Happy Birthday Charles Bukowski ( 16/8/20 -9/3/94) Barfly, maverick, genius.

Ah Mr Henry Charles Bukowski. This is a man that I owe a lot of debt and gratitude, For those  not familiar, I hail  him for being  one of Americas  greatest poets, novelists and short story writers. His writing that  still continues to influence, one of the main reasons I attempt to write myself.
Born  in Andernach, Germany in 1926,as Heinrich Karl Bukowski,  he came to the United States at the age of three, he began writing at  a young age, and was first published in the 1940's, he would spend the next 20 years, working in  a series of menial jobs, while immersing himself in the world of booze and hard living.
At the age of 49, after years of heavy drinking and debauchery, he struck a deal with Black Sparrow Press that allowed him to quit a work ethic that he was not comfortable with, in a post office, to focus full time on his writing. The result was over 30 poetry collections, 6 novels and two feature films based on his life and works, making him one of the most prolific writers of the 20th Century.
His work was marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships, failure, depression, gambling, life and death, and drinking and more drinking. He was a poet who wrote without pretence, privilege or sheen, embracing what so many of us try to avoid. He was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, and all the senses that he witnessed and devoured.
He lived alongside  his words, alongside the margins of societies edge, with the down and outs, the wrecked, the outsiders, the hopelessly abandoned, the walking wounded. Beyond the literary schools, his work emerged  to break all traditional rules, against all that is conventional, beautifully sinful, uncompromising, but  never hypocritically  righteous, releasing poetry of such passion that I believe still matters today. Utilising free verse and spontanaeity, despite the idolation that was bestowed  upon him, he joined no clichés, refusing acceptance  into any literary community, in true essence of his rebellious spirit.
Blunt and outspoken, he saw the ugliness of the earth, and was not afraid to express his ways of seeing. Remembered because of the rawness and roughness and the many manifestations of ugliness that he saw in life, I try not to forget, the beauty and tenderness that he shared too.
In simple language, he simply used the inner rhythm of his voice, to release what I have realised to be a form of magic, no cleverness or pretence disguised, just a raw undiluted life affirming truth filled with his brutal honesty.
He died in  San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994 at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp,  but his spirit and his words live on.
So today I raise a sweet glass to my lips, unfortunately it's apple juice, i'm currently on the wagon, hey ho, will still gulp down thirstily his words of essential breath, that still continue to fill my heart with hope, in a world driven mad. So thank you kindly Charles, happy birthday. Cheers.

Here is a selection  of some of my favourite poems from his pen. There are so many to choose from. I hope you enjoy.

don't come round, but if you do.

yeah sure, I'll be in unless I'm out
don't knock if the lights are out
or you hear voices or then
I might be reading Proust
if someone  slips Proust under my door
or one of his bones for my stew,
and I can't loan money or
the phone
or what's left of my car
though you can have yesterday's newspaper
an old shirt or a  bologna sandwich
or sleep on the couch
if you don't scream at night
and you can talk about yourself
that's only normal;
hard times are upon us all
only I am not trying to raise a family
to send through Harvard
or buy  hunting land,
I am not aiming high
I am only trying to keep myself alive
just a little longer,
so if you sometimes knock
and I don't answer
and there isn't a woman in here
maybe I have broken my jaw
and I am looking for wire
or I am chasing the butterflies in
my wallpaper,
I mean if I don't answer
I don't answer, and the reason is
that I am not yet ready to kill you,
it means I don't want to talk
I am busy, I am mad, I am glad
or maybe I am stringing up a rope;
so even if the lights are on
and you hear sound
like breathing or praying or singing
a radio or the roll of dice
or typing -
go away, it is not the day
the night, the hour
it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,
I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug,
but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind
that takes some sorting,
and your blue eyes, be they blue
and your hair, if you have some
or your mind - they cannot enter
until the rope is cut or knotted
or until I have shaven into
new mirrors, until the world is
stopped or opened
                            forever

  I am dead but I know
the dead are not like this

the dead can sleep
they don't get up and rage
they don't have a wife.

her white face
like a flower in a closed
window lifts up and
looks at me.


the curtain smokes a cigarette
and a moth dies in a
freeway crash
as I examine the shadows of my
hands.

an owl, the size of a baby clock
rings for me, come on come on
it says as Jerusalem is hustled
down crotch-stained halls.

the 5.a.m, grass is nasal now
in hums of battleships and valleys
in the raped light that brings on
the fascist birds.

