Numbered

In "Doctor Brodie's Report," a 1970 short story by Borges, there's an Amazon tribe with no notion of cause and effect and no sense of the past. N. T. di Giovanni translates, "Since they lack the capacity to fashion the simplest object, the Yahoos regard such ornaments [produced elsewhere] as natural. To the tribe my hut was a tree, despite the fact that many of them saw me construct it and even lent me their aid. Among a number of other items, I had in my possession a watch, a cork helmet, a mariner's compass, and a Bible. The Yahoos stared at them, weighed them in their hands, and wanted to know where I had found them." And, "The words 'Our Father,' owning to the fact that they have no notion of fatherhood, left them puzzled. They cannot, it seems, accept a cause so remote and so unlikely, and are therefore uncomprehending that an act carried out several months before may bear relation to the birth of a child."

The Yahoos' numerical system stops at four. "On their fingers they count thus: one, two, three, four, many. Infinity begins at the thumb." Yet even more stingy and sublime are the real life Warlpiris, Australian aborigines whose language only allows for one, two, then many. Eternity snaps into being with one's middle finger. There's also the Pirahas. Numbering less than 350 souls, this Amazon tribe has no creation myths, no fairy tales, no arts, not even tattooing, no words for colors and no numbers except hói, which means either "one," "few" or "small." Compared to the 112 phonemes of Taa (spoken in Botswana and Namibia), 40 of English, 30 of Italian, the Piraha language only has ten. They also have no concept of the past. According to linguist Daniel Everett, the Pirahas believe that "everything is the same, things always are," and nothing matters but the present.

[...]

Death, with Compound Interest

Give money me, take friendship whoso list,
For friends are gone, come once adversity,
When money yet remaineth safe in chest,
That quickly can thee bring from misery;
Fair face show friends when riches do abound;
Come time of proof, farewell, they must away;
Believe me well, they are not to be found
If God but send thee once a lowering day.
Gold never starts aside, but in distress,
Finds ways enough to ease thine heaviness.

--"Of Money" by Barnabe Googe

Cool, the American stands on two legs, favoring neither left nor right, his weight equally distributed. No contrapposto wuss, he declines to lean on stumps, cherry trees, walls, chaise longues or, god forbid, another man. In his mind at least, one or more babes could be seen draping themselves, melting, practically, all over his dry solidity. For a casual yet don't-mess-with-me equilibrium, his feet are set slightly wider than his hormone-bred, steroid-fortified shoulders.

His forebears stood at a sepia-tinted bar, draining liquor. Though sitting, he hasn't gone soft but is perched on a high stool, his height nearly that of a man standing. Even at rest, he is erect and ready for action, be it darts, dancing or a preemptive strike against some dark pest of an enemy.

Just east of Italy or south of Spain, men squat. In all of Asia, even Japan, they squat. That says it all, he reflects, turning off his credit card charged plasma screen. If ever evicted, he would never squat, he doesn't think. He imagines a squatting form in his foreclosure encroached, exurban cul-de-sac. With a running start, he would boot this collapsed, balled up, abject, defecating alien through the goddamn upright. You just can't have shit on the sidewalk.

[...]


..............

Empire in Funkville

"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetic nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem [...] One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women [...] Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."--Walt Whitman, from his preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855.

Whitman's projection of the poet's central and celebrated role in American society never came to pass, obviously. Many of our best have been ignored, angry drunkards, suicides or madhouse inmates, while others groomed themselves into clowns, not wise fools, mind you, just giggly or lugubrious. (But clowns are born, not made, you're huffing, slamming your wireless mouse on the table.) Eliot changed his citizenship.

With his desolate blog and countable band of readers, identifiable by name, face and even favorite beer if not deodorant, the American poet lives in a forgotten dwelling furthest away from the corridors of money and power. Each morning, brushing his uninsured or just barely tenured teeth, thank god, the American poet is glad and relieved to be reintroduced to his best and only attentive reader. Speaking of arithmetic, Don King said, "If you can count your money, you ain't got none."

"Where do you shop, darling?"
"At the Mall of America, of course, and you?"
"At the Mall of American Poetry, where nearly every item is free and there's never a problem with parking."

Click on this link and buy my book, please.
I have a new book coming out, it's my best yet, you'll see.
All of my poems are online now.
The reading is free, obviously, but I'll also provide free (American) cheese, free of charge. It'll be a cheese orgy, I promise.
Please come, I'll put you on top of the guest list.
Please come, I'll grant you a backstage pass where you can meet me (unplugged), my doppelgänger and e-persona, free of charge.

