these hard knots in our timber

balls to naively trying to make it better
balls to increased production
balls to procreation
take a leaf out of an unwritten taoist classic
read its scattered characters at the bottom of a cup of tea
steeped in sugar and bad habits
just stop
full stop

love letter #3

eating paper, i rereread the letter
the words, the alphabet
the symbols and code
desperate calligraphy emerging at the interface between the paper stage
and the carving point of sharpened lead

in a concertina of ghostly sheets
i mull the deformed thoughts of a broken lover
    the cellulose pulp that won't digest
    forming moebial knots of fabric
    in my ever shrinking organs
and wait for the full stop of the singularity

Canaries in a Coal Mine

Gran Canary, 2011

I sit on a boulder that harbours a pregnant explosion;
unpredictable and total in its perennial extinctive catharsis;
and listen for a seismic whisper in this calm basaltine night.

I lie on a volcanic sheath;
separating me from the magmatic plumage of mantle convection;
and wonder if the grasses of the world will tonight forever conceal their blades.

I look up at a billion burning suns;
here, squinting specks of sugar in the obsidian void;
and ask the void my conflagrant questions about our inexorable tectonic fate.

Fire above me.
Fire below me.
Cold in the wind's midnight breath.

ETERNITY

struggling against entropy
struggling against the end
the salience of death
a surge in surgery
you can't fight decay
new generations tell ancient tales of elixirs and snake oil
superhero prisoners

let the snow queen in
everything south of horizon screams the end of days
opaque with lack of sustainability
carrier bag tummbleweeds skirt across reticent tarmac
coal and concrete frame and fuel all we have become
we close the walls in on ourselves
like a child
hide in the shade, cower from mutagenic light
lest reality be seen

eat your silicon wafers
lifeless buds whisper in your ear
the little plastic voices in your head
the little shards in all our hearts
surrounded by mirrors
that make even the loveliest landscapes look like boiled spinach
as we sing our self conscious dirge
the devil chases us with his magnifying glass
hold it high, high
high as heaven
so that god herself may recoil


whereeesa? that's weird. thought i lost the "original" draft of this on the computer, immediately tried to re-write it with what was still in my head, but just now weeks later, i must have dragged the original into a different folder (pet peeve! why not have a pop-up reminder when doing that under a particular transition rate). anyway, interesting to compare the two


snow queen

in this expanse, where every object south of
the horizon screams the coming end,
degenerate in its lack of sustainability,
the opaque decadence is clear as mud.

post-modern tumbleweeds, skating across reticent tarmac.

a surge in surgery, struggling against entropy,
struggling against mortality, against the salience of death.

a new generation tells an old tale of elixirs and snake oil,
renewing immortal fables.
we bring the walls in on us.
the endless plugs and the little plastic voices in our heads
lifeless buds and parasitic wires.

the life of shade and surrounding black mirrors,
that make even the loveliest landscapes look like boiled spinach
in our hearts the microscopic shards
estranged silicon wafers through which we act
for shame, for shame
as we sing our self-conscious dirge
an ambient throbbing moan, devoid of words
the devil chases us with his looking glass
hold it high, high
until even god recoils

folding bags

choking on smoke and airborn grease
carbon monoxide clinging to my cluttered oesophagus
spine of rope
ribs like a spring
i am an accordion
a book of wafers
wood and diseased glue
dead fabric unweaving
flakes of unplanned origami
the slow scrunch
the yellow sheets
wrinkle
a brief moment of pleasure as i open a tin of beer
anticipating the characteristic metalic squelch
the reassuring inevitability of seals being broken
if you look hard you can watch the pulse
dissapear
minor chords on wire fibres
i conduct my orchestra of coat hangers
the loose grip rippling strings
the croak made by rubbing against ribbed metal
shells from beaches as fingertips
getting smaller
sandpaper smooth