I put out the lamp and get in bed
beside her, she thinks I'm there
mumbles a rosy gratitude
so I stretch my legs
to coffin length
get in and swim away
from frogs and fortunes.


well, that's just the way it is . . .

sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted -
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
I get what many will consider as
obnoxious thought
it's still nice to be
Bukowski


no help for that

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled

a space
and even during,
the best moments
and the greatest times

we will know it

we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place  in the heart that
will never be filled
and

we will wait
and
wait

in that space.



safe

the house next door  makes me sad
both man and  wife rise early and go to work
they arrive home early in the evening
they have a young boy and a girl
by 9.p.m all in the lights in the house are out
the next morning both  man and
wife rise early again and  go to
work.
they return in early evening,
By 9 p.m. all the lights are
out

the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.

but I feel them drowning,
and \ I can't save them.

They are surviving.
they are not
homeless
but the price is terrible.

Sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.


alone with everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
cases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

the laughing heart

your life s  your life
don't let it  be clubbed into dank submission
be on the watch
there are ways out
there is a light somewhere,
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch
the gods will offer you chances,
know them,
take them.
you can't beat death in life, sometimes
and the more often you  learn to do it,
the more light there will be
your life is your life
know it while you have it
you are marvellous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

nirvana

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arrived,
the meal was
particularly
good
and  the
coffee,
the waitress was
unlike the woman
he  had
known,
she was unaffected,
there  was a natural
humor which came
from her
the fry cook said
crazy things
the dishwater
in  back
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows
he wanted  to stay
in that café
forever
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was beautiful
there,
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board,
the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here,
but then
he rose and followed
the others  into
the bus
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window,
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills,
the young man
looked straight
forward,
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
or other things,
or they were
reading
or attempting to
sleep,
they had not
noticed
the
magic
the young man
put his head to
one side
closed his eyes,
pretended to
sleep,
there  was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine
the sound  of the
tyres
in the
snow.

one for the shoeshine man

If you see me grinning from
my blue volks
running a yellow light
driving straight into the sun
I will be locked  in the
arms of a
crazy life.

Further Reading:-

Love is a Dog from Hell - Charles Bukowski;1977

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames - Charles Bukowski; 1974;

Play the Piano Drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed
-Charles Bukowski; 1978

Factotum - Charles Bukowski;  1979

Post Office- Charles Bukowski,  1971

Charles Bukowski; Locked in the arms of a crazy life- Howard Sounes; 1996


I have posted poems from  Bukowski, several times over the years, here is a link to two of them ;-

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/charles-bukowski-captain-is-out-to.html

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/charles-bukowski-16829-9394-genius-of.html

Beyond Doubt

Stubbornness can be linked with awkwardness
A refusal to play by rules of engagement,
Keep questioning if you doubt
But it's ok to accept assistance,
Investigate your fears and bias
Learn about new potential,
Mental processes will still define you
Past grinning gaze and teeth that gnash,
Allow tools to sharpen reason
With endeavour  purpose will become known,
Passing obstacles, retaining integrity

Defiiantly keep holding onto your ground,
Accept mistakes as learning opportunity

Fill the night with scents of  cognition,

Go easy in the chisseling chambers of time
Try not to spend those long hours, skulking in the dark.            
                                       

