Roll Call

 

 Looking at numbers again; a chill evening, the first for the summer.

 

Windows closed and breezes staunched, I delve into this garage sale lap top and take it through its paces - slowly. I don't want to break a sweat. 

 

Perusing the statistics at HBS I begin to muse over their evolution and meaning. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down on YouTube through a pair of hard-wired JBLs. That and a glass of cheap Riesling keep me quiet. 

 

The day and hour seem pensive. The week has been, too. The light ever more golden, evening comes too soon. The season is changing, though still I may remain as others come and go.

 

 

 

For all time visitor rolls to the blog, the USA takes the lead. Not surprising in itself despite trying to hide my accent. The stridency must give it away.

 

An individualist trait some perceive.  Not my first misspelling, either.

 

I recall Melissa's Red Dragonfly inspire's for its passion and unique view, Carole MacCrury for her lyricism, gentle Adelaide her patient prose,  the consistent form of Bill Kenney as well the many guises of Angie Werren.  Then Hortensia, John and I, her frailty and his courage,  transcendent through all things, comparing notes and symptoms, linking verse for verse.

I'm too immature to contend for most acceptances to have rubbed shoulders with many more.

Once near the top, Ukraine and Russia exchange rank and move down two places as Germany leaps above. I'm reminded of lovely Valeria, with the hat I once complimented, one of two ex-pats and a loner writing renku. And young Leon't whom I befriended, not his real name, after he and his shit-poster buddy trolled me online. We've lost all of any contact nigh on five years. Funny to mention in third person, don't you think?

I seem to recall two Russians at the helm of British haiku, both different as night and day. One a staunch Atlantacist, convinced of the West's supremacy who would hear nothing critical of his chosen Knight exceptionale'.  The other, likely a refugee from the Anglo/American banking cartel's attempt to strip Russia of every resource possible. Despite the inevitable failure, they haven't stopped trying.

Some would call this a form of insanity.

Ramona Linke was my first contact in Germany, subject for a feature in A Hundred Gourds, distinctive for more than its place in the alphabet I had hoped, since I rarely contributed again. Does she still toil over easel and pen? Simone Busch is online; I should look there.

Then there's a gentleman, Kamphuis, I believe, of some ill repute who ran a server from an abandoned bunker somewhere, only to be visited by three hundred storm police for crimes most egregious. He forgot to review his client's content. We have laws for that, you know.

 

A devoted coder, he prefers to remain Anonymous. His observations in real time were fascinating throughout the emerging growth of social media. Vowing to never be banned was not quite the same ever again.

The real Schadenfreude belongs to Singapore. That many clicks, extending the blog's visibility, tells me a keyboard locked shut on someone's device. I don't feel I've earned them. The added restrictions, I should say.

France is a surprise. I didn't think they understood the language. But I'm projecting. 'lest it was that exuberant Vietnamese, his haiku memes as loud as he was affable.

 

China seems a constant, unseen behind a wall of willows, yellow dust engulfing pacifists and provocateurs alike. 

I argued with a Swede over milliliters rise in glacial lake water once. A naturalist, as well an herbalist, he could not approve my Denialism of the climate science. They do say that Al Gore will appear and whisk you away in the night, never to be seen again. I had heard of the Blood and Gore.

.
Yet he lauded my stance for trolling the Atlantic Council, on its own page, no less.

We both must have been as high as kites.

There are a number of fine poets in Canada. I've collaborated with a few, wittingly or not. Nearly lost on an expanse of lake, I once guided a small watercraft home by identifying familiar trees noted on our way out. 

 

 Let it be obvious Tanka has never been my forte. 

 

 Canada has never overtly displayed Colonialist ambitions, although the numbers, and recent history, juxtapose a tendency to reign over "Others". 

(to be con't)

 

two clocks

 

too early, or late?

two clocks in the village

tic-toc in the haze

fawn

Leo rammed the Grader through all the gears, racing the fire to the county line. Just in time he cut a swath parallel the gravel track - the fire had jumped one road already. There was nothing to stop it between there and Williston, fifteen miles away. // It had rained only once that entire Summer, the day I hit the fawn on County 5, in a convoy, fiddling with my wiper blades. A bad omen. The Honduran crew finished him with a pen knife, his blood soaking into the infernal dust. That night, back at the Man Camp, they feasted on its haunches under a moon turned pink by the Earth's contents, broken to pieces and churned into the air.

the heat of mid day returns to the sky -
it lingers there well into the night

Black Moon

黒い月私の足跡が落ちた葉で失われた


footprints lost
under the fallen leaves
Black Moon

Black Moon - 黒い月

黒い月私の足跡が落ちた葉で失われた


Black Moon
my footprints were lost
in the fallen leaves

Reality of War

Of course, war and the large military establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.

