I like a good Pastie.

Cultivate Hope a poem for Hana Shalabi - Rafeef Ziadah

The following video poem in solidarity with hunger striking Palestinian prisoner was created by the Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah.
Hana Shalabi is a Palestinian political prisoner. She was released over 2 years ago from administrative detention on October 18 2011, as part of the prisoner exchange deal. She was rearrested less than four months later on February 16 2012.
Yesterday marked the 40th day of her hunger strike. It has been reported that she is in danger of imminent death and has great difficulty standing and has extremely low blood pressure.
She is one of over 200 Palestinians currently held in administrative detention in Israeli prisons. This practice allows Israel to hold detainess for up to 6 months ( and can also indefinitely renew the decision).In total their are 4,637 Palestinian political prisoners in the jails of the Israeli occupation, 20 of whom continue to be held in isolation, from Palestinian national leaders and Palestinian children, all of whom are demanding freedom. Hana Shalabi wants freedom or death, and not just for herself. It's for all the wrongfully imprisoned Palestinians.
Yesterday Hana's appeal for the ending of her administrative detention was denied. Stating that she was resposible for her own recovery. Administative detention dates from the British Emergency Law of 1945 under the British Mandate of Palestine.
Amnesty International has issued a new appeal calling for Hana's release and declared her a prisoner of conscience.
- however,many other human rights organisations have maintained complete silence.

Cultivate Hope - words by Rafeef Ziadeh,
                             music by Phil Monsour.



Please Click here to send a letter to Israeli officials demanding Hana's release.

http://samidoun.ca/2012/02/take-action-today-for-hana-al-shalabi-administrative-detainee-and-hunger-striker/#letter

The sun might be shining, here in West Wales
but that does not mean that I should forget.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 24/3/19) - Sometime During Eternity/ Constantly Risking Absurdity.

Mr Ferlinghetti 93 years young, yesterday....... so belated birthday greetings to this beat icon.
A heretic, rebel, civil libertarian, painter , poet , publisher...... who is still writing, painting,plain speaking, travelling widely.
I thank him for  his huge wonderful contribution to the world of literature.
As I post this I realise I am baking, it's a rather balmy , beautiful spring day over here in my little corner, so in a minute, gathering up some of his books and finding a quiet spot somewhere, to bathe a while in some of his thoughts, and enjoy some moments of peace.

Sometime During Eternity

                         Sometime during eternity
                                                              some gus show up
and one of them
                         who shows up real late
                                                            is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
                                           like Galilee
 and he starts wailing
                               and claiming he is hip
  to who made heaven
                                 and earth
                                       and that the cat
   who really laid it on us
                            is his Dad
And moreover
  he adds
              It's all writ down
                                     on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
          leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
     a long time ago
                           and which you won't even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
                                                  or at least for
       nineteen hundred and fortyseven
                                                      of them
                        to be exact
                                        and even then
     nobody really believes them
                                               or me
                                                        for that matter

    You're hot
     they tell him
     And they cool him
     They stretch him on the Tree to cool
           And everybody after that
                                                 is always making models
                      of this Tree
                                      with Him hung up
and always crooning his name
                                             and calling Him to come down
                            and sit in
                                         on their combo
            as if he is the king cat
                                           who's got to blow
  or they can't quite make it
  Only he don't come down
                                       from His Tree
Him just hang there
                             on His Tree
                                              looking real Petered out
                                 and real cool
                                                   and also
 according to a roundup
                                    of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
                                                real dead

From
These are my Rivers
New and Selected Poems 55-93

New Directions Press



Constantly Risking Absurdity

                Constantly risking absurdity
                                                         and death
                         whenever he performs
                                                      above the heads
                                                                            of his audience
     the    poet   like an acrobat
                                                  climbs on rime
                                                    to a high wire of his own making
 and  balancing on eyebeams
                                                       above a sea of faces
                paces his way
                                   to the other side of the day
    performing entrechats
                                and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
                               and all without mistaking
                  any thing
                                for what it may not be
      For he's the super realist
                                       who must perforce percieve
                taut truth
                                      before the taking of each stance or
                                                                                      step
  in his supposed advance
                                     toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
                                          with gravity
                                                    to start her death-defying
                                                                                         leap
          And he
                    a little charleychaplin man
                                                who may or may not catch
                    her fair external form
                                               spreadeagled in the empty air
                         of   existence

Reprinted from
A Coney Island of the Mind
New Direction Press


Ferlinghetti ' Trailor'

Ferlinghetti by Ferlinghetti

                               
                                                           


                          
             

This sick Govt need locking up

WANTED

PLEASE AMEND THE ABOVE


THE HEIST HAS ALREADY

TAKEN PLACE

 VERY DANGEROUS........