Don't Be a Sucker :Post-WW2 Anti-Fascist Educational Film , 1947

Don't Be a Sucker! is a short educational film produced by the U.S. War Department in 1943 and re-released in 1947. The film depicts the rise of Nazism in Germany and warns Americans against repeating the mistakes of intolerance made in Nazi Germany and avoid falling for fascism. It emphasizes that Americans will lose their country if they let themselves be turned into "suckers" by the forces of fanaticism and hatred. The film was made to make the case for the desegregation of the United States armed forces by simply revealing the connection between prejudice and fascism.
This film is not propaganda. To the contrary, it teaches how to recognize and reject propaganda, as was used by the Nazis to promote to bigotry and intimidation. It shows how prejudice can be used to divide the population to gain power.
It  is very relevant again in the era of Brexit, Farage, Theresa May, Trump ,Charlottesville, VA.  et al. Something that needs to be reposted in these dangerous, broken, fractured times.
I am sharing after the weekend, when my stomach turned aftervarious groups of neo-Nazis including the National Socialist Movement and the Traditionalist Workers Party held an event called 'Unite the Right' in Charlottesville, VA. where they waved Confederate and Nazi flags, brandish weapons, scream “Jews are Satan’s children”
They used the same  dog-whistle politics, citing “freedom of speech,” like Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists in the 1960s, and the National Front, the BNP, and Britain First and the English Defence League that have followed in their wake in Britain.
Due to the hard work of the combined opposition of local antifascists and the numerous groups who made the journey to the city, the rally was called off before any speeches were made. But throughout the day violent clashes continued to take place as antifascists defended the streets against people who were openly identifying themselves as national socialists and ethno-nationalists. Later in the day as the event appeared to be coming to a close, James Alex Field Jr, who was seen holding a shield with American Vanguard, drove a vehicle at speed into a group of antifascists, which included a contingent of Wobblies, Black Lives Matter, and Democratic Socialists of America. Though different sources are saying slightly different things, it appears that 19 people were badly injured and one woman who bravely came out ro demonstrate was killed, she was Heather Heyer, a local Charlottesville antifascist .Rest in Power
Now the racists/Nazis are currently getting  all upset and whining about losing their jobs, .too bad, idiots. Their  bosses and the companies  they worked for also have the right to choose not to be associated with racists and Nazis just as the sane people of the world have the right to identify and ostracize them.
Frighteningly though there are white nationalist enablers actually in the White House. They demonize immigrants and Muslims. They boast about their close ties to the alt-right  They refuse to condemn far-right violence and terror by name. And in one case, they’ve literally helped to establish a political party with European neo-Nazis.Their presence in the White House emboldens neo-Nazis and brings their ideology into the mainstream.
They are Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka. It's time for the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to show them the door.
The hatred unleashed by President Trump’s campaign is not new to this country or to the world. We’ve seen it before, and we know that it will not be vanquished just by firing these three men, or even by the eventual end of the Trump presidency.
But firing them will send an important message that the White House will not allow these dangerous ideologies to fester within the president's closest circle of advisers. It’s a first step , and one that General Kelly needs to take now.
As long as Bannon and co. are still in the administration, any White House condemnations of white supremacy will be ultimately ineffective and inadequate. Their proximity to the most powerful person in the world is shameful  and dangerous.
We  afford to  sit by in silence while White nationalists, neo-Nazis, the KKK and the Trump administration terrorize communities of color, Muslims, immigrants, the LGBT community, Jewish people and people with disabilities.
We don't have a Muslim problem. We don't have a Jewish problem We have a Fascism problem. Stop calling it alt-right. Start shutting it down. We can't afford to be suckers any more.
Please share the word.

Anti Fascist Poem

                                            Dedicated to Heather Heyer R.I.P

There should be no platform
For bigoted people with fascist views,
It's time to block and remove the space
That promotes superiority of white race,
Alt right equals Nazi, it's as simple as this
Provoking Nazi salutes, spreading hate.

Yesterday Heather Heyer was murdered
In Charlottesville, USA, this occurred,
During an anti fascist demonstration
Slain by stagnated forces of negation,
Enough is enough people cry
We do not forget, we do not forgive!

Fascism does not arrive as a friend
Already using the language of persecution,
Daily threatening minorities and the vulnerable
Spreading message of repugnance and hate,
Harassing, prejudiced and spreading fear.
They will never be given a welcome here.

40 years ago the fascists were beaten
At the battle of Lewisham,
Intolerance was not accepted
Today we must face them again,
Standing together, proud and strong
We will resist, they shall not pass.

