Flightless Dreams and Dark Humour of a Post-W.orld

George W. Bush cartoon with international justice symbol by Galehr

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." — George W. Bush, LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000 (BUSHISM)

I happened to have spent my entire primary and post-secondary education in America during Bush W's regime. My freshman year in High School started with 9/11, and by 2007, I fled to Cairo, Egypt, having had just quite enough of American life under Bush W. In the course of those seven fateful years, I lost a lot of hope in all political righteousness, voting and demonstration included. Our world will never be the same. 

________

Departing from the downtown train, a friend blanks off in another direction, holding her pistol and handing one to my wife. She’s gone to shoot two of my childhood friends. “I’ll only kill one,” she says. All the while, I feel a similar fate between my wife and I. 

One of Four Freedoms Murals by Norman Rockwell

Entering an emptied church in a historic neighborhood, I kneel down on unfinished concrete flooring, bare as my back as I lift my shirt. My wife then raises her pistol and commences to shoot me straight through above my stomach, below my lungs, a perfect shot, just so much that I’ll survive while experiencing the bitter pain of the act and my coursing blood. As we exit the building room, outside on the street corner, our friend rushes over, hiding her pistol in a bag. 

La Chapelle de La Madeleine à Malestroit by Alexandre Bloch

At my feet, I see a broken skull. I can see the smile of my childhood friend eerily emanating from the skinless mouth. Supposedly, the other under our friend’s thumb, my other childhood friend, got away like me, shot clean through the back. 

________

Moment's seasonal greeting, here in Virginia the human weather anticipates unprecedented climactic shift. We are aware, N. Americans, ready? He closes, "I'll be home for Christmas."

- excerpt from "The Pleasant Man"

The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross

Eusebius of Caesarea 

"...when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS."

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILUS OF CAESAREA: THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED EMPEROR CONSTANTINE. CHAPTER XXVIII. The Bagster translation, revised by Ernest Cushing Richardson, Ph.D.

For a magnificent compendium on Medieval and also Ancient and Modern Literature, visit Internet History Sourcebooks

________

A medieval townscape; similarly forged in the imaginative filmmaking of Kurosawa, yet in the guise of European history. I see lowered clay-roofed structures, and dirt roads amassing with each step into the muddy ground. There is an instinctual defensive glare from the executioner’s hat and the stymying bureaucrat’s shallow presence as I enter the gates of the stead. 

Meeting at the Golden Gate by Jean Hey (Master of Moulins)

At my first meeting, I am greeted by a youth, an apprentice to a knight, with radiant innocence so bright I am shocked to the core. And in that moment I lash out. In a single slash of my sword, an instantaneous move, I split the defenseless youth in half. 

Bors and Lionel

Blood sprays from his center and the gore filters through my footprints in stone and mud. I am taken aback by my own actions, yet as the clouds roll on, the silence is ever penetrating, unfulfilled by redolent justice, coursing on as voiceless blood, loyal only to the alive.

________

Witnessing the continuance of an apocalyptic crusade on these modern shores

Breaking open the earth-less ocean unto the final turning of Europe’s last romantic page,

Closure to the novel convulsions of a people well-practiced in ethnic cleansing and rife with general ethno-cultural frights

- excerpt from "Feel Old, Death?"

To All The Freedom Poets Shouting In The Dark

“HAMAD DREAM OF 2030 IS NOT APPEARED YET IN BAHRAIN!...HAMAD YOU ARE A DICTATOR”  - from a protest sign at beginning of film

“I feel really alone. Whether it was a democratic country or an authoritarian country. All of them acted the same when it came to us. I discovered that my humanity is a subject of discussion. Should I be killed in the street or not be killed? Based on the interests of the United States or Saudi Arabia or other countries. It’s the killing of a dream.”

“When I’m sleeping, a lot of times I dream we are returning to the roundabout. To this day I dream it is there. I don’t feel it is broken.”

"This [facebook] page was a virtual lynch mob, focused on a 20 year old girl, named Ayat al Qurmezi. She had read a poem criticizing Khalifa and the King at Pearl Roundabout. The page asked thousands to participate in defaming her honor, and demanded her arrest and torture in prison. It wasn't long before they got their wish. Masked commandos broke down the door of her family home and took her to prison...After three months in prison, Ayat surfaced for this apology on state TV, which the family says was obtained by electric shock torture and forcing her to open her mouth while army and police officers spat in it." 

- from "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark" by May Ying Welsh of Al-Jazeera, the only journalists who stayed

Ayat al Qurmezi (read her BLOG)

"I have not yet finished forcing every candle of dreams (youth) on this motherland..." 