CURRENTLY RUNNING AMOK

Built by Bevan...Crushed by Cameron

"No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin - Nye Bevan

Today woke up  with great sadness and anger, the Tories insidious N.H.S bill has been passed.
Medical experts believe the tory's changes will do horrible harm to our health service. It makes me wonder who the hell voted for the tories. Their policies when they put themselves up for election seemed to suggest to me an ideology of pure hatred, and one of divide and rule.
Perhaps they are the same people who spent yesterday fawning over the Queen in Westminster, whilst our beloved N.H.S was being kicked in the guts. The people who voted for them and those who have kept them in power, the lib dems have sounded the death knell for the N.H.S and for this they should be thouroughly ashamed. The N.H.S is to me like the pulse of the nation, essential, where my father worked and dedicated himself to, for over 30 years.
The people who voted for the Conservatives  are the same people who must accept resposibility for the slow demonisation of the unemployed, the marginalised, the weak, the mentally ill.
So David Cameron and Andrew Lansley keep on smiling as they rob the poor to pay the rich. Proving time and again, what contemptable bastards they are.
Their Budget today, proving that we really are not in it all together, housing buget cuts already means soaring homelessness,  the poorer you are the hardest your hit, tax cuts for the rich... nothing about the thieving banks, help for students, help for people getting jobs, for communities that they have already started battering apart.
Yesterday I was full of Springs promise, celebrating the rebirth of nature, today I try to keep on keeping on, just...... so let me compare for a moment . The Conservatives like to think of themselves as ineradicable, indestrutible and imperishable, but like their nearest relation the cockroach this is not true, when crushed they can make a horrible cracking sound...... we must not let them defeat us, we have the power to beat them back. Ah I'm feeling better already.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE 

Nope, absolutely none.......

Robert Anton Wilson (18/01/32 - 11/01/07) -Maybe Logic: The Lives & Ideas of

essayist, novelist, absurdist philosopher, futurist... maverick genius, political activist, visionary, prophet, discordian, existentalist prober of imagination, anto-fundamentalist.... profoundity leaps in his works, just when I think i'm getting what he's told me, he leads me on to another thread.
Born in Brooklyn , Wilson was many things, his books  ended up in many a hipsters library, the counterculture embraced him, some however could not seperate fact or fiction.
His 'Illuminatis'  trilogy - Eye of the Pyramid, Golden Apple, and Leviathon  incorporated elments from the cult literature of the time: borrowing elements of Colin Wilson, Philip K Dick, Flann O' Brien, Carlos Castenada, Timothy Leary and Kurt Vonnegut in a mix that bordered on the academic to the downright hilarious, like some philosopher writing on some heavy duty drugs.
He did prodigiously consume and was an advocate  for the taking of all sort of drugs, and became a strong opponent of what he called " the war on some drugs." Initially  though had started  using cannabis as a way to alleviate the  misfortunes of Post-polio syndrome. He worked with  psychedelic guru Timothy Leary on two books Neuropolitics ( 1978) and The Game of Life (1979) and began to  become a serious practitioner of stoned sensations. Writing under the influence , he said  he wrote the first draft of each book "straight, the second stoned, then straight, then stoned, and so on , until i'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, Or until irate editors start reminding me about deadlines, whichever comes first."
A prodigious talent, he went on to write numerous books, and became linked with the Church of the Sub-Genius, the Association for Consciousness Exploration and E.Prime. He taught me to never trust anything that I read, but along with Burroughs I keep returning. Even though in life and in his books the sentiment is one of anti-religion, their is to me a semi mythical,mysticism to his work, but then drugs are known for taken us to the furthest reaches of human consciousness, and a lot of us who take these sacrements , have a rebellious nature already, and even before taking anything illicit we were questioning, reason and all forms of authority.  But Robert Anton Wilson pushed all possibities, becoming a master crafter of disinfomation, conspiracy theories and twinkling pages full of suspect devices.
Other works were the Schroedinger's Cat  trilogy (80-81) Prometheus Rising (1983) and William Reich in Hell (1987)
By the time he departed this planet, he had found himself many devotees and with his grey hair and long white goatee had taken on the air of a taoist sage, prophet or sorceror. He had also manged to upset a considerable amount of people, he'd stopped paying his taxes and was in considerable debt, a strong advocate of freedom in its many forms, his political and social credos were ones of questioning, EVERYTHING, so their were quite a few enemies out there. Some say the C.I.A killed him , others that he is very much alive, theories grow. What he definitely did teach was that " the universe contains a maybe." So he might be hovering around somehere, illuminating an argument with some cunning laughter.
The following fim Maybe Logic  is a fascinating , hilarious and mind-bending journey in his mult-dimensional life, spanning 35 years and the best of 100 hours of footage, thorughly tweaked, tansmuted and regenerated. It feature Tom Robbins, R U Sirius, Ivan Stang, Paul Krassner, Valerie Corral and Douglas Rushkoff.
The soundtrack includes music by the Boards of canada, Animals on Wheels, Tarentel, Funki Porcini, Amon Tobin and the Cinematic Orchestra and others.
However all the above I may have just simply made up, who knows for definite.