Over the years, I've sold most of my books when even zinc pennies became scarce. A copy of Heinrich von Kleist, An Abyss Deep Enough: Selected Letters, Essays, and Anecdotes, for example, would yield just enough fiat currency for a packet of Ramen Pride and a very proud can of Spam. In a lost volume, I read that Walt Whitman had an office job where he slept, Bartleby like, under his desk at night. Even more fantastic, I read that a track jumping train destroyed Edgar Allan Poe's headstone before it could be erected over his grave. I learnt that a half naked Ezra Pound was kept in a cage under the sun, where he busied himself translating from the Chinese. These wretched examples gave me courage and convinced me that if the greatest poets in the greatest country with the fullest poetic potential at any time upon the earth, mankind's greatest experiment, never to be bankrupt, a shining plantation on a hill, blah, blah, blah, could be so miserably fated, then I should shut my freedom fries grinder and learn how to think and write, one botched phrase or linebreak at a time. At a 1984 Leon Golub lecture, some dork, not me, asked, "What advice would you give a young painter?" Without hesitation, he said, "Quit! It's not worth it!”

Every young writer or artist starts out believing that he or she's a chosen one. What choice does one have? One must think this way to keep going until it's too late to change or death or until one has enough of failure, rejection or poverty to agonize over a caesura. Mired in irrelevance, the American poet has nothing to lose but words.

Countries can also be led or deluded into thinking they're exceptional, none more so than the United of States of America. Its citizens have believed this throughout its history and so has a large part of the world. American exceptionalism derives from many factors, none more convincingly than the country's wealth and a range of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Millions have risked death just to live under the U.S. Constitution, and at least one man was sent to jail for translating a document explaining its tenets.

In 2003, a Vietnamese court convicted Phạm Hồng Sơn, a 35-year-old doctor, of "espionage," and sentenced him to 13 years' imprisonment plus 3 years of house arrest. His offense? In February of 2002, Sơn translated “What Is Democracy?” and emailed it to his friends. He also sent copies to many high-ranking Vietnamese officials, including the Secretary General of the Communist Party. On March 29th, 2002, Sơn was arrested and held incommunicado until his trial on June 18th, 2003, a closed hearing with no lawyers or reporters present. It began at 8AM and was over by 4PM. Now, "espionage" is when someone's hired by a government to obtain secrets from another. Sơn could only be a spy if he took Vietnamese state secrets and gave it to a foreign power. Instead, he copied a U.S. document, readily available online, and sent it to Vietnamese authorities, so he was really “spying” for Vietnam and should be rewarded accordingly. Totalitarianism breeds idiocy and this farce would be funny if it didn't destroy a man's life.

One Vietnamese went to jail for dreaming of the U.S. Constitution, another helped to shred it. John Ashcroft's top deputy and chief architect of the Patriot Act, which became law on October 26, 2001, was Viet Dinh, who came to this country as a ten-year-old in 1978.


2

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

--Walt Whitman

Whitman died in 1892, before the Age of Oil began in earnest. The oil industry started in Western Pennsylvania in 1859, with the first significant oil well named Empire, appropriately enough. Oil became the fuel and engine of the American Empire and Century, and the U.S. was the biggest oil producer in the world until the 1950's, a decade of peak American prosperity and confidence. America's most enduring and quintessential icons, Elvis Presley, Maralyn Monroe and James Dean, all came out of the 1950's. When I arrived in the US in 1975, the most popular television show was Happy Days. About the 50's, its best loved character was a greasy (oily) mechanic and biker named Arthur Fonzarelli, or the Fonz. When times were good, even a high school drop out could give two thumbs up and co-own a diner. Today, Fonzie would be lucky to work as a sales associate at Wal-Mart.

The American Dream was clothed, fed and driven by oil. Oil allowed this country to build an unprecedentedly sprawling, wasteful and alienating environment, where citizens are conditioned to spend hours sitting alone in a steel box and liking it. "It relaxes me," a poet friend told me. The car, not the eagle or cracked bell, is the symbol of American freedom, with its erratic, stop and start speed a metaphor for inevitable progress. That's why NASCAR's popularity has increased, defiantly and foolishly, in spite of high gas price and shortage, and foreign wars to insure more of the same-old-same-old. Dick Cheney, "The American way of life is not negotiable." As the oil age and American dominance peter out, it's Greek tragedy appropriate that we're being steered by a failed oil executive. In 1996, Nadine Gordimer wrote:

[...] what are the factors that affect our daily lives—running across calendar events, over trade winds and continents and national frontiers, affecting have and have-not alike? What influences the late twentieth-century world most widely, you and me, now?

Dip a finger in a dark viscous sub­stance and write on the window of our world. OIL.

There always has been awe of gold, a mythology of gold as the ultimate in material value; gold as the alchemy in which human fate is bound up. At the end of this century it is oil that has that has significance. Oil is ominously bound up with our time; it was the base of the Nobel fortune from which came the Peace Prize...and undreamt-of means of destruction. It is the "why" of many wars of our day [...] Men, women and children die, for oil, without knowing it.