- line from the poem by Ayat al Qurmezi which led to her imprisonment, translated by Mohamed Al-mahroos

_________

I had come out of a bedroom, pajamas and all, to greet a few friends. Sitting patiently and in reserved calm is my wife and a local actor in town, sitting outside in the main room of my abode. I begin talking about recent books I’ve read. I start talking about a book on the subject of black history in the American South pointed at the presence of the actor, who I only recently became acquainted with. I continue to divulge in The Inconvenient History of Brazil, which I learned received the greatest influx of African slaves than anywhere else. She is sweet and doesn’t mind me carrying on. In another room, my brother and a friend are worriedly arguing about how to get to Los Angeles, specifically to have more drinks. Ignoring them, I saunter out of the house and find my way to a nearby bus stop. 

Small trickles of rain bear down on the fogged windows of the bus as we cross through a muddy swamp area. The bus driver is exceptionally personable and a great comfort, in total control. In mid-conversation, I ask to be dropped off at a local convenience store. The cold, wet ground feels like a vent of sticky moisture from the saturated soil. Immediately outside the door, three homeless Aboriginal people kneel prostrating outside the store entrance, while one of them, a middle aged lady takes to a free gift of exceedingly processed fast food. I enter, greeting the store owners. As I look out the window, I see a group of girls in beachwear catapulting themselves off a nearby roof for the humorous purposes of landing on a trampoline. I walk out to get a closer look. The first lands extremely short, the second a bit further and right on her spine. She gets up aching, only to watch a third catapult far beyond the trampoline’s distance. Her impact is felt with crushing intensity as she writhes in a split-second. Witnessing, one can immediately tell her thigh must be broken. I then enter the store again, and with uncontrollable laughter, we are outraged by the stark contrast between the different kinds of help needed around the store. 

_________

History

"To dream that you are reading history, indicates a long and pleasant recreation."  

Rain

"A powerful symbol of renewal and spiritual cleansing...Interpretation is contingent on your current circumstances as well as the kind of rain that is falling...Depending on the dreamer it could suggest a period of renewal and fertility (reproduction or creativity)." 

Help

"If you dream that you help someone, or someone asked you for help, it means that you will succeed without needing help from anyone."

(iDream)

_________

can you tell me why you want to lose your minds?

“is the mind not a functional device?

a stronghold of impurity, though weak as a right?

a vile desire entrenched in the quickening of race and drabness? 

or old as a tire-stretched din?"

shrieking at dawn with favored kids,

roped to the sound in time 

only for a moment

“to flesh out the wicked rot 

a spawn of loss and un-coped wires

fuming ghastly as the corpse 

that smoked wild smoke

and leapt to a magic unseen and disbelieved

except by the weeded out freak-smiling lawmakers at dawn”

the hopeless mold sweetens through an unearthly jail

round toxic commotion encircles in ash and loneliness

wakefulness opens to the sole breath of god

and waiting awhile for the noose tightened,

alas around the saviors brightened tooth shown under a restful laugh...

- excerpt from "Why you want to lose your minds."

Dreaming is a Choice between Fear and Love

"ARE YOU THE NEW PERSON DRAWN TOWARD ME?"
By Walt Whitman

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion? 

_________

I am in a dimly lit college dormitory. Occupying a strange room with my new wife, I await an old acquaintance. I’m being enticed to be a part of an international marijuana trade. The benefits will by high and the peer pressure mounts however I turn my back on the offers and listen to the silent wishes of my new wife, whose dear presence reminds me that trafficking only leads to indirect violence, and all the filth that follows in the wake of easy money. We stand in the smoked out room, where dusty, creaking lights sway as above a reptile’s glass cage. The old life of chronic marijuana use wafts in my subconscious as a strong, deep inhalation, and I clear the smoke of self-conscious perception through a mind and body purified by love. 

_______

Love without Music

Is there love without music? 

And why does music spark love?

Music provides the innocent

backdrop for the play to unfold,

and become sweet

as the spring in a mid-winter sun

fading against the whisky iris of my lover’s cat

scratching the butchered skin of L.A.

deranged toxicity, madness of memory

from beyond the grips of fatigue

and into the failure to be,

true and awake, light with the speed of thought,

a slight wink on the riverside blue,

and what's new from another lazy, sick waiting?

she sits transfixed

and I ignore the heart

that beats quicker inside

with every finger drop

word flatness

I rinse myself blindly in an alcoholic fight

through perfect humanity,

knowing the loveless embrace of non-feeling,

and her lust

and her lust again,

a secretive tear at the loss of an eyelid

dimming in the thick listening

of night fallen

anew

with shared melancholic delight…

March 01. 217am 2010

Butler mansion. (N.W. Calgary). My love sleeps smiling, I sober up, listening to music of nostalgic kisses