"There  are periods of history when the visions of mad men and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common sense interpretaton of data available to the so called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."

" There is no governer anywhere, you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of death, even. All existing Society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses, Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."

- Robert Anton Wilson

MAYBE LOGIC:
The Lives & Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson

Rachel Corrie ( 10/4/79 - 16/3/03) - The Courage to Resist.

Rachel Corrie was killed 9 years ago today in the Gaza Strip in Palestine on March 16th 2003, trying to prevent the demolition of the home of a Palestinian family.
She was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer whilst undertaking nonviolent direct action. Her name has not been forgotten and carries on being an inspiration to solidarity activists around the globe. Today we remember her.

http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Billy Bragg - The lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSNJ4RDGtUE

David Roviks - A song for Rachel Corrie

Serj Tankian - Borders Are

Borders Are

Borders are the gallows
Of our collective egos
Subjective, lines in sand
In the water, seperating everything

Fear is the cause of seperation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National blood painted persuasions

Here's my song for the free
No, it's not about praise and publicity
Coprotocracy, what a hypocricy
Aristocracy verses democracy

Fear is the cause of seperation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National blood-painted persuasions

The king is dead and now
We're dancing in the streets
As the waters rise
We're merely covering our feet

I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go

I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go

Fear is the cause of seperation
Backed with illicit condemnations
National blood-painted persuasions

Tear is the cause of seperation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National bloo-painted persuasions

The king is dead, and now we're dancing in the streets
As the waters rise, we're merely covering our feet
Your gods are dead and now we're dancing in the streets
As the waters rise we're merely covering in defeat

I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go

I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go

I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go
I never let you go

Never let you go
Never let you go
Never let you go
Never let you go

                           - Serj Tankien

Happy 90th Birthday Jack Kerouac.

' the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirious of everything at the same time the one's wo never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars in the middle you see the bluecenter light pop and everything goes Awww!'
- Jack Kerouac.

Today is the birthday of visionary, iconclastic writer and poet, Jack Kerouac. The shaman of the Beat Generation . Born 12/3/22 of a French-Canadian family in the factory town of Lowel, Mass, U.S.A.
Variously called the Beat Generations apostle, poet, hero, laureate, saint?  Through his own life story he created  a work of fiction .Soared so high, that in the end unfortunately found his own human skin, then found himself out of his depth in bottled delusion, where the burning ship had become his own.
In his life, he had been part of a culture and people , who burned like meteors.  Jack Kerouac was the Beat Generations very own mythologiser, he and his band of brothers helped  redeem a bit of America's soul. His legacy, like that of the Beat Culture, still alive, still relevant, still taking root.
Along with his friends, Corso, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Ferllinghetti etc, he paved a way for a whole host of dreamers searching for risk, some form of adventure. Colouring our worlds with their crazy visions, their minds in revolt, searching for future's possibilities. Hand in hand with rebellion, against the conventions of the times.
Jack Kerouac in his eighteen books  and many others under Jack's influence were to me important epiphanies on my own path of self discovery. He taught me about "Spontaneous prose." - writing without revising....... He called this " a spontaneous bop prosody."  which is a bit like a jazz musician taking an improvised solo, and taking it as far as he could go, no editing , no pause of breath. Sometimes what is left, has no meaning, a void, but often their is a glimmer, that spells hope, that can become endless, can run off the page, infinite but accessible.
On my bookshelf at home Keroucs influence groans on my bookcases, his own works, sharing spaces with others , that were touched by his inspiration.
Their is something about his tragic, magic life that still resonates, hums, their will always be new connections, outhouses where seeds will forever drift. New poets will emerge, try to experience, the whole wide world, and words will dance, impulsively between time, forever and forever. Some might go out to the garden and pick lunch. Enthusiasims will be shared, thougyhs will be exchanged, and for some the personal will always be political. Passion will ignite. Jack was not immortal, though for me his words are, he left this planet on October 21 1969,  47 years , his  search for inner  lamentation cut tragically short. Still yearning for his mother, but lost in a catholic guilt, that had always consumed him. Stuck in  sad exile, his  mystical breath had grown tired , what was once beautiful  had begun to  drift towards bitterness.
So happy birthday Jack.....your impact continues to be felt....satori breath ... om  switchin on.... tomorrow's dawns chorus echoes, anethetizing the sky.... sentences littered with wild perception, language as  a spell that  leaves us forever hooked. In human existence our contradictions will abound, freeze framed, on the road to nowhere. Kicks joy darkness.

