Le Trio Joubran and Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008)

‘This siege will persist until we teach our enemies
models of our finest poetry

the sky is leaden during the day
and a fiery orange at night… but our hearts
are as neutral as the flowery emblems on a shield

This low, high land
this holy harlot…
we do not pay much attention to the magic of these words
a cavity may become a vacuum in space
a contour in geography’

from State of Siege

‘I am dreaming of white lilies
of a song-filled street
a house that’s well-lit.
I want a good heart
not the weight of a gun’s magazine.
I want a day & its sunlight
& no fascist victory exultation in it.
I want a smiling child in this day
not an issue of the war-machine.
I came here because I thought a sun
was approaching its zenith not setting.
I refuse to die
turning my gun my love
on women & children
to guard the orchards & wells
of oil tycoons & tycoons of weapons factories.’

from “A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies

I Have Behind the Sky a Sky

I have behind the sky a sky for my return, but I

am still polishing the metal of this place, and living

an hour that foresees the unknown. I know time

will not be my ally twice, and I know I will exit

my banner as a bird that does not alight on trees in the garden.

I will exit all of my skin, and my language.

And some talk about love will descend in

Lorca poems that will live in my bedroom

and see what I have seen of the bedouin moon. I will exit

the almond trees as cotton on the brine of the sea. The stranger passed

carrying seven hundred years of horses. The stranger passed

right here, for the stranger to pass over there. I will soon exit

the wrinkles of my time as a stranger to Syria and the Andalus.

This earth is not my sky, yet this sky is my evening

and the keys are mine, the minarets are mine, the lanterns are mine, and I

am also mine. I am the Adam of two Edens, I lost them twice.

So expel me slowly,

and kill me quickly,

beneath my olive tree,

with Lorca …

Related Links

Mahmoud Darwish, “Unbeliever in the Impossible”

Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish Biography

Selected Works: On the 5th Anniversary of Mahmoud Darwish’s Death

Poems Of Domestic Revolution

Tenant from Hell (from Other People’s Lives)

He cares not for mundane semiotics –
weeks of encrusted dishes mount,
all year I’ve begged the bludger
to wash the house,
sombre as my roiling mood,
disdain for stains and smudges
curses my brain.
Mould seethes from wall to ceiling,
the rot’s set in …
devolution is inspiration
for deconstructive brilliance,
cadging appreciation
of Lacanian castration.
Ragged spiderwebs in corners
mock and spin since he moved in,
from nights of carousing toil
empty cans pattern the yard
with post-structural foil,
laundry unspeakable with foetid heaps,
garden weed-festooned
like his scruffy tangled beard,
I, or is it my ego, struggle not to weep.
He clicks the remote for the footy game,
derisively philosophizes Derrida,
oblivious to temporal flames.
Someone has to clean it up
and I guess it won’t be him.
His mind’s immersed in existential
anguish of being, not doing,
my discomfort his convenient exegesis
to carve another tidy thesis.

Jinjirrie
July 2013

Domestic Inconsistencies (from Other Peoples’ Lives)

I

She made me do it, didn’t get the hint.
Simple things change. It didn’t feel right.
There had been others. I owed her no reason.
Too old, too bright, too cosmic,
her song had ended.
She came to take her furniture.
After all I’d done for her. I needed it.
She stood her ground.
Her quietness incited,
inviting me to strike.
The barbed truth prodded my hands
to encircle her neck,
clasp her thin body and throw it
like a curse across the room.
Who would have thought
she’d be so light. I didn’t mean to.
She bounced off her old table,
fell against her lounge,
head cracking.
I nearly laughed, pushed her from my house.
Hurled her bag after her.
She provoked it, this matter of perspective.
Everyone says there’s always two sides.