The above poem can now also be found here too :-

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/anti-fascist-poem-by-dave-rendle/

Demand freedom for Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin Now

Prominent leftist leader, feminist, human rights defender and Member of the Palestinian parliament Khalida Jarrar and Khilam Saafin, president of the Union of Palestinian Women's Committes and prominent struggler for the liberation of Palestinian women and the Palestinian have currently been held without being charged or tried for 36 days. They both face indefinite detention without charge or trial.
The ‘arrest’ of the two women should be seen in light of the Israeli policy to deprive the Palestinian people of its leadership. In Palestine and internationally, there has  already been a furious response. Their administrative detention orders can be renewed indefinitely and with no prior notice.
They  have been held without charge or trial since 2 July. According to Addameer Association’s lawyers who represent both women, the Israel military commander issued a three-month administrative detention order against Khitam Saafin on 9 July. The decision was confirmed by a military judge on 12 July. Khalida Jarrar, who is an elected parliamentarian, was given a six-month administrative detention order on 12 July and a military judge confirmed the decision on 18 July. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely.
Both women were arrested by Israeli soldiers during pre-dawn raids on their homes on 2 July. According to eyewitnesses, at 3:30am that day, between 40 and 50 armed Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Khitam Saafin's home in Beitunia, a neighbourhood of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, in order to arrest her. On the same morning at around 4am, a similar Israeli military raid was carried out to arrest Khalida Jarrar in her home in Ramallah. In the raid, the soldiers also confiscated Khalida Jarrar’s phone, tablet and the hard drive of her home computer.
Both women were first held in Ofer military compound near Ramallah and then transferred to HaSharon prison inside Israel in the afternoon of 2 July. The transfer of both women to HaSharon prison violates international humanitarian law; detainees from occupied territories must be detained in the occupied territory, and not in the territory of the occupying power. Israeli authorities accuse each woman of membership in an illegal organisation, claims they both deny.

As with all cases of administrative detention, the “evidence” against Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin is secret, and neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to review it. This violates a central tenet of fair trial standards.
Khitam Saafin, aged 54, is the president of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, an organization that works for community-based economic and social development of women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has been an outspoken activist for Palestinian women’s economic, national, and social liberation for decades who has spoken internationally and participated in many worldwide events, including the World Social Forum, linking women’s struggles internationally with the struggle of Palestinian women for national and social liberation.
Khalida Jarrar, aged 54, is an elected Palestinian parliamentarian and outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and Palestinian security cooperation with the Israeli military. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Addameer Association, a human rights organization, and an appointed member of the Palestinian Higher National Committee to Follow-up with the International Criminal Court. She has been a strong advocate for the rights of Palestinian prisoners and their families. She has been subjected to decades of harassment and intimidation by the Israeli authorities, including a travel ban imposed since 1998. The ban was lifted once for a couple of days in 2010 to allow her to travel for medical testing in Jordan for a serious chronic medical issue that she continues to suffer from. Israeli authorities have repeatedly declared her a security risk, but did not charge her with any criminal offence until April 2015. On 2 April 2015, she was arrested by Israeli soldiers at her home in Ramallah, and placed under administrative detention. On 15 April 2015, at the review hearing of her administrative detention order, the military prosecution brought 12 charges against her relating to membership of the banned political party Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and incitement to kidnap Israeli soldiers. She has vehemently denied this accusation and her lawyers have claimed that it has no basis. Following an unfair trial in an Israeli military court, Khalida Jarrar was convicted of four of the charges, including incitement. She served 14 months in prison and was released in June 2016 with a five-year suspended sentence.
Israel’s use of administrative detention of Palestinians is widespread and has led to mass hunger strikes by Palestinian detainees and prisoners, protesting against the conditions in which they are held and being detained without charge. Administrative detention, ostensibly introduced as an exceptional measure to detain people who pose an extreme and imminent danger to security is used by Israel as an alternative to the criminal justice system to arrest, charge and prosecute people suspected of criminal offences, or to detain people who should not have been arrested at all. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely and Amnesty International believes that some Palestinians held in administrative detention by Israel are prisoners of conscience, held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association.
According to Israeli NGO, HaMoked—Center for the Defence of the Individual,http://www.hamoked.org/home.aspx Israel is holding 465 administrative detainees without charge or trial as of August 2017.For decades now Israel has used its cruel administrative policies to trample over the rights o Palestinian detainees. Instead o indefinitely detaining Palestinians without charge or trial, I believe Israel should end its use of administrative  detention, which inflicts huge emotional suffering on detainees and their families, placing them in a permanent state of uncertainty.
The arrests of Khalida and Khiltam represent an attack on the political activity and popular organization of the Palestinian people and a blatant assault on the Palestinians women's movement. Therefore, it is necessary that the people of the world support and demand their immediate release, and all the thousands of Palestinian prisoners  of conscience behind Israeli jails.
The Palestinian people have the right to struggle against the occupation of their land and to use all means available under international law for their lives and their country.Israel must end illegal detentions, and all detainees must be charged and have access to a fair trial.
For a Free Palestine!  Solidarity with Palestinian women and the Palestinian people! From the rivers to the sea Palestine will be free.