War is like a fire in the human community, one whose fuel is living beings. I find this analogy especially appropriate and useful. Modern warfare waged primarily with different forms of fire, but we are so conditioned to see it as thrilling that we talk about this or that marvelous weapon as a remarkable piece of technology without remembering that, if it is actually used, it will burn living people. War also strongly resembles a fire in the way it spreads. If one area gets weak, the commanding officer sends in reinforcements. This is throwing live people onto a fire. But because we have been brainwashed to think this way, we do not consider the suffering of individual soldiers. No soldiers want to be wounded or die. None of his loved ones wants any harm to come to him. If one soldier is killed, or maimed for life, at least another five or ten people - his relatives and friends - suffer as well. We should all be horrified by the extent of this tragedy, but we are too confused.

Frankly as a child, I too was attracted to the military. Their uniform looked so smart and beautiful. But that is exactly how the seduction begins. Children starts playing games that will one day lead them in trouble. There are plenty of exciting games to play and costumes to wear other than those based on the killing of human beings. Again, if we as adults were not so fascinated by war, we would clearly see that to allow our children to become habituated to war games is extremely unfortunate. Some former soldiers have told me that when they shot their first person they felt uncomfortable but as they continued to kill it began to feel quite normal. In time, we can get used to anything.

It is not only during times of war that military establishments are destructive. By their very design, they were the single greatest violators of human rights, and it is the soldiers themselves who suffer most consistently from their abuse. After the officer in charge have given beautiful explanations about the importance of the army, its discipline and the need to conquer the enemy, the rights of the great mass of soldiers are most entirely taken away. They are then compelled to forfeit their individual will, and, in the end, to sacrifice their lives. Moreover, once an army has become a powerful force, there is every risk that it will destroy the happiness of its own country.

There are people with destructive intentions in every society, and the temptation to gain command over an organisation capable of fulfilling their desires can become overwhelming. But no matter how malevolent or evil are the many murderous dictators who can currently oppress their nations and cause international problems, it is obvious that they cannot harm others or destroy countless human lives if they don't have a military organisation accepted and condoned by society. As long as there are powerful armies there will always be danger of dictatorship. If we really believe dictatorship to be a despicable and destructive form of government, then we must recognize that the existence of a powerful military establishment is one of its main causes.

Militarism is also very expensive. Pursuing peace through military strength places a tremendously wasteful burden on society. Governments spend vast sums on increasingly intricate weapons when, in fact, nobody really wants to use them. Not only money but also valuable energy and human intelligence are squandered, while all that increases is fear.

I want to make it clear, however, that although I am deeply opposed to war, I am not advocating appeasement. It is often necessary to take a strong stand to counter unjust aggression. For instance, it is plain to all of us that the Second World War was entirely justified. It "saved civilization" from the tyranny of Nazi Germany, as Winston Churchill so aptly put it. In my view, the Korean War was also just, since it gave South Korea the chance of gradually developing democracy. But we can only judge whether or not a conflict was vindicated on moral grounds with hindsight. For example, we can now see that during the Cold War, the principle of nuclear deterrence had a certain value. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to assess al such matters with any degree of accuracy. War is violence and violence is unpredictable. Therefore, it is better to avoid it if possible, and never to presume that we know beforehand whether the outcome of a particular war will be beneficial or not.

For instance, in the case of the Cold War, through deterrence may have helped promote stability, it did not create genuine peace. The last forty years in Europe have seen merely the absence of war, which has not been real peace but a facsimile founded dear. At best, building arms to maintain peace serves only as a temporary measure. As long as adversaries do not trust each other, any number of factors can upset the balance of power. Lasting peace can assure secured only on the basis of genuine trust.