II

He dropped the blade on our love,
smiled when he dismissed me.
Kept my furniture. To compensate for
all he’d done for me.
So I visited to ask for my heater to keep me warm
now I was alone.
Like Anne Boleyn on the block,
my head in his hands,
across the room I flew,
ricochetting off the table against my old lounge.
My head rings still.
Once he called me his gentle rose.
Excuses are words, not blows,
not the black petals on my body.
I’ll extract the thorns,
release the angry pus in private.
Everyone says there’s two sides and
asks whether I provoked him.
I stood my ground, wept,
now weep no more.

Jinjirrie
April 2013

Australia’s Shameful Racism Against Refugees

Betty the PossumWhy do most Australians only stir in masses about endemic racism in Australian government policy when it comes to a head, as if victimisation of refugees arriving in boats is an anomaly instead of an institution? That Australian politicians can trigger the settler population so easily to reject refugees reveals suppressed self-hatred and alienation from the land. For settlers, the native ecosystem must be transformed, exploited, and converted to resemble the predating mother country, with monocultures of exotic introduced species termed ‘productive agriculture’ and Indigenous fauna and flora reframed as ‘pests’. Invading settlers in this sense are vectors for colonising plants and animals – for white colonists, refugees who bear competing species from regions regarded as ‘non-white’ are suspected, quarantined and feared. Thus, racist Australian colonials endeavour to delay refugees offshore, and now to expose them permanently to dangerous conditions in Papua New Guinea to colonise the jungle instead of diluting white supremacist Australia and jeopardising election results.

With an uprising of indignant, decent protest throughout Australia, is there hope?

Will the Human Rights Commission take action against this appalling advertisement, posted on the Rural Australians for Refugees site? The Australian government is apparently utilising social media to spread its divisive, opportunistic hate for asylum seekers.

How smooth is the regression to the sadism of Australia’s convict past, with disgraceful treatment of refugees on Manus Island exposed on SBS Dateline by a whistleblower:

“Words can’t describe,” Mr St George said. “I’ve never seen human beings so destitute, so helpless and so hopeless before.”

‘Mr St George alleged six men were sexually abused in the men-only tent section of the camp. Because there are no separate secure areas, he said, the victims were left in the same facilities as their attackers. “‘

Concurrently the racism behind the Northern Territory intervention, and embarrassing settler colonial collaborative sycophancy toward Israel and the US at the expense of Palestinians continues largely unchallenged. Each outrage which the fatal shore fetishises serves as a smokescreen for other repulsive human rights abuses. With inalienable individual rights sacrificed to white supremacist economic irrationalism, humans are treated by the political and financial elite as units of economic production. People are divided and exploited by racism and bigotry, made angry, powerless, weary and apathetic, distracted from questioning the rule of cruel, predatory elites who increasingly and disproportionately benefit from their global nightmare of neoliberal, patriarchal capitalist parasitism termed duplicitously as ‘progress’ and ‘civilisation’.

With the race to the bottom cheer-led by pernicious, opportunistic politicians, this gruesome explosion of racism by existing settler colonials, ex-refugees and their descendants in Australia at the moment makes one even more determined to stay on the property and pretend they don’t exist. One is tempted to identify merely as a visitor from another planet sent here to observe the ignominious downfall of the human species as its self-appointed greedy elite trample on humans considered undeserving, whilst contaminating the environment on which we all depend. .

No Pasaran

My favourite refugees arrive for dinner.
They’ve signed petitions. There’s hope.
El gobierno de Rudd habla con mala leche del diablo!
Abran las puertas hay lugar para mas gente!!
No tiene sentido de pelear y sancionar en Afghanistan,
Iran y Iraq y despues no recibir los ciudadanos de estos paises!!!
The garbanzos were delicious.

Jinjirrie, July 2013
Paradise Parrot

Neoliberal Darwinism

@KRuddMP
grew up empty
on a farm not far from Namboring,
lack of diversity a wedge for perversity
his rhetoric leaves us all snoring.