Please write immediately in English, Hebrew or your own language calling on the Israeli authorities to:


Immediately release Khitam Saafin and Khalida Jarrar and all other administrative detainees or to promptly charge them with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and bring them to trial in conformity with international trial standards;Take immediate steps to end the practice of administrative detention.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 19 SEPTEMBER 2017 TO:

Minister of Defence
Avigdor Leiberman
Ministry of Defence
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel
Email: minister@mod.gov.il
pniot@mod.gov.il
Fax: +972 3 691 6940

Salutation: Dear Minister
Commander of the IDF – West Bank
Major-General Roni Numa
GOC Central Command
Military Post 02367, Battalion 877
Israel Defence Forces, Israel
Fax: +972 2 530 5741, +972 2 530 5724

Salutation: Dear Major-General Roni Numa
And copies to:
Minister of Public Security
Gilad Erdan
Kiryat Hamemshala
PO Box 18182
Jerusalem 91181, Israel
Fax: +972 2 584 7872
Email: gerdan@knesset.gov.il

Salutation: Dear Minister
Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.

HIS EXCELLENCY MR MARK REGEV, Embassy of Israel
2 Palace Green Kensington W8 4QB, 020 7957 9500

There is also a petition one could sign here :-

https://www.change.org/p/israeli-occupation-forces-free-khalida-jarrar-and-khitam-saafin-now

LOWKEY - GHOSTS OF GRENFELL (ft. MAI KHALIL)

Rapper Lowkey, a North Kensington resident affected by the Grenfell disaster, brings the community together to call for justice with his latest release, Ghosts of Grenfell. Many of the local residents, key players in the community generated relief and support efforts, are featured in the accompanying video, demanding to know where are all those friends and neighbours who are still “missing”. It is probably the most powerful , emotive, apposite song you will hear all summer.
The hard-hitting track pays tribute to victims of the devastating fire in June and lashes out at the “political class, so servile to corporate power”
.It asks: “Did they die or us?” and includes the words: “People crying in the street, watching the burning of their kinfolk/Grenfell Tower now historically a symbol.
“People reaching form their windows, screaming for their lives/Pleading with their cries, trying to reason with the skies… every single person in that building was a hero.
“The street is like a graveyard, tombstone lurching over us… now it’s flowers for the dead, printing posters for the missing.”
The second half of the five-minute track becomes an appeal to “whom it may concern at the Queen’s Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea” for the whereabouts of people still missing after the devastating fire in June, with contributors holding up named images of residents who have not been found. The song finishes: “The blood is on your hands, there’ll be ashes on your grave, like a phoenix we will rise.”
Hopefully thisvideo will contribute to the wider call for justice.
Lowkey – Ghosts of Grenfell, featuring vocals of Mai Khalil and Asheber. For September 2017 tour info and tickets: https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/...
Produced by Quincy Tones and Jo Caleb. Mixed by Guy Buss.
Film – Exec Producers: Lowkey, Fahim Alam and Tariq Chow; Directed by Fahim Alam; Director of Photography: Jeffrey Celis

Please – Donate to the Grenfell Tower Appeal and support the Justice 4 Grenfell campaign

http://justice4grenfell.org/

A Beautiful Silence

Freedom improvisations
Dense smoke, shivers down spine,
We travel on up to a blessed place
Drunk with possibilities,
Midnight we are lifted off the ground
I feel like staying all night,
Small town romances
Lead to wonderful occurrences,
Soft melodies sweep among the landscapes
Painting the world with happiness,
With satori breaths, and sweaty palms
We stretch out our mortality,
As the sun comes up
We are shapeless and crazy,
Dawns gentle caress, touches us sweetly
The returnless twist that shapes our paths,
As the morning comes on down
And boundaries are set aside,
Surrender, it is so effortless
" just like that! "
Could this be paradise?
No this is not the real word,
Adrift in a sky of random moments
All these things have a beautiful silence.