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970. On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon took the U.S. Dollar off the gold standard, making it fiat money and intrinsically worthless. Still, it remained the world's reserve currency by morphing into the Petrodollar, meaning every country on earth had to buy and sell petroleum with our funny paper, an involuntary arrangement enforced by the U.S. military, with its 761 bases in 151 countries. It's the primary reason why we're in Iraq, not to liberate or chase terrorists but to make sure everyone around that gulf continues to swap oil for greenbacks. If Arabs accepted euros, yens, yuans or rubles for petroleum, the United States would quickly become irrelevant and no one would have to send us real products for our worthless paper. Drunk with hubris, thinking the world had to put up with this protection and monopoly racket forever, the U.S. became indifferent to its stratospheric trade deficits and disappearing industries. Instead of producing actual merchandises, we dumped onto the world our exotic financial instruments and toxic investments, but ponzi scams can't last forever. That's why we're bankrupt, naked and at the mercy of our creditors, friends and foes alike. It's point, game, match, so the lights will be turned off soon. Let's hope we don't go postal before leaving the court.



.............................

Poetry Politic: A Blog in 50 Days

Daily political poetry news—from September 15th through November 4th, 2008—brought you by the citizens at Wave Books.

New plebella, argentine review

Release of Plebella #13

For this issue, we have a wide interview with poet, translator and researcher Delfina Muschietti, and we have an advanced of her unpublished book El Enigma de las Flores.

Emiliano Bustos was invited to the Venezuela Book Convention 2007 (Filven 2007) and we have a beautiful and sensitive chronicle, an interview with poet Richard Montenegro, of group Li Po and a brief anthology of poetry of Venezuela (including poems by Ramos Sucre, Palomares, Gervasi, Wafi Salih and Calzadilla).

Rodolfo Edwards comments in column Sembradores de Fósforos, the spark that generated the poem that gives title to his first book, Culo Criollo, published by Siesta in 1999.

Matías Ayala gives an introducction to his dossier Puro Chile, collection of recent poetry from Chile , with poems by Rodrigo Lira, Diego Maquieira, Tomás Harris, Roberto Merino, Claudio Gaete Briones, Paula Ilabaca, Yanko González, Jaime Luis Huenún, Andrés Anwandter, Juan Cristóbal Romero and Julio Carrasco. Puro Chile will an extended version on line in our site, http://www.plebella.com.ar/, only for readers and suscribers.

Reviews of the latest books by Héctor. M. Ángeli, M.Julia. de Ruschi, Romina Freschi, Denise León and Agostina. L. López.

A comment on festival “Sin pedir permiso” by group Rosa Fuerte, festival we were part of last week.

And basis to Contest “Poeta Revelación” (in Spanish) and recent inauguration of our Journal http://www.plebellabilingue.blogspot.com/.

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Onward, Christian Soldiers!

The mercenary outfit Blackwater was in the news, accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in a single incident, but they've been linked to many more murders, just like the regular US Army. Our boys are just doing their jobs, you'all. We have to fight them over there, so we won't have to fight them over here. We have to fight them over here, so we won't have to fight them over there. We have to fight them where we can find them, yesterday, today and tomorrow, even if they're not, especially if they're not fighting back. In truth, the only difference between a defense contractor and an American GI in Iraq is the size of their paychecks, since both are hired guns, willing to kill for money. What else are they fighting for? Oh yes, for the SUV, NASCAR, exurban way of life, which is unnegotiable. It's the petroleum, Gomer. Is there no higher purpose? Some American grunts are convinced they're soldiering for God [...]


......

boicot

boicot
16 OCTOBER 2007
Guillermo Vargas Habacuc calls himself an artist. He is from Costa Rica and in past august he haunted a dog from the streets and exhibited it as an art piece in a gallery. The dog was left there with no water or food to die and it did. He calls this sadistic act "art". Now this torturer has been invited to the prestigious 2008 Bienal Centroamericana de Honduras.
There´s a campaign to raise signatures for revoking the invitation. You can sign http://www.petitiononline.com/13031953/

David Mura

Poet David Mura interviewed by E. Ethelbert Miller:

"One key aspect of the internment was the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Japanese-Americans were not given a trial in which they could prove their innocence. We are now seeing similar suspensions or violations of civil liberties today with regard to Muslim Americans. If people were more cognizant of what happened to the Japanese-Americans, then people might be more reluctant to suspend civil liberties when dealing with the current threats facing our country. They might think twice and come to conclusion that we should avoid making the same mistakes we have made in the past."