His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet


https://www.dalailama.com/messages/world-peace/the-reality-of-war

three day moon

still a few stalks
by the windbreak in the snow --
three day moon

the dog makes a beeline
for the fox's spoor

in the villager's panic
torches and pitchforks
passed all around

she posts a view of blossoms
one last time


Bandit, Rice


` '';;;;'' yotsumono

The Sun Never Sets

A Place Where The Sun Never Sets __ cyber.monday

November :: yotsumono

November --
countless raindrops to measure
the length of a day

a veil of frost
tints Johari's window

ranks of children
prone and obedient
to a flickering image

Lebensraum
a none too distant dream



` ` ;;;;;

Dowager's moon

Dowager's moon --
 each coin accounted
but for one

the flower thief

this silence gives the flower thief pause ...



closing time

accounts

a pressed mum
falls from its pages
one to ninety nine
a list of accounts 
 long overdue

... truck knows the way

some things not remembered
my hands will not forget --
Autumn deepening ...

Reconciliation

trying to reconcile my image of a semi-retired slouch
with my OCD has been no Spring picnic










more people seem fixated on a speckled fawn
than concerned with a flight of geese










poets anthropomorphize plants and rocks and things
while I struggle with inanimate objects










my MMPI reveals a predilection for occasional chairs that swivel










more than once I've been called upon to ask myself,
"What would a Monkey do?"









I never understood what they meant by "fat ladies in glasses"
until I'd been under surveillance by the Secret Service











they talk of War and all the while I've fought myself
and I'm one tough son-of-a-bitch

Reefer Madness

We stood around and laughed, making jokes and piling derision on some cops in Missouri today. They'd posted on their Facebook timeline news of a "raid" on a rural field somewhere, claiming a major bust of a marijuana growing operation. They had to pull the post down after it was pointed out by numerous commentators the illicit material they posed next to in their photo op was was in fact cannabis ruderalis - Hemp plant. A big to do over nothing; it grows wild all across the country still, since the day hemp was a commonly accepted commodity, self-seeding illicit patches and spurring controversy from time to time.

Sometime after Prohibition, prior to the Red Scare and the inception of the Central Intelligence Agency, a rabble rousing lobby in Government made it into a boogieman to be persecuted and controlled. So successful was the campaign that most have forgotten its beneficial beginnings. Mention it now and our conditioning compels us to associate it only with criminal behavior.

A number of us began to share stories of our encounters with marijuana, criminal, bumbling, with intent or just by chance, swapping lies and tall tales in a friendly competition of sorts. Some of the stories were more incredulous than others, while none spoke of its uses in industry. some of the more odd confrontations addressed culture as well, due its relation to the outlawed strains that put so many in jeopardy with the law.

We had a plant growing by our back door when we were very young and living on our own. It went eleven feet tall if not more. Just for a joke we threw some seeds down from the stoop to land next to a small garden. This was a result along with a handful of specimens of varying sizes surrounding it.

The cops had to visit one day - East Side was always poppin' - responding to some call or other. I was always the front man, so came out to address them in my best schmooze. And there, over my right shoulder, stood the giant sweet leaf, fully expanded in the high southern sun, its stench and stalk rising from grade to far above the deck where I stood. The lead cop looked at me and then looked right at Weedzilla but didn't say a word. I didn't move a muscle.

The state went on to charge possession with a misdemeanor eventually, a $100 ticket' essentially. Seems like pretty reasonable legislation to me.

Some made mention of more harrowing experiences, about society and lawlessness, the politicization of an issue, of the militarization of police and their training and mindset towards the public. Others reminisced about their lives growing up in various regions, revealing an homogeneity of experience, its changes, and what they might portend.

You could pick Minnesota Green from down by the tracks all day long. The first of its seeds fallen off plant material loaded on the passing cars, hemp for the war effort, and for industry and export. The country's breadbasket brought all it's production here, across the plains to The Great Woods, the northern most port on the Mississippi and a city of thieves, the most boring town in America.

A million freight cars must have passed through here in its heyday. Even now, if one has his wits about him, where ever you are, night or day, you soon will hear the train's echo down any street, through every nook and alley.

I complain a lot about this place. I wonder what it will look like in ten years?


Harvest moon --
halcyon days
in Rivertown



;;;;

... long nights

have you ever noticed
4 o' clock in the morning
is the middle of the night?


all of our nights are long now
since the Solstice moon

Sonny Boy

4 o'clock in the morning -
Sonny Boy explains
the sound of the trains

beans and corn

beans and corn
straddle a broken fence --
shorter days



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