Conch Republic

In 1982, the United States Border Patrol set up a roadblock and inspection points just north of the merger of Monroe County Road 905A and Miami-Dade County Road 905A in front of the Last Chance Saloon just south of Florida City. They are the only two roads connecting the Florida Keys with the mainland. Vehicles were stopped and searched for narcotics and illegal immigrants. The Key West City Council complained repeatedly about the inconvenience for travelers to and from Key West, claiming that it hurt the Keys' important tourism industry. Eastern Air Lines, which had a hub at Miami International Airport, saw a window of opportunity when the roadblocks were established. Eastern became the only airline to establish jet service to Key West International Airport, counting on travelers from Key West to Miami preferring to fly rather than to wait for police to search their vehicles.

When the City Council's complaints went unanswered by the federal government and attempts to get an injunction against the roadblock failed in court, as a form of protest Mayor Dennis Wardlow and the Council declared Key West's independence on April 23, 1982. In the eyes of the Council, since the federal government had set up the equivalent of a border station as if they were a foreign nation, they might as well become one. As many of the local citizens were referred to as Conchs, the nation took the name of the Conch Republic.

As part of the protest, Mayor Wardlow was proclaimed Prime Minister of the Republic, which immediately declared war against the U.S. (symbolically breaking a loaf of stale Cuban bread over the head of a man dressed in a naval uniform), quickly surrendered after one minute (to the man in the uniform), and applied for one billion dollars in foreign aid.

Conch Republic officials were invited to the Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994, and Conch representatives were officially invited to 1995's Florida Jubilee. The mock secession and the events surrounding it generated great publicity for the Keys' plight — the roadblock and inspection station were removed soon afterward. It also resulted in the creation of a new avenue of tourism for the Keys.

On September 20, 1995, it was reported that the 478th Civil Affairs Battalion of the United States Army Reserve was to conduct a training exercise simulating an invasion of a foreign island. They were to land on Key West and conduct affairs as if the islanders were foreign. However, no one from the 478th notified Conch officials of the exercise. Seeing another chance at publicity, Wardlow and the forces behind the 1982 Conch Republic secession mobilized the island for a full-scale war (in the Conch Republic, this involved firing water cannons from fireboats and hitting people with stale Cuban bread), and protested to the Department of Defense for arranging this exercise without consulting the City of Key West. The leaders of the 478th issued an apology the next day, saying they "in no way meant to challenge or impugn the sovereignty of the Conch Republic", and submitted to a surrender ceremony on September 22.

During the federal government shutdown of 1995 and 1996, as a protest, the Republic sent a flotilla of Conch Navy, civilian and fire department boats to Fort Jefferson, located in Dry Tortugas National Park, to reopen it. The action was dubbed a "full scale invasion" by the Conch Republic. Inspired by efforts of the Smithsonian Institution to keep its museums open by private donations, local residents had raised private money to keep the park running (a closed park would damage the tourist-dependent local economy), but could find no one to accept the money and reopen the park. When officials attempted to enter the monument, they were cited. When the citation was contested in court the following year, the resultant case, The United States of America v. Peter Anderson, was quickly dropped.

The Conch Republic actively maintains an Army, Navy, and Air Force whose primary duties are to help re-enact the Great Sea Battle of 1982 and the retaking of Ft. Jefferson. The Navy comprises no fewer than 10 civilian boats and the schooner Wolf under the command of RAdm. Finbar Gittelman. The Army consists of the 1st Conch Artillery, garrisoned in Ft. Taylor. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, FBI investigators thought that hijacker Mohamed Atta had possibly purchased a Conch Republic passport from the website.