Gaiacide

Beer and music lovers at the Al Gore-organized Live Earth concerts were asked to sign a pledge to "take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become 'carbon neutral'." Al Gore himself is a world-class emitter, however, with a monthly electricity bill of $1,359 to service his 20-room, 8-bathroom mansion, 20 times the American household average. (My bill for last month was $21.71, to service my rented two-room, walk-up mansionette.) John Travolta, another "environmental activist," happens to own five jets, contrailing 30,000 miles a year. It's apparently too hard for most of us to wean ourselves from whatever comfort or toys we could get our paws on. Thus, as Joe Bageant wrote in a recent essay, "Homo sapiens hath shat, frolicked, killed and exceeded their MasterCard limits upon the earth [...] All the green energy sources and eating right and voting right cannot fix what has been irretrievably ruined, but only make life amid the ruination slightly more bearable. Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the earth and pissed upon its bones. Not because we are cruel by nature (though a case might be made for stupidity) but because the existence of consciousness necessarily implies each of us as its individual center, the individual point of all experience and thus all knowing." Poets are also implicated in this gaiacide, and not only because of our jetting back and forth to readings, conferences and various cool places, just for the hell of it, since we're still part of the system, after all, but because of our often ready embrace of technology and "progress." Hindsight is handier than a low blow, of course, but how quaint will a poem like Neruda's "Ode to the Sea" be, when there's no more sea?


Ode to the Sea

Here on the island
the sea
and so much sea
overflowing,
relentless,
it says yes, then no,
then no, no, no,
then yes, in blue,
in foam, with gallops,
it says no, again no.
It cannot stay still,
my name is sea, it repeats
while slamming against rocks
but unable to convince rocks,
then
with seven green tongues
of seven green dogs,
of seven green tigers,
of seven green seas,
it smothers rocks, kisses rocks,
drenches rocks
and slamming its chest,
repeats its name.
O sea, you declare yourself,
O comrade ocean,
don’t waste time and water,
don’t beat yourself up,
help us,
we are lowly
fishermen,
men of the shore,
we’re cold and hungry
and you’re the enemy,
don’t slam so hard,
don’t scream like that,
open your green trunk
and give all of us
on our hands
your silver gifts:
fish every day.

Here in each house,
we all crave it
whether it’s of silver,
crystal or moonlight,
spawn for the poor
kitchens on earth.
Don’t hoard it,
you miser,
coldly rushing like
wet lightning
beneath your waves.
Come, now,
open yourself
and leave it
near our hands,
help us, ocean,
deep green father,
end one day
our earthly poverty.
Let us
harvest your lives’
endless plantation,
your wheat and eggs,
your oxes, your metals,
the wet splendor
and submerged fruits.

Father sea, we know already
what you are called, all
the seagulls circulate
your name on the beaches:
now, behave yourself,
don’t shake you mane,
don’t threaten anyone,
don’t smash against the sky
your beautiful teeth,
ignore for a moment
your glorious history,
give to every man,
to every
woman and to every child,
a fish large or small
every day.
Go out to every street
in the world
and distribute fish
and then
scream,
scream
so all the working poor
could hear you,
so they could say,
sticking their heads
into the mine:
“Here comes the old man sea
to distribute fish.”
And they’ll go back down
into the darkness,
smiling, and on the streets
and in the forests,
men and the earth
will smile
an oceanic smile.
But
if you don’t want it,
if you don’t care for it,
then wait,
wait for us,
we must worry, first
we must try to solve
and straighten out
human affairs,
the biggest problems first,
then all the others,
and then
we’ll enter you,
we’ll chop the waves
with a knife made of fire,
on an electric horse
leaping over foam,
singing
we’ll sink
until we touch the bottom
of your guts,
an atomic thread
will guard your shank,
we’ll plant
in your deep garden
trees
of cement and steel,
we’ll tie
your hands and feet,
on your skin man will walk,
spitting,
yanking in bunches,
building armatures,
mounting and taming you
to dominate your spirit.
All this will occur
when us men
have straightened out
our problem,
the big,
the big problem.
We’ll slowly
solve everything:
we’ll force you, sea,
we’ll force you, earth
perform miracles,
because in our very selves,
in the struggle,
is fish, is bread,
is the miracle.


(1954)
translated from the Spanish by Linh Dinh

Sinan Antoon

Iraqi poet & novelist Sinan Antoon interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now

3 Burmese poems, introduced and translated by Kyi May Kaung

In the Burmese original, these poems were first broadcast on my weekly poetry column, “Poems of Those Who Love Their Country” (later Garland of Poems) on Radio Free Asia’s Burmese Service between 1997 and 2001.

"In Memory of My Little Daughter" is one of my favorites as it is so heartfelt and moving. It was sent to me by a poetry fan from Burma as a tear sheet from a magazine whose name I cannot now remember. I thought it was based on a true incident, so true are the emotions expressed there, but someone told me that the poet Htay Aung is in fact a single gentleman and has no children. But of course it does not matter, as he speaks for all the thousands of parents who have lost a child – especially those who have lost a child during the vicious clampdown on the pro-democracy movement in Burma in 1988.

"Moe Ma Kha Plant" [Plant Which Does Not Kow Tow to the Sky] was the first poem I featured on my weekly radio program. A co-worker who used to be with the ABSDF (All Burma Students Democratic Front), which emerged from the university students who fled after the 1988 clampdown and which is based on the Burma-Thai Border, directed me to this poem. The moe ma kha plant, he told me, is a kind of water plant that grows in the Moei or Thaung Yin River which forms part of the border between Burma and Thailand.

