Roz Kaveney's Blog, page 8

Just as I am getting over the cold from Hell, a request poem...

POEM FOR AN ASTRONAUT

All of us fear to, really want to go
Beyond the storm clouds out beyond the air
No troubles because little else is there.
Beneath the human world rotates so very slow
It almost sleeps and will when we are gone
To grave dust all our towers go away
Our words works sins and kindnesses decay.
As the world turns our lights die one by one

But not today not yet. Today you ride
Phaeton unfailing Icarus on high
Collective wisdoms place you in the sky
We dream that we are winging at your side.

All that we make will fall. Perhaps the best.
To reach this height before we come to rest

They are tearing down the Munchen

LESBIAN BAR FIGHT 1987

He took a long draw of his cigarette
then threw it in my former girlfriend's hair
affronted she ignored him. We were there
me, her, her current girlfriend. I forget
what I was drinking. Had to throw it quick
to quench the burn. Schwarz threw him to the floor
and punched him. And we all got shown the door.
Perhaps because his quiet friend was sick
I hurt his hand wrenching away the glass
he emptied tried to brain her with. My nails
dug in a pressure point. That never fails
You twist in, they collapse, down on their arse
they fall. And there's the thing. What point is love
if you don't hurt men when push comes to shove?

OUT OF THE QUARREL WITH OURSELVES WE MAKE POETRY

SYRIA DECEMBER THIRD

My words are useless. They will not prevent
a single starving child or stitch in place
an arm torn-off or smooth acid burned face
or turn aside the bloodiest event
heart can conceive. Perhaps announce my grief
in organ tones of sorrow, bring a tear
to hardest heart's stone eye. i disappear
from my best work. A poet is a thief
who stands inside the mirror of her eyes
watches the world bleed, but I cannot change
the pieces that I steal, that I arrange
in pleasing shapes. At best I offer lies
pretend that art can make what's damaged whole.
I damn myself pretending to console.

Too sick at heart to write well

To 67 Labour MPs

Gold tongues and lion hearts are worthless trash.
Virtues that history will not recall.
We do not care what reasons made you fall.
Ambition, pique, or principle or cash.

It is the crime and not the motive weighs
so heavy, breaks our hearts, loses our trust.
It's hard to hate you now but hate we must
to keep our anger hot. When each page says

how right you were to take us all for fools.
You are the clever ones with clear bright eyes
yet sell yourself so cheap, tell stupid lies
corrupt your virtues into broken tools

All that you were for this one day you sold
For jobs which go with power which goes with gold.

End time bollocks

Here's another amplification. As I understand it, one of the differences between Al-Qaeda and Daesh/ISIL is that both have an end time theology but that Al Baghdadi believes himself entitled to declare himself caliph with minimal authority from theologians and start the clock ticking whereas Al Qaeda defer to the major universities to let them know when the end times start.

This is private Islamic business - which I may have hopelessly mis-stated - and for Muslims to sort out among themselves.

However, one thing that the Christian world could do is de-escalate Christian theology about the End Time. The Christian Right in the US and elsewhere started the clock ticking long ago, and this has particular ramifications for politics. Part of this is the assumption that eg equal marriage is a provocation to god and evidence for climate change is a sign of his wrath.. There is also the stuff about Obama or Putin being the Antichrist. More importantly, in relation to Middle Eastern affairs, there is the backing of Israel beyond all reason on the assumption that the Apocalypse kicks off with a lot of Israelis suddenly converting to Christianity and the rest all dying horribly. The Israelis find this belief on the part of most Republicans and many others convenient - bar the conversion/horrible death stuff.

I am suggesting a convention of those major branches of Christianity who think this is all impious bollocks to say so, loudly. I don't normally think the Pope should tell other Christians that something is heretical nonsense, but in this instance...

If you want to put out a signal, that might be one of the ones to put out

More Jarvis bollocks

Some amplification.

Intelligence about command and control is of two kinds. 1 Electronic tracing of GPS chips etc. This tells you where the chip is but not who is there with it - thus, blown up hospitals and schools readily provided for propaganda purposes.
2. Special forces infiltrators on rooftops with binoculars and laser sights. That might mean you get someone you want to kill but bombs aren't bullets and you get eg the building he is next to eg school or hospital.

