Adrian Mitchell (24/10/32 -20/12/08) - Guns

a sense of proportion.....

                                                       They seem to have all the guns,
                                                       Most of the guns in Britain are
                                                       British/American government property
                                                       Police property
                                                       Or the property of gentry-gangsters
                                                       Who are British/American government property.

                                                       Nobody I love has a gun. Not in Britain.

                                                       The rich are rich because they fuck people about.
                                                       They call it the Quality of Leadership
                                                       And they have special school-machines producing
                                                       Leaders to fuck people about.

                                                       People with guns
                                                       Tend to fuck other people about.
                                                       The people they tend to fuck about
                                                       Are people who don't have guns.

                                                       None of my friends has a machine-gun ready,
                                                       Let alone a tank.

                                                       A few yards ahead of us, a row of truncheons.
                                                       Behind the truncheons, rifles,
                                                       Behind the rifles, grenades,
                                                       Behind the grenades, machine-guns,
                                                       Behind the machine-guns, tanks,
                                                       Behind the tanks, bombs,
                                                       And behind the bombs - the rich.

                                                       The rich are as stupid as guns,
                                                       They will be killed with their own guns.
                                                       In every capital
                                                       The fucked about of the world are taking arms.
                                                       The people of the world
                                                       We are going to take it.

                                     
                                             
                            


                             
  

Artscape: Poets of Protest - Manal Al Sheikh: Fire Won't Eat Me Up

Poet, editor and activist Manal Al Sheik, says it is now lethal for her to be a writer in her home town of Ninewh, Iraq. We follow her as she prepares a new poem for a public reading in Norwegian.

Happy Autumn Equinox

Every day, the season air humming, for some can be numbing, walking on the edge..... beyond the weight, voices talk, voices share, navigate between imperfect intervals and mornings rush..... towards a mutlitude of possibility. Shadows become a thousand words, and the roaring continues , the wind is never silent.


Happy Autumn Equinox

heddwch/peace.....

Nick Clegg Says Sorry - The Remix

I like it when people say  sorry, it can't be easy.But sometimes it just happens to come a little too bloody late. Is this for the country or is it for his party's conference this weekend. His original apology did not sound very heartfelt either, I prefer this version
Not sure if it will change anybodies opinions about him though. Don't think he's goin to win any popularity contests any time soon, either. ****R

Kelvin MacKenzie doorstepped over Hillsborough

Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie declines to answer question from Channel 4 news  reporter Alex Thomson on  his record over the papers coverage of Hillsborough football tragedy.
This video has now been watched on youtube over 64,000 times.
Here's a response to it.

Kelvin Mackenzie Dorstopped Remixed

Sarah Ahmed (b.1969) ) On Solidarity

" Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves committment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies we do live on common ground."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Ahmed

Mgicineni Noki  at Markan Mine, addresssing his comrades in an act of solidarity  before he and 34 of his fellow miners were shot dead.

Jack Clemo (11/3/1916- 25/7/94) - Outsider

                                          image, Tricia Porter, National Portrait Galllery
                                                                            1975

Outsider

You are so civilised, so alert
In your tunnel, arching the drilled brain;
So  desterous in control
Of the tricky signals, the obvious gain.
I am outside, a truant soul,
Deep in the Word, stung by the dirt
Of primal clues which you disdain.

I cannot be a comrade
To you who claim your victory
In affliction's craft and trade.
I am angry with your tunnel life,
For a free wind, out here, storms the base
Of resignation, topples the perch of suffering.
Slits like a knife
The bladdered boast, the wan, competent face;
And it seeks you also, but you hide from its sting.

I pioneer for you,
But the gulf is too wide
And you cannot see my clue.
I do not have to overcome,
I do not face the worst, I do not accept:
I just speed home
With no flakes of darkness admitted or defied.

Your skilled courage is not for me:
I have overstepped.
By God's grace, some mark or boundary
Where faith branches higher
And its vagabond thrills never cool.
I am wild with expectation, full of strange fire
That would scorch a mundane tool.

You miss that fire through your efficiency:
Your triumphs only prove
You are too sleek for miracle. It takes
An unkempt faith to make a mountain move:
Unsheltered savage trust, bare to the mud,
Till your ego's clay-seam quakes
And the kingdom seethes in your blood.
This fierce old pilgrim's way I have known,
But you despise it, so I sing alone.

Reprinted from Penguin Modern Poets 6
Jack Clemo, Edward Lucie-Smith, George MacBeth
1964


On a personal note I lost my faith many moons ago
but still believe in tomorrow, but hey that's another story.