Naing Win Swe was a former communist who became a freedom fighter for democracy and died in the jungle. I remember having read somewhere about the death of Naing Win Swe and how his comrades had no time to bury him and so left his remains covered with wild flowers. The broadcast of this first on-air poetry feature of mine brought a warm response from the listeners, one of whom started sending me poems she had collected in Burma. This woman told me she had not known of Naing Win Swe’s death until she heard my radio program.

"The Late Dear Departed" is part of Maru (Kyaw Aung Lwin’s) poetry collection Ultimatum to a King.

When I featured it on my on-air column, Maru was still a refugee from Burma waiting on tables in Tokyo. I was directed to the poem by Maru’s best friend, then also working in the Burmese Service of RFA.

I called Maru in Tokyo from the studio and he read the poem for me. At the end he short temperedly threw the receiver down, saying abruptly “Dar bè.” I thought this “That’s all!” worked so well at the end of this very angry and very true ultimatum poem, that I have left it in.

Subsequently, Maru’s wife Kaythwe and I became close friends, and now Maru works also in international broadcasting.

Now that the late great Burmese poets Zawgyi, Minthuwun and Tin Moe are all no longer with us, I consider Maru one of the best Burmese poets around. Our Poet Laureate in fact.

He excels at a very visual imagery and metaphor and is not “flowery” like most Burmese poets but a lot more “in your face,” and I believe that denotes courage as an artist and the ability to confront evil head-on.

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)
March 19, 2007


In Memory of My Little Daughter
Htay Aung

One day after the other
goes by, and we arrive back
at this day.

Daughter, just as in previous years
the raindrops fall, drop out of the sky
slowly, slowly.

Daughter as for your father
he is still, holding tenderly to his
breast, the small green frock
edged in white.

At this time you would be
up out of bed
you would be, washing your face
taking a bath.

Oh, even though it is
a long time for us
your mother and me
the memory is still
quite new and fresh
like the tiny jasmine flowers
in the small vase, in front of
your picture
my daughter.

My daughter who used to
listen so carefully
so silently as I read to you.

The books of cartoons must also
be remembering
you.

The little slippers that went
gauk gauk as you walked.

The slippers that we got back
only one of the pair.

The gauk gauk slippers must be
Telling us, of the things that I
your father, did not see.

Dear little daughter
actually
the skies themselves
have not
had their fill of
crying.


Moe Ma Kha Plant
[The plant that does not service, kow tow, to the sky]
Naing Win Swe (1940-1995)

That time when they
submerged my head
in water
they did not
not even
one moment
let me
raise it up
to breathe.

Thick cream of mud
essence of mud
water
rushes over
runs over
my head.

Flotsam Jetsam
Dirt Excrement
Floating weeds.

Old rotting logs
falling
apart
hit my head
bump my head
I turn like a top
dizzy
dizzy.

I lurch
a drunken
yein
dancer.

To breathe
no air
pocket
no vacuum
to breathe.

No air.

Just within
my own
body

I breathe
IN . . .
OUT . . .

A hero
climbing
the gallows
to be hanged
does not
flinch
change
expression.

Keep smiling
every inch.

I make
myself
brave
telling myself
when you use
the hammer
strike
boldly
do not
pull back.

In my
body
is
my
life
slowly
revolving.

Am I still alive. Am I still alive?

Ah, the great
peoples’ revolutionary
hero
who
has given his life
for freedom
has walked
the bloody
streets
for
freedom.

Am I still alive.

I am not
quite
sure.

One day
two days
three days – oh.

One month
two months
three months -- oh.

Oh.

In the water
I am
drowned.


ii.

When the time
is right
water over-
whelmed
water runs off.

Moe Ma Kha plant
out of muck
struggles up
bent over.

Beautiful sunlight
under trees.

Moe Ma Kha plant
spreads
dangling
leaves.

Moe Ma Kha plant
a little shaky
Moe Ma Kha plant
slightly
wilted.

Moe Ma Kha plant
a little broken
a little, crooked.

Little things, minor things
let them all
be washed away.

With wounds, with scars, with marks

Smiling I look up
at sky. Universe

far

away.


Our Late Dear Departed
Maru (Kyaw Aung Lwin)

Our late dear departed
You won’t be on time.
As for us we aren’t quite sure
The train has not yet – arrived.
There are many fallen – on our side.
Before – the enemies have become friends, the friends
Have become enemies.

In that kind of – rather messed up
Raggedy rundown country, with its rather
Wobbly, lopsided history
We are backward in everything
Backward behind
In monsoon winds
Backward behind in
The sun rising, and the tide
Turning
Backward behind, in education
In rock music, tin beer cans
Tissue paper and lavatories that keep
The flies, firmly, out.