Shadows of the Past (Hiroshima Fossils)

It started with a Little Boy

3 planes flew overhead that day

Enola Gay

and two observations

The Great Artiste

Necessary Evil

And in this guise, an irreversible chain reaction was set into motion

The nuclei were split

The atomic clock chimed

The existential nightmare began

And the world was forever bad

10million degrees it burnt

Hotter than hell

This promethean curse

Skin peels like paper

Bone pulverises under unleashed fission

Blood boils and evaporates into the aether
Buildings collapse, girders curl
Melting metal like hot glue

In the nuclear holocaust

Silhouettes of daily life

Become preserved
In the mutated cityscape

As brightness bleaches the surroundings

Leaving negatives of quotidian bodies

In the vast flash of that total moment

Not the flesh, but the spirit

The petrified impression

The negative of reality

Fossils of traumatic light

A terrible figuration of ultimate transgression

This transmigration of souls
Marking the beginning of the end 

And just as the fallout began to settle, they hit them

Again
Just to prove to Stalin something he already knew:

Crazy always wins.

It started with a message in a bottle

Written on Pandora’s skin

Once it’s been let out

It can never be put back in


 

THERE IS A POLICEMAN IN ALL OUR HEADS: HE MUST BE DESTROYED

how does one destroy the policeman who lives inside ones head?

think about it.
 
...no, not that. that's the easy option.

how did he get in there and who put him there? hm?

Bear Worship

 Paleolithic Bear Cult


The existence of an ancient bear cult among Neanderthals in Western Eurasia in the middle paleolithic period has been a topic of discussion spurred by archaeological findings. Emil Bächler, a main supporter of the argument for the presence of an ancient bear cult, found bear remains in Mornova Cave in Slovenia. Upon excavation, archaeologists on site determined that the bones were found arranged in such a way that it was not naturally possible. Along with Bächler’s discovery, bear skulls were found by André Leroi-Gourhan, arranged in a perfect circle in Saône-et-Loire. Leroi-Gourhan suggests that these bear remains were placed in their arrangement intentionally; an act which has been attributed to H. neanderthalensis.

Sending Off the Bear in Ainu Culture

The Ainu people, who live on select islands in the Japanese archipelago, call the bear “kamuy” in their language, which translates to mean "god". While many other animals are considered to be gods in the Ainu culture, the bear is the head of the gods. For the Ainu, when the gods visit the world of man, they don fur and claws and take on the physical appearance of an animal. The Ainu people willingly and thankfully ate the bear as they believed that the disguise (the flesh and fur) was a gift to the home and that the god chose to deliver its meat voluntarily.

The event of Iyomante* (イヨマンテ in Ainu) (also Kumamatsuri** in Japanese) began with the capture of a young bear cub. As if he was a child given by the gods, the cub was fed human food from a carved wooden platter and was treated better than Ainu children for they thought of him as a god. If the cub was too young and lacked the teeth to properly chew food, a nursing mother will let him suckle from her own breast. When the cub reaches 2–3 years of age, the cub is taken to the altar and then sacrificed. Usually, the villagers will shoot it with both normal and ceremonial arrows, make offerings, dance, and pour wine on top of the cub corpse. The words of sending off for the bear god are then recited. This festivity lasts for three days and three nights to properly return the bear god to his home.

*“sending off”
**“the bear festival”

The Nivkh

The Nivkh live at the mouth of the Amur River and on the northern parts of Sakhalin Island. They speak a language not proven to be related to any other language, either in Siberia or anywhere else. Many features of the Nivkh language are unique, especially the number system (in Nivkh there are about seven ways to express each number, depending upon the shape of the object being quantified). The Nivkh, like the Ainu, are thought to be a remnant of the aboriginal population of the Amur region that everywhere else was replaced by Tungusic tribes such as the Ewenki. Several features link the modern Nivkh to the ancient Neolithic inhabitants of the Pacific coast: a settled way of life based on fishing, dugout dwellings, fishskin clothing as well as dogskin clothing, and a religious cult related to the worship of the river.

