headstones of the 'forgotten' would be taken away to be 'recycled'.

Clearly the hopeful phrase carved everywhere in stone - Rest in Peace - is not for eternity when it comes to Zentralfriedhof economics.

It's the same story in almost all Vienna's public graveyards, I was told.

It's a curious fact that most of the marble used in Vienna's graveyards these days is imported from India. Traditional Italian marble is proving hard to source, and the little there may be is too expensive for Viennese pockets. Hence the recycling scheme.

Death in Vienna is undoubtedly a growth industry.

My father's ashes were scattered without ceremony beneath an old oak tree in England and that is good.


In the Zentralfriedhof 

Gold has fallen 
from those trees
their bones now black and bare  

Frost has grown 
upon these leaves 
it covers them with care

The earth is hard 
and pale with frost 
it is a winter's tale

Upon her stone 
more leaves in line  
in goldness fading pale

_________________

a poem for those no longer resting in peace


Thursday 1 November 2012

ANOTHER PULL ON THE OARS


The evening breeze
and the reeds 
rustle.

The snake swims
in the skin 
of the water

It vanishes into the reeds.

I face away
from a place 
that is always before me.


A SHORT POEM



The short poems 


may be 
of gods 

the you-kneel
-verse 
and every-think. 

They'll
need more time
than space.