From these things to something called
Democracy. We are behind in everything
Most clearly and effectively, behind.
In that place we had to trade, for something called
Human rights
with our lives.

Before our young men have become
Buddhist novices
They have gone, early into prison.
Before they’ve even gotten
A little diploma
They’ve been sentenced
A heavy jail term.
Before they’ve even gotten themselves
A little sweetheart, they’ve become
Long-term prison residents.

It’s that kind of country, with that kind of hatchet marks and
Stab wounds on it. That kind of struck dumb nation
Notched crooked nation.

The kind of nation where, even without
Anything to eat, you have to meet
Your financial obligation.

That kind of nation where even though
Married, children have to be carefully
Prevented, with permanent
Contraception.

That kind of country where, if it
Becomes unbearable, and you want
To vomit in disgust, you’d better plan
A silent noiseless
Eruption/explosion.

That kind of country where lives
Slowly become small
And insignificant.

Where husband and wife
Start to fight more and more.
Where you soon lose
Self-confidence.

Where you begin to suffer from
Malnutrition, where
evil deeds multiply, where
the bad stars cast their light, growing
cruel and oppressive, where
rather than live one would
rather die.

A great nation like that where
The seeds of our dreams never reach
Fruition.

A great nation where many fall and die
Where the standard of living is low
The death rates high.

A great nation that can’t hold up
Its head, among others.
A great nation that is, below par.
A great nation that isn’t, truly human.
Where it isn’t worth it, to be
A human being.

A nation without a parliament, our great
Royal nation, of course.

But there are people who would
Like to see that country
Of all countries shining gold
Would like the country to be
accepted among all others.

Our martyrs, our late
dear departed have died
for their beliefs, been
crushed, their blood fallen
on black earth.

Those of us remaining, can only
Quite often, pray
And pay our respects, to the fallen, as to
The Buddha in this
Country of ours where
Morning has
Not yet
Dawned.

That’s all!


On 1-1-99, New Year’s Day
(excerpts from Shan Human Rights Report Feb 1999, selected by Kyi May Kaung, and read as poetry).

On 1-1-99, New Year’s Day
SPDC troops of IB66 led by
Myint Sein
Raped
6 women and killed one man.

The women were carrying
rice on their shoulder yokes
were walking
from farms to village.

Before they reached home
they met a patrol of 70-80 mentioned above.

The troops stopped them
Forced them to put down their yokes
And interrogated them
Accusing them of intending to husk the rice
And give it to the Shan rebels.

Commander Myint Sein took away
Nang Leng Sa aged 15
from Nawng Kaw
and raped her. After that
he shot her dead.

As he was about to shoot her
one of the civilian porters
pleaded for mercy
“I am from the same village
and I know
she is innocent.”

The commander forced the porter
Sai Mu aged 29
to sit down near Nang Leng Sa
and shot him dead as well.

Then he said to his troops
“you can rest one hour
then you can do whatever you like with the women
except kill them.”
So the troops raped them for one hour and left.

It took some time for the women
to be able to stand up and walk back to their villages
but they could not
carry
their rice.

The women were, not their real names
were
Nang Ser aged 22 from Wan Ek
Nang Peng aged 27 from Wan Ek
Nang In aged 30 from Wan Wawn
Nang Lu aged 31 from Wan Wawn
Nang Non aged 33 from Wan Ed.

They shot a mute person aged 21
at Hawn Lin
on sight.

He was hit in the stomach and badly wounded.

They said he was an informer for the Resistance.

After they found out he was mute
they let him go.

To prevent the news they had shot a mute
person, from spreading --
they did not allow him to go to the hospital
in Murg-Ton
instead they said
he must go to Thailand for
medical treatment.

THE SILENCE OF MALACHI RITSCHER by Kevin Kilroy

from Wikepedia: [Malachi] Ritscher came into the national spotlight after commiting self-immolation on the side of the Kennedy Expressway near downtown Chicago during the morning rush hour of Friday November 3, 2006, as a protest against the Iraq war and more generally against "the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country." Ritscher's suicide is one of only nine reported incidents of self-immolation performed as an act of protest in American history.

“The Silence of Malachi Ritscher,” by Kevin Kilroy—

There’s nothing like a shower to cool you down. Cool fool, nothing. When I watch my mind, it doesn’t move. Joe’s a fucking idiot. I go to work, on-time, I do my shit. Who does he think he is? Why do I care, really, though? My heart isn’t in it. I don’t have passion for that job. [pause]

Before Malachi self-immolated, writes Kilroy in a recent email conversation about his stage drama, I was working on a political play—something that had a purpose beyond attention to mind, imagination, and intelligent expression, which I felt I was spending too much time on. Utopic but with less outrage, more human emotion, trying to accept today's a-political climate and be in it without desiring a vision of how it should be.

All other discussion about Malachi were very surface level—basically: sane? or insane?—and I understand why that was the case as self-immolation is a very difficult action to contemplate. But I felt somebody needed to spend more time doing just that, contemplating this action, and so I did.