Daily Mail Poem

Hate-filled media stories are creating a violent culture of hostility towards migrants and refugees.
Given the rise in violent hate crime that we’ve seen in recent months, we need to stand up to the parts of the media that are helping legitimise racist and xenophobic attitudes. That means challenging the Daily Mail. Take the pledge now and stand up against the divisive media narrative in the Daily Mail.

https://act.globaljustice.org.uk/pledge-boycott-daily-mail-0


Daily Mail Poem

I pour scorn on its petty margins
Its distortion of realities silhouette,
The daily shame, should be its new name
Cross out all its lies, we'd be left with empty pages,
Drinking toasts to underbellies of nastiness
It sharpens its pen on bile,
With agenda of spreading hatred
Is enough to scramble your brain,.
A bully that's scared of everything
Its dark heart  distorts reality,
With script of venom and division
In truth, worth nothing at all,
Its pinning sense of intolerance
Is a message I don't want to hear,
A tabloid  rag not fit for the gutter
Full of twisted opinion and bad news
Designed to leave us disheartened,
Don't know how anyone can call it a friend.

.

72 years on :The World marks anniversary of Hiroshima Bomb

72 years ago today at 8.15 a.m , the city of Hiroshima was destroyed with an Atomic bomb. In a matter of minutes , hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives in this cowardly attack.
A bright summer morning turned to dark twilight with smoke and dust rising in the mushroom cloud, dead and injured covering the ground, begging desperately for water and receiving no medical care at all. The spreading firestorm and the foul stench of burnt flesh filled the air.
Three days later the city of Nagasaki met the same fate.
Many survivors of the nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki have died in recent years with their dreams of nuclear abolition unfulfilled. Their motto was, “abolition in our lifetime”.
Across the world people will join commemorations to mark this tragic event. People have not forgotten those who died as a result of these nuclear attacks and are working together to ensure it never happens again. Candle lighting, poetry readings and picnics will be taking place across the day.
On this poignant anniversary, we must reaffirm our determination to campaign for a world without nuclear weapons.This year is even more significant, as it comes on the heels of the United Nations successful vote for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. In early July, 122 nations in the UN General Assembly passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.This is a historic breakthrough. On 20 September, this treaty will open for signature at the UN, and all governments are invited to join it.  We should not forget that the U.S, Russia and China and 6 other countries still possess over 15,000 Nuclear weapons. The vast majority are magnitudes more powerful than those dropped on Japan.
You can find out more information about the treaty and the signing and ratification process on www.nuclearban.org
 Will you help us get your government to sign the treaty?
 You can send an email to your government here, telling them you want them to sign the treaty!

Hiroshima : An Acrostic Poem

Horror was dropped  on August 6, 1945
Incinerating thousands of innocents,
Reason evaporated,after  deadly poison shed
One bomb released left devastation
Senseless slaughter, the scorched sin of humanity
Haunting vapours of pitiful sorrow
Insanity blossoming with  black rain
Murderous atom shattered spirits
American weapon of evil, B- 29 Enola Gay.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822) - Revolutionary Romantic Poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Revolutionary Romantic poet was born on this day in 1792 in Broadbridge Heath near Horsham in Sussex  into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley, was a Sussex squire and a member of Parliament.

At ten, he left home to study at Syon House Academy and just two years later enrolled at Eton College. Within his first year at Eton, he had already published two novels and two volumes of poetry. Although born into the ruling class himself, Shelley was quick to relinquish his birth-right  and ally himself with the ordinary people with whom he identified and whose cause he identified.
In 1810, Shelley enrolled at the University of Oxford. But after just a few months, he was called to the office of a dean who demanded he acknowledge his contribution to an atheist pamphlet. He denied authoring any part of it but was expelled.