Also, of course, Daesh believe in 5 caliphs before the End. Al Baghdadi expects he will die. Leaving him alive buggers up the prophesies he relies on.

Why I think Dan Jarvis is wrong

It's important to examine Dan Jarvis' case for voting for bombing, because he is going endlessly to be cited as the persuasive Labour case. I have to say I am not convinced.

1. He assumes that the RAF is superior to other air forces in precision bombing and can therefore reliably strike against Daesh's command and control points within Raqqa. He implies but does not state that this can be done without harm to civilians - this seems implausible especially because he does not state how the RAF is going to know with certainty where those C&C points in Raqqa are - reliable intelligence sources? Really?

2. He blusters about ground forces - he is clearly sceptical about Cameron's figure of 70,000 but 'It reminds me of the dilemma I faced when commanding Afghan soldiers whose knowledge was invaluable but whose competencies were questionable in other areas. Sometimes you have to work with what you have'.
a - like Afghanistan was a huge success
b- the ground forces in Syria include a lot of Al Qaeda whose argument with Daesh is real but impenetrable.
He acknowledges that Cameron has a lot of explaining to do but thinks it can be deferred until after the bombing starts.

3. He continually poses a false dichotomy between action - ie bombing plus other avenues like chasing money, diplomatic efforts and so on- and inaction - those avenues without bombing. Clearly this is untrue; he also assumes, without much evidence, that Cameron will pursue those other avenues in the face of the fact that doing so effectively would mean taking a tough line with our allies.


4. He talks as if Daesh were the only 'new fascists' in the game - this is trasnparently untrue and renders everything he says about Atlee and WW2 a piece of rhetorical nonsense.

5. He argues that bombing Daesh will make Britain's streets safer. My own view is that since Daesh and other groupes long ago moved from revenge to provocation in their deployment of terror is that this is as much nonsense as the assumption by anti-war forces that not bombing will make British streets safer.

I fear that Jarvis is groping for reasons that will enable him to vote in a way that positions him as the candidate to replace Corbyn as leader; I am not accusing him of entire insincerity but, since he acknowledges that he is voting on the basis of a thin margin of reasons, I fear his judgement in the matter,

After reading his arguments I still think joining in an incoherent, not especially competent and immoral bombing campaign with allies who are not actually pursuing the same goals is both stupid and wrong.


http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2015/12/case-action-against-isil-syria-outweighs-case-inaction

People have called for us to write about Beirut

FOR ADEL TERMOS OF BEIRUT

How mourn not knowing how the spice oil smell
crates between stalls meat hanging fresh baked rolls
the crowded bus exhaust walls peppered with small holes
posters I could not read? This man, Adel

made a decision that I could not make
sure knowing both he and his child were dead
saw guessed planned weighed a second in his head
Heard detonation saw a window break

glass splinters in the air. Saw at his side
another man with death sewn in his vest
prayed quickly for them both to find the best
threw the man down was blasted daughter died

so many others lived. My words are weak
beside the witness. See her tears her shriek.

Another 1311 poem

PAIN

Our skeleton remembers every blow.
Each trauma lines our teeth with fine dark rings
Our mother's pain deep in our blood vein sings
Our skull holds knowledge that we cannot know

Yet feel deep rooted as a tooth that throbs
or wind that twists an air knife in our gut.
Throat razor slash turns to a paper cut.
Old memory returned in dreams that robs

us of our sleep. Forgotten when we wake
save for the pain that haunts us long past dawn
the slamming doors of ivory and horns
so hard they almost splinter. And this ache

persists. Cannot escape. Hurts us to blind
we cannot kiss it better, but be kind.

Inadequate but what can you do or say?

PARIS 13/11

There is a dance that people play with knives.
A circle forms. One cuts another's throat.
Whose cut whose turn. The sweet squeal of the stoat
teeth in a fieldmouse. It's the end of lives

of peace and charm. It has its own high step.
Boot click against the floor. We know the tune
Fiddled by Mr Bones. We'll hear it soon
Crusader dance to it HEP HEP HEP HEP.

All we can do is sleep to numb the pain
Dream of the small canal, an autumn kiss.
The city of my heart has come to this.
It happens now. It happens soon. Again.

Love one another. We knew this for years.
Embrace no harm feed hungry dry all tears.