Jinjirrie, July 2013

The Paradise Parrot vs Genesis 1:28

White boats transport extinction
in flat watercolours and oils
stuffed and caged native treasures
consigned to monocultural oblivion

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Recipes for Revolution

when will the obstinate muse
reclaim the rituals
deliver them on a plate to share
i’m cooking words to open sesame
this cavern of just desserts
where my mother and her mother smile

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Here’s a list of rallies for refugee rights happening nationally this weekend:

Melbourne Saturday 27 July, 1pm, State Library
Sydney: Sunday 28 July, 12pm, Sydney Town Hall
Sydney West: Sunday 28 July, 12pm, Mount Druitt Hub
Brisbane: Saturday 27 July, 1pm, King George Square
Perth:Saturday 27th July, 1pm, Murray Street Mall
Adelaide: Saturday 27 July, 1pm, Parliament House

Related Links

Four reasons why dumping Australia’s responsibilities onto PNG is unacceptable and the NSW Rabbinical Council’s disgusting edict is hypocritical and racist. The Rabbinical Council of Victoria however takes a more ethical view.

Asylum deal ‘madness’, says PNG opposition

The Nauru Riot: Staff Condemn Cruel and Degrading Conditions

Get busy acquiring your own economic productivity accessory and replacement unit. Here in Arsestralia, the government bribes people to breed unilaterally with hefty baby bonuses, to ensure increase in the number of locals, as opposed to taking in those scruffy undeserving refugees.

Protesting the empire’s troops in Australia

Rudd giving succour to white supremacists

As in other countries, the work of reconciliation in Sri Lanka

will undoubtedly require a long, painstaking and painful process of mutual reflection and community-based dialogues. However, it cannot be avoided if we want seriously to address the asylum seeker problem.

Australia can play an important role, here and elsewhere, in assisting with community capacity building and supporting the re-emergence of an independent civil society sector. Often, as in this case, the presence of a committed and highly skilled diaspora community is a key resource on which we can draw.

While the process is time-consuming and labour-intensive it is relatively inexpensive: estimates suggest that an effective reconciliation process in Sri Lanka – which Australia could support – would cost less than 1 per cent of that spent on our border protection activities.

Palestine/Israel Links

It’s unlikely these ‘threats’ against Eric Burdon came from BDS folks. Whilst deploring anyone who threatens performers, one has to be cynical about unsourced ‘threats’, Israeli media and hearsay.

La Ashton is deeply into labelling settlement goods. Not enough, Catherine, but a start.[FB]

SOAS Conference in October:

‘In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to critically rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory and committed space.”

Poems of Discontent

Under Capitalism

I would be more worthy
if I am a wage earner
if I am male
if I am white
if I am not dis-abled
if I am least colonised
if I am from the mother country
if I am young and not too young
if I am seductively skinny
if I am gender normative
silent alliance and complicit silence
secret scythes to reproduce
and feed the dream
that steals from
all of us.

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Snowden

How we love Amerikkka, land of bugs and drones,
Where obscenely rich old men perch upon their thrones,
Spying on the world to keep their loot secure,
Destruction is their legacy, they will not endure.
The US gave us Hollywood to keep us occupied,
Sharing in the dream, we’d sleep, complicit in the lies.

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Independence What?

genocide
puffed pride
worlds collide
truth died
monoculture pesticide
unreconciled
desensitised
settler heart identified

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Related Links

The NSA Comes Recruiting

Postscript: The Present through a PRISM

To paraphrase a dead French guy badly, the surveillance state has to change people/populations into the kind of group that basically remains silent. That is what is needed first in order to make the unthinkable possible and finally, normal.

This is why, when they come for some of us, they actually come for all of us.

Postscript ||: Our Government has No Right to Hide Its Actions

The Spill Surprise

Julia sharpened knitting needles
prepared for spill of blood,
around Australia we all waited
would there be another PM Rudd?

At last Bill Shorten swings
manouevring for another day
he’s waiting quietly in the wings
for when a chance comes into play.

All hail our leader, Kevvie’s back,
Out with Conroy, Howes and Swan,
But can he get the show on track?
much easier when the Right is gone.

Yet refugees still feel the pain
whichever candidate remains.

26 June 2013