Shelley's beliefs were controversial to those who surrounded him, he was  an individualist and non conformist idealist who rejected the institutions of family, church, marriage and the Christian faith and rebelled against all forms of tyranny, he espoused atheism, vegetarianism as well as political and sexual freedom.
He eloped with a 16-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook, but soon lost interest and became interested in a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Hitchener, who became the inspiration for his first important poem, Queen Mab  which became known as the ‘Chartist’s Bible’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/shelley/1813/queen-mab.htm
Despite this, he remained with Harriet and they had two children together, but  he left her for another woman before the second was born. The other woman was Mary Godwin, who he had fallen hopelessly in love with,the daughter of famed political activist and writer William Godwin and  the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft  who was responsible for the work A Vindication of the Rights of Women . Mary herself was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known nowadays for her Gothic novel Frankenstein.
The two fled Godwin, who disapproved of their relationship, to go to Paris. In 1816, Shelley accompanied Mary on a trip to Switzerland for the summer with Mary's stepsister Claire
who was dating Lord Byron at the time. Shelley became close with the Romantic poet, and wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty upon his return. Not long after, he took a trip through the French Alps with Byron and later wrote Mont Blanc. During their time in Switzerland it would be the catalyst too for Mary;s own classic novel Frankenstein, a tremendous  tale in itself that I hope to return and write about at a later date,
Upon returning to England, it was discovered that Shelley's wife, Harriet, had committed suicide. This left Shelley free to marry Mary. However, he lost custody of his children when the courts ruled they would be better off with foster parents. Shelley and Mary moved to Buckinghamshire where they befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt.
Shelley, this Romantic  poet, is also called a rebel for his idea of revolution in his poetry. As The French Revolution dominated all politics in those years, unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned the ideals of the revolution, though he was appalled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. Shelley only experienced the revolution at second hand through, but when he looked back, all he could see was the flame of revolution still flickering in spite of the terror, war and disease. His long poem, The Revolt of Islam, http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/2779/ written at the height of his powers, is clear on one matter above all else,that the ideas of progress, which inspired the revolution, will triumph once again. Here is the preface to it :-

The preface to The Revolt of Islam:
Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
From the near schoolroom, voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes —
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
And then I clasped my hands and looked around —
— But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground —
So without shame I spake:—‘I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise
Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold...

Is it that now my inexperienced fingers
But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?
Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers
Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again,
Though it might shake the Anarch Custom’s reign,
And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway
Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain
Reply in hope — but I am worn away,
And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

In the "Ode to The West Wind" he desires a social change and the West Wind is to his symbol of change. This poem, written in iambic pentameter, begins with three stanzas describing the wind's effects upon earth, air and ocean. The last two stanzas are Shelley speaking directly to the wind, asking for its power, to lift  him like a leaf, or a cloud and make him his companion in its wanderings. He asks the wind to take his thoughts and spread them all over the world so that the youth are awoken with his ideas.
At  the end of the poem he is seen very much optimistic when he say that his revolutionary ideas must bring a change and the new order will be established. The wind blows through the jungle and produces music out to the dead leaves. Shelley requests it to create music out of his heart and to inspire him to write great poetry, which may create a revolution in the hearts of men . He wants the Wind to scatter his revolutionary message in the world, just as it scatters cries and sparks from a burning fire. His thoughts may not be as fiery as they once were, but they still have the power to inspire men. He tells the Wind to take message to sleeping world, that if winter comes, spring cannot be far behind.  It is at the very darkest of times, Shelley seems to suggest, that change takes place; that, in effect, things must get worse before they can possible get better. After bad  days come good days. Here he says, " If winter comes , can spring be far behind?"

Ode to the West Wind

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?                         


We also find Shelley’s revolutionary zeal in ode “To A Skylark”. According to Shelley, the bird, Skylark, that pours spontaneous melody from heaven and sours higher and higher can never be a bird. It is for the poet, a joyful spirit that begins its upward flight at sunrise and becomes invisible at evening like the stars of the sky that become invisible in day light. Moreover, it is compared with the beans of the moon whose presence is rather felt than seen. It's a heavenly bird and by singing it spreads its influence through the world.
In the opening stanza, the bind is seen as a "blithe spirit" that "pourest thy full heart/ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." The words "Pourest thy full heart" mean that the bird pours out its heart in song and with "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art", Shelley refers to the spontaneous flow of music which comes from the Skylark. There is nothing artificial in its music, it overflows profusely from its heart. And Shelley says as a spirit of revolution it spreads it revolutionary message as the moon spreads its beam.

To a Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!                         

Then there is The Masque of Anarchy, which he penned in the wake of the Peterloo massacre, which ends with this fiery appeal to the working class: "

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are manythey are few."