What is my point? My argument? What do I desire? Taxes- they connect me, everybody, to the blood we shed. More, go deeper. The two-party system will never work. Alright, yea – but these arguments have no effect. Everybody says them. What can I say that will touch people more than words? What can I do that’s deeper – people need to feel political. They need to get off their asses. Yelling at them, that’s not going to work – I need to show them… [long/snappy pause realizing he could self-immolate—that scary thought has returned to his head.] Those fuckers at my work, they think I’m a joke. Tonight, I’d work on the website more. Public Parking Party dot Org – people will get into it. I’ll get hits. [sighs again] [singing] “They say I’m crazy. OH, Oh-ohOH! But I don’t believe I can be that strong.”

Malachi self-immolated and thereby became a microcosm of fears and questions and nightmares and love and living. Is this an act of anti-patriotism? Yes and no. No, in that it is not anti-anything. But yes, because it contradicts the motions and ideologies of a patriotic gesture. This play is human, it's about relationships, it’s about fears and questions and nightmares and love and living in the world that is present and taking the time out of lives to connect with each other and discuss what is happening.

Also, politics—living politically on a daily basis, working towards a political consciousness— Malachi's reasoning for doing this: there are so few who could possibly feel any empathy for his situation, his internal crisis, and for the decision he made. We, as a society, are so far away from what his action represents, so I wrote a play that creates more possibilities for more people to gain sympathy for his crisis and, if nothing more, I am walking away from this play wiser about to what degree politics should be played out upon my body and the bodies of those I love. And, I hope, with a greater capacity for empathy.

What I am most proud of, and at the same time doubtful of, is the fact that this play does not say anything. I think it shows a good deal of the conflicts and issues and errors in living, but in the end there is no message which I have judged to be more worthy than any other possible message. However, staying connected to people, to loved ones, seems key to this world created in the play. Another message—avoid utopic actions. Another message—politics touches even the most intimate and private and special areas/moments of our lives.

The Silence of Malachi Ritscher
Opens at Theatre Building Chicago
Mar. 23 - Apr. 21*

*After the final performance the script will be burned

Kyi May Kaung

Translators of poetry from ignored, troubled countries are often political activists. This should come as no surprise since the writers they translate are often dissidents, harassed, censored, jailed or in exile. Born in Rangoon, Burma in 1943, Kyi May Kaung came to the US on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1982. At the University of Pennsylvania, she did a dissertation about centralization and totalitarianism in her home country, "and the harm it does to human beings." After the failure of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma in 1988, she applied and received political asylum in the US, and has worked tirelessly to introduce Burmese poets to English readers, as in this interview with U Tin Moe, with a selection of his poems in her translations, published in Burma Debate.

This morning, I received an email from Kyi May Kaung:

Subject: Excellent 30 min video on Burma 1962-2007--Highly recommended

From Khitpyaing (New Era) Journal, based in Bangkok, Thailand.

This video documentary/commentary soberly moves back and forth between footage of recent notorious gala wedding of Gen. Than Shwe's daughter -- "Ph.D. candidate Shanghai Univ." and conditions in Burma.

Rare footage includes:

Shots -- also gunshots and wounds -- from 1988 -- some first aired on Nightline with Ted Koppel.

An aged Gen. Ne Win saying, "When the army shoots, it doesn't shoot in the air. It shoots to kill."

In roughly serial order:

1. sales of Burma's natural resources, including jade, pearls, gemstones and teak.
2. the gap between rich and poor.
3. the plight of women.
4. rape as a weapon of war.
5. an army officer expounding on high yield paddy (rice) and the rice production targets (note someone moves silently and deliberately out of the camera's field of vision).
6. the importance of food.
7. the crowds lined up for food--the little boy who spilled his rice--are being fed in a SattuDeeThar--a special charity where all comers are fed.

Individualism and the Dog

Bangladeshi poet and fiction writer Iftekhar Sayeed has a provocative essay on Online Journal:

After the war in Afghanistan, the citizens of the United States, out of the goodness of their hearts, donated 50 precious cents for every Afghan man, woman and child; each animal in the zoo received $10,000. Marjan, the wounded lion, became a celebrity, and died in regal style after his 16 minutes of fame [...]

On OpEdNews.com, he discusses how the habits and peculiarities of a language determine that society's political landscape:

Meaning is a social entity, and since an ‎entire society--and its history and culture--can never be exported, no amount of regime ‎change can export the meaning of a word [...]

"No language change, no regime change," ‎Iftekhar Sayeed concludes.

Voice Exchange Rates - (H.Yepez-Mexico)

Hope you check this out.

Wanna Beef?