Nivkh religion was animistic. The mountains, trees and even the island of Sakhalin were considered animate beings with sentient spirits. Sakhalin was believed to be an enormous animal, its forests being the fur of this animal. When earthquakes rocked the land, the Nivkh believed that this huge beast was stirring. As with the Ainu, the bear was particularly revered. In a very simular ritual, a clan would capture a bear cub and raise it to a certain age, wherupon they would ritually sacrifice it during a solemn ceremony. A Nivkh Shaman (ch'am) would preside over the Bear Festival, celebrated in the winter between January and February. During the Festival the bear is dressed in a specially made ceremonial costume and offered a banquet to take back to the realm of gods to show benevolence upon the clans. The festival was arranged by relatives to honor the death of a kinsman. Generally, the Bear Festival was an inter-clan ceremony where a clan of wife-takers restored ties with a clan of wife-givers upon the broken link of the kinsman's death. The Bear Festival was suppressed in the Soviet period. 
 
Bear Festivals of the Pyranese

There are annual bear festivals that take place in various towns and communes in the Pyrenees region. In Prats-de-Mollo, the Fête de l'Ours (fr) ("festival of the bear") held on Candlemas (February 2) is a ritual in which men dressed up as bears brandishing sticks terrorize people in the streets. Formerly, the festival centered on the "bears" mock-attacking the women and trying to blacken their breasts (with soot), which seemed scandalous to outside first-time observers. But according to the testimony of someone who remembered the olden days before that, the festival that at Prats-de-Mollo involved elaborate staging, much like the version in Arles.

The Arles-sur-Tech version (Fête de l’ours d’Arles-sur-Tech (fr)) involves a female character named Rosetta (Roseta) who gets abducted by the "bear". Rosetta was traditionally played by a man or a boy dressed up as a girl. The "bear" would bring the Rosetta to a hut raised on the center square of town (where the victim would be fed sausages, cake, and white wine). The event finished with the "bear" being shaved and "killed".

source. adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_worship#Nivkh_bear_festival

Smoking Propaganda III

To smoke,
hold a gun to your face.
The index and middle finger, outstretched.
The 3rd and 4th fingers, tucked in, towards the palm.
The thumb; perpendicular.
There, between the index and the middle,
the paper spoke, transfixed.

Then the hand
closes in on itself ::between::
::between:: the prehensile thumb and middle finger;
an act of sleight magic;
as the stubby one rolls the filter into the middle.

Finally, the index drops aggressively.
The hand strikes;
a cigarette chimes;
as the ash is shaken
from its dirty,
orange
crown.

Veils of phlegm in my throat.

Casu Marzu (food for island monkeys)

I'm just going to preface this with, what the fuck is wrong with people? no, i don't have anything smart or funny to say about, just wtf, i'm dumbfounded. this is what happens when you leave people on islands, people.


cut and paste job from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu

Casu marzu, transliterated into English as "rotten/putrid cheese", is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae. Although from the island of Sardinia, a variety of this cheese is also found on the nearby island of Corsica, where it goes by the name of casgiu merzu.

Derived from pecorino, casu marzu goes above and beyond typical fermentation to a stage of decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called lagrima, Sardinian for "teardrop") seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as translucent white worms, about 8 mm (0.3 in) long. When disturbed, the larvae can launch themselves for distances up to 15 cm (6 in).

Casu marzu is created by leaving whole pecorino cheeses outside with part of the rind removed to allow the eggs of the cheese fly Piophila casei to be laid in the cheese. A female P. casei can lay more than 500 eggs at one time. The eggs hatch and the larvae begin to eat through the cheese. The acid from the maggots' digestive system breaks down the cheese's fats, making the texture of the cheese very soft; by the time it is ready for consumption, a typical casu marzu will contain thousands of these maggots.

Casu marzu is considered by Sardinian aficionados to be unsafe to eat when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is usually eaten, although allowances are made for cheese that has been refrigerated, which can kill the maggots. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is often cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine. Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by Sardinians. Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping. Some who eat the cheese prefer not to ingest the maggots. Those who do wish to eat them place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.