It is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world. The Chartists knew it in the 19th century and so did the striking women garment workers in 1909 New York. It was chanted on demonstrations in Tiananmen Square (1989) and Tahrir Square (2011).The last lines were adapted to ‘We Are Many’ by the campaign against the Poll Tax. In February 2003 a ‘great assembly’ took place ,the huge anti-war demo in Hyde Park which echoed around the world in the first global protest. Jeremy Corbyn was one of the speakers on that occasion, and it is only fitting that he should turn to Shelley to give a voice to his campaign and  at end of the election campaign on June 7, 2017, Corbyn gave  a speech in Islington which ended with him quoting from it.again.
It  is loved so much  because,  it reminds us to remember that we are not alone but part of the vast majority, and that being many we can win.But we don’t always do that. For most of our lives we feel fragmented, cut off ,we are divided from each other by ethnicity, sex, age or some other way in which the ruling class assures us that we are isolated and different from those we should be united with. When we are on a demo, when we know we are many, we see the truth of the lines and we know that we can rise like lions.
Here is a link to an earlier post on Peterloo and this great poem :-
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-peterloo-massacre-and-percy-bysshe.html
Today, Percy Bysshe Shelley is an emblem of the Romantic movement and one of the lights of English culture, his poems memorized by schoolchildren, his life honored with a memorial in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. That wasn’t always the case, however. In his own day, Shelley was widely loathed, seen as an immoral atheist and a traitor to his class for his revolutionary politics. His work was damned as well, receiving scathing reviews rooted as much in disapproval of his politics and personal life as in the verse itself.  Some of his reviews give a fair indication of what the literary and political establishment thought of him at the time: "Mr Shelley ... would overthrow the constitution ... would pull down our churches and burn our bibles ... marriage he cannot endure."

The reviewers hated him because of his political opinions, just as many academics came to adore him in later years despite, or more rarely because of, his politics. During his lifetime, because of his revolutionary politics, he had the utmost difficulty in getting anything published - Queen Mab did not sell any copies at all. During all his life, this "greatest of English lyrical poets" made precisely £40 from his writing, and most of that was from a novel he wrote while still at school. 

It is true that Shelley left behind him a trail of destruction, his personal relations were tainted by an unshakeable conviction that his views were always right, and many people who became close to him suffered as a result of that intimacy. And yet Shelley the poet was capable of expressing in memorable language ideas that were shocking and anarchic at the time but which have since become part of our common beliefs about the basic right of the individual to freedom  and to this  day his words and poetry continue to endure.

Shelley’s short life-story is wild, outrageous, shocking, revolutionary and unconventional, a

revolutionary reformer who wanted  to change the old order and to find universal happiness, who  lest we forget  was also a great Nature lover,  merging himself in the beauty of the world around him.

On July 6, 1822,  his small, custom-built sailing boat (dubbed Don Juan) during a stormy voyage sank off the coast of Italy.Shelley drowned a moth short of 30 . His body was washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the presence of Lord Byron he was burned on the beach.
Shelley’s ashes were later buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, and the stone bears the inscription:

"Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

Unhappily, Shelley's  remains suffered  not only a sea change but a variety of other transformations before arriving at the cemetery, A number of romanticized paintings depict Shelley's cremation the young poet lies serenely atop his bier, surrounded by his friends (including Byron) and grieving widow Actually, what was left  of Shelley's body was hardly in any condition to be painted. The corpse had washed up some ten days after the drowning and all exposed flesh was gone, Shelley was identified by his socks, trousers  and a volume of Keat's poetry in his pocket. The body was then covered in quicklime ad temporarily buried in a shallow ,grave until permission for cremation  could be acquired  Mary did not attend the cremation, Byron was there for a short time but got nauseous and had to leave,

Shelley's heart that remained entire was given to Mary Shelley.and was found among her things after her dearh,So while Shelley's ashes are over in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, his heart  is in England.

More than anyone after Shelley's death it was the grieving Mary Shelley  who kept his everlasting legacy alive, In concluding  it can be said that Shelley was a true revolutionary poet whose message bears the ideas of revolution, whose powerful words still carry a marked impression on our world.

Paul Foot Speaks! The Revolutionary Percy Shelley. Paul's remarkable 1981 talk to London's Marxism Conference.

Further Reading :-

Red Shelley - Paul Foot, Bookmarks, 1984

Shelley, A life Story - Edmund Blunden, 1946

Jacqueline Mulhallen, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary (Pluto 2015)