William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, 1953

Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kerouac,

Greeenwich Village, 1957.

Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen show 1958.

A freewheeling Kerouac

interviewed by Fernando Pirano

  

Kerouac : The movie (1985)

Their are numerous pages  and books devoted to Kerouac and the Beats , if you look you will find what your looking for, the searching is part of the journey.Here's a wikilink, better than nothing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_kerouac
and some  of his poetry

POOR SOTTISH KEROUAC

Poor sottish Kerouac with his thumb in his eye
Getting interested in literature again
Through a mote of dust just flew by

How should I know that the dead were born?
Does Master cry?

   The weeds Ophelia wound with
    and Chatterton measured in the moon
     are the weeds of Goethe, Wang Wei,
      and the Golden Courtesans

Imagining recommending a prefecture
       for a man in the madhouse
                      rain
Sleep well, my angel
Make some eggs
The house in the moor
The house is a monument
In the moor of the grave
        Whatever that means
The white dove descended in disguise?

WOMAN

      A woman is beautiful
       but
          you have to swing
          and swing and swing
          and swing like
          a hankerchief in the
                                       wind

149th Chorus

I keep falling  in love
with my mother
I dont want to hurt her
=Of all people to hurt

Every time I see her
she's grown older
But her uniform always
amazes me
For its Dutch simplicity
And the Doll she is.
The doll-like way
she stands
Bowlegged in my dreams,
Waiting to serve me

And I am only an Apache
Smoking Hashi
In old Cabashy
By the Lamp

2111th Chorus

The wheel of the quivering meat
conception
Turns in the Void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,
Mice, Lice, Lizards, rats, roan
Racinghorses, poxy bucolic pigtics,
Horrible unnameable lice of vultures
Murderous attacking dog-armies
Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle
Vast boars and huge gigantic bull
Elephants, rams, eagles, condors,
Pones and Porcupines and Pills-
All the endless conception of living
beings
Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness
Throughout the ten directions of space
Occupying all the quarters in and out,
From supermicroscopic no-bug
To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell
Illuminating the sky of one mind


AND THEN THEY GOT HIM

The Oil of the Olive
Bittersweet taffies
Bittersweet cabbage
Cabbage soup made right
A hunk a grass
In a big barrel
Stunk but Good

163rd Chorus

Left the Tombs to go
  and look at the
  Millions of cut glass-
-a guy clocking them,
as you look you sawllow,
you get so fat
you can't leave the building
-stand straight,
don't tip over, breathe
in such a way yr fatness
deflates, go back to
               the Tombs,
ride the elevator-
             he tips over again'
gazes on the Lights,
eats them, is clocked,
    gets so fat
    he can leave elevator,
has to stand straight
and breathe out the fat -
-hurry back to the Tombs

242nd Chorus

The sound in your mind
   is the first sound
      that you could sing

If you were singing
   at a cash register
       with nothing on yr mind-

But when that grim reper
   comes to lay you
       look out my lady

He will steal all you got
   while you dingle with the dangle
   and having robbed you

Vanish
     Which will be your best reward,
     T'were better to get rid o
     John O'Twill, then sit a mortying
     In this Half Eternity with nobody
    To save the old man being hanged
    In my closet for nothing
    And everybody watches
    When the act is done-

Stop the murder and the suicide!
   All's well!
      I am the Guard