Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: Hawa Dolo

bit old, but one of my fav albums, "In the Heart of the Moon"

Impossibly beautiful songs.

Corner: Ralph Pomeroy

                             (photo from series entitled, "Brooklyn Gang", by Bruce Davidson)

Corner

by Ralph Pomeroy

The cop slumps alertly at his motorcycle,
supported by one leg like a leather stork.
His glance accuses me of loitering.
I can see his eyes moving like a fish
in the green depths of his green goggles.

His ease is fake. I can tell.
My ease is fake. And he can tell.
The fingers armoured by his gloves
Splay and clench, itching to change something.
As if he were my enemy or my death,
I just stand there watching.

I spit out my gum which has gone stale.
I knock out my new cigarette --
Which is my bravery.
It is all imperceptible:
The way I shift my weight,
The way he creaks in the saddle.

The traffic is specific though constant.
The sun surrounds me, divides the street between us.
His crash helmet is whiter in the shade.
It is like a bullring as they say it is just before the fighting.
I cannot back down. I am there.

Everything holds me back.
I am in danger of disappearing into the sunny dust,
My levis bake and my T-shirt sweats.

My cigarette makes my eyes burn.
But I don't dare drop it.

Who made him my enemy?
Prince of coolness. King of fear.
Why do I lean here waiting?
Why does he lounge there watching?

I am becoming sunlight.
My hair is on fire. My boots run like tar.
I am hung-up by the bright air.

Something breaks through all of a sudden.
And he blasts off, quick as a craver,
Snug in his power; watching me watch.

Late-night Ramblings: Apocalypse

Late-night Ramblings: Apocalypse

There is chaos. Internal and external.

I've always felt like the Apocalypse would somehow be recognizable, like I would, being human, and as such nearly divine (not through God, per se, but through our species unique quantity of intelligence), be able to say, “Nope, conditions aren't bad enough yet, we need the sky to turn three shades of grey darker before any real trouble comes our way.” But now I'm not so sure I trust the guys taking the readings anymore or even myself, the the guy listening to their proclamations.

Sure there have been strict moral-codes before in various religions, the Ten Commandments of the Abrahamic religions(I'm not certain if Islam formally recognize the 10 commandments as divine laws like the Jews and Christians do) and five moral precepts of Buddhism being but two of them. But still, they only say what sin is, the particulars of each objective transgression, not how much accumulated sin eventually tips the scales from life as human to life after humans. They don't tell us how to distinguish between 'within the limits' and going 'beyond the limits.' Without the existence of moral exactitudes how can we ever hope to make proper moral decisions in times of crisis, when clear-thinking and informed leadership are needed most?

What expertise do I have? I mean beyond,“well, the sun has risen each and every morning so far-- I think it's fair to assume we're all gonna be ok.” Or, “North America is isolated and insulated from danger-- for the entirety of my lifetime, anyway, so I conclude it'll always be like this, or if not always, I'll be able to read the signs and hear the trumpets that signal otherwise.” Yep, Trumpets. Will there be trumpets? What melodies will they be playing? Not that I'm an expert but isn't the current radio-fodder about as paradoxically gloomy as it gets? Why count on hearing the guttural sounds of seven-headed lions when we have fucking auto-tune pop in the airwaves? Surely degradation of Art must count for something in the scheme of right and wrong, of merely approaching the apocalypse versus fully encountering the apocalypse.

What of the contemptible behaviour of governments everywhere towards the Truth and those who bring us truth? Wikileaks? The psychological torture of not yet convicted whistle-blower, Pfc. Bradley Manning? Why doesn't anybody care? Is it because the mainstream media hasn't told us to? Ditto with the world-wide apathy towards the democratic revolutionaries being massacred in Libya? These are surely signs of darkening skies at least, are they not?

The recent disasters in Japan, first the geophysical kind and then the man-made kind, which promises to be much worse, are only the latest in a long-line of evils that cause or promise to cause vast amount of suffering to humanity-- the latter, of the completely undue and unnecessary variety. There are forty-two million people in and around the Tokyo region, about an 1-hour drive away from the exploding nuclear stations-- and I have very little faith that their government is doing enough to ensure their safety. Or more, I have my doubts that any government has the capacity to rule properly enough, considerately enough, to save the lives of it's citizens in regards to pending nuclear catastrophe. Obviously, the same goes for our own government. Steven Harper's recent reassurance that the Canadian west coast has nothing to fear from radioactive particulate coming our way via the jet-stream, does just the opposite of calming me. I don't believe that Harper would lie and purposely endanger his people, rather I believe that the variables are so overwhelming, and the risks so long-term and ambiguous, they really don't have the capacity or the expertise to properly inform us of what is safe and what isn't, of when a threshold has been crossed or hasn't. And he doesn't want to deal with the problem, doesn't want to carry that load unless he's forced to. Throwing caution to the radioactive wind. Ha. That was bad. But you get my point. Boy, that was bad. Funny. Yeesh. Time for bed. "Nuclear sleep". Ah. ?

I dunno, I guess I am blathering here but it seems to me that without knowing just how much is too much, we're just forced to experiment--lots of trial and error-- only problem there is that with too many trials and too many errors, we're bound to reach a point where there isn't enough room left for another test. We'll call the passing of that threshold: The Apocalypse.

(cue scary music) ... (and blushing)

untitled

I'll meet the flowers where they hold me,

As they love the earth.

We'll be bold together, but relatively, my colours, spare.

Fortunes will remain, but as silent as the wills of old, unopened books.

And Still, I'll sneak into every season.

My memory, your memory.

Then their memory, no memory.

Snowflake,

Raindrop,

Riverock,

Cow's cough.

Into every atom of action, each ruby of sin,

Motivating all kinds of greed, and greeting love.

Like the history of smoke I was before my birth.

Free in everything, without intention,

As calm and gone as our unknown God.