I rap, you rap, who isn’t rapping these days? I just ran into these lines from the Vietnamese-Canadian Chuckie Akenz:

Wanna beef with my clique, we can war tomorrow
And we won't stop frontin' til your chests are torn
'til your faces are scorn, 'til your blood squirts out
'til the moment we break your motherfucking mouth

Lordy, lordy, sups, Chuckie? What’s roiling you? The anthem of gangsta rap is still “Cop Killer,” of course, written by Ice-T in 1991, in response to Rodney King’s beating:

I got my black shirt on.
I got my black gloves on.
I got my ski mask on.
This shit's been too long.
I got my twelve gauge sawed off.
I got my headlights turned off.
I'm 'bout to bust some shots off.
I'm 'bout to dust some cops off.
Cop killer, better you than me.
Cop killer, fuck police brutality!
Cop killer, I know your family's grievin'
(fuck 'em)
Cop killer, but tonight we get even.
I got my brain on hype.
Tonight'll be your night.
I got this long-assed knife,
and your neck looks just right.

[…]

This shit’s been too long is right… Scholar/blues harmonica player Adam Gussow, one half of Satan and Adam, pointed out that the familiar gangsta themes of drugs, guns and cop killing were present on the very first blues record. Written by Perry Bradford, “Crazy Blues” was recorded by Mamie Smith in 1920. Its last verse:

Now I've got the crazy blues
Since my baby went away
I ain't had no time to lose
I must find him today
I'm gonna do like a Chinaman, go and get some hop
Get myself a gun, and shoot myself a cop
I ain't had nothin' but bad news
Now I've got the crazy blues.
Those blues.

Tracing the blues to the late 19th century, Gussow explains:

“1890s saw the coming-of-age of the first freeborn generation of black southerners, a generation that enjoyed an unprecedented freedom of travel (although hemmed in by lynch law and vagrancy laws), a new freedom to determine the contours of one's sexual personhood, and a freedom, too, to live out the violent outlaw identities of mythic "bad niggers" such as Stagolee and Railroad Bill. In the midst of virulent racism and violent repression, the blues emerged out of a creative tension between black grievance and disillusionment on the one hand and black freedom and expressive license on the other.”

There was another American musical genre, developed also in the 19th century, that dealt with issues of white hegemony. The Tejano corrido is much less well-known, however, partly because the songs are in Spanish. Scholar Dan W. Dickey explains:

“Events in Texas between 1836 and 1848 resulted in the colonization of the lower Rio Grande area by white empresarios. The gradual displacement or subjugation of the Mexican people there provided the basis for more than a century of border conflict between the Anglos and the Mexicans. During the struggle against the Anglos, the corrido form developed in the area and became extremely popular. In [Américo] Paredes's words, the borderers' "slow, dogged struggle against economic enslavement and the loss of their own identity was the most important factor in the development of a distinct local balladry."

Fighting a losing battle, they sang of defiance. Here’s a Texas ranger-killing corrido:

Jacinto Treviño

Ya con ésta van tres veces
que se ha visto lo bonito;
la primera fue en McAllen
en Brownsville y en San Benito.

En la cantina de Bekar
se agarraron a balazos;
por dondequiera volaban
botellas hechas pedazos.

Esa la cantina de Bekar
al momento quedó sola;
nomás Jacinto Treviño
de carabina y pistola.

“Entrele rinches cobardes,
el pleito no es con un niño;
querían conocer a su padre,
¡yo soy Jacinto Treviño!”

Decía Jacinto Treviño
que se arrastraba de risa:
“A mí los rinches me hicieron
los puños de la camisa.”

Decía el sherife mayor
como era un americano:
“Ay que Jacinto tan hombre,
no niega ser Mexicano.”

Ya con ésta me despido
aquí en presencia de todos;
si me quieren conocer
los espero allá en Matamoros.


My rough, real rough, translation:


Jacinto Treviño

This makes 3 times
beauty reveals itself;
the first was in McAllen,
then Brownsville and San Benito.

In Bekar’s cantina
a shootout erupted;
shards of broken bottles
flying everywhere.

In Bekar’s cantina
only one was left,
only Jacinto Treviño
with rifle and pistol.

“Come in here, cowardly rangers,
you’re not messing with a kid;
if you want to know your father,
that’s me, Jacinto Treviño!”

Jacinto Treviño tried to stifle
a laugh as he spoke: "To me,
rangers are only suitable
to sew my shirt cuffs."

The sheriff then spoke
as an American: “Jacinto's
too much of a man, there’s
no denying he’s Mexican.”

With this I’ll take my leave
from all those present here;
if anyone wants to find me,
I’ll be waiting in Matamoros.

Corridos are often about real people and issues, crimes, outlaws and murders, but they aren’t necessarily anti-gringos. After Kennedy was assassinated, dozens of corridos were composed in praise of the late president’s ideals. As an outlet for the disenfranchised, however, many corridos remain songs of grievances. Texas billionaires don’t do corridos. Kings, presidents and deciders, no matter how wobbly, speak in slogans. Serfs and slaves sing the blues.