Photo: Matryoshka Dolls, by bfishadow
3 hours ago
"I want you back...gimme back what I lost!"I'm not sure what I'm mourning for - Michael Jackson or my own youth. He was a giant in the 80s – a glitterball of possibilities, ubiquitous and invincible. As Sean "Diddy" Combs said, “MJ showed me that you can actually see the beat.”
* in early 1983 I won a contest dancing to “Beat It” at Bumpers Disco in Whalley (trust me, it was all about Eddie Van Halen's riffage);
* in December 1989, I actually met the man...on Christmas Day at Disneyland. I was there courtesy of my mum who had brought the family to SoCal for a vacation. It was early morning and the park was virtually empty. Then from across the way this man in a glittering red military coat, sunglasses and a hat emerged accompanied by a Macaulay Culkin-type waif. I walked over and said, “Merry Christmas Michael!” and he squeaked, “Thank you.”
From The Rooftops
By David Kootnikoff
On the rooftop a bird is building her nest
It’s springtime tonight in this city of unrest
While the bird keeps on working for some future prize
The harder she fails, the harder she tries
When the stars come out people rise from below
And their voices ring out as the dark shadows grow
They cry out for god in the heat of the night
They cry for each other, for comfort and light
From the rooftops you can hear their hearts in their song
Beat back the night until all fear is gone
While the dark pushes in like the blade of a knife
But the wound that it leaves only bleeds life
In the morning the bird rises up with the dawn
To continue her work, to sing out her song
And the people wake up to the beating of wings
To gather together ‘neath the shelter she brings
On the rooftop a bird is building her nest
It’s springtime tonight in this city of unrest
While the bird keeps on working for some future prize
The harder she fails, the harder she tries
"Tell me sister, how do you feel?Anyone who has spent time in Iran shouldn't be surprised with the heroism and tact the demonstrators are displaying. They're young, savvy and cunning. They're also determined not to stand idly by while their country is ravaged by corruption and savage brutality. They love Iran too much for that. Many are also under 30, too young to remember the 1979 revolution and the subsequent terror that followed.
Tell me my brother, how do you feel?
Move on with the spirit, the spirit
in the dark..."
- Spirit In The Dark
Aretha Franklin
O, mankind! What has made you be arrogant and rude towards your creator who is the supreme bounteous
**Follow my friend in Iran, Sadaff, on Twitter.**When we were in Iran last summer we met Sai who taught us a lot about this amazing and complex country. One unforgettable event happened on the outskirts of Yazd on the way to Shiraz when a soldier stopped us at a checkpoint. What was supposed to be a routine check turned a bit more heated when he asked for our passports. After we complied he demanded we open our bags. Sai stood up to him refusing to do so and accused the soldier of overstepping his authority. After a few more words we were allowed to continue on our way. It was a brave act that took guts and demonstrated Sai's willingness to invoke his own rights in a way that I found truly inspiring.
"I AM UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE SHAM ELECTION. THEY HAVE CUT ME OFF FROM ANY COMMUNICATION WITH PEOPLE AND AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE. I ASK THE PEOPLE TO STAY IN THE STREETS BUT AVOID VIOLENCE"
Frederick Seidel is a gnarled, cantankerous old fart of a man who absorbs sordid and unseemly themes the way a mushroom sucks out the nutrients from a turd. Like Charles Baudelaire he takes ugliness and gilds it with the transformative power of his writing."I spend most of my time not dying.
That's what living is for"
Evening Man sits signing bills in the Oval Office headless -Of course he starts his poems without a head - it's all about heart and appetite. The image has such a grisly resonance in this age of beheadings and terror, but Seidel transforms it from a news-flash fear-bite into an absurd vision. He has become the US President, a kind of Ichabod Crane pursued by some headless muse.
Every poem I write starts or ends like this.
His hands have been chopped off. He signs bills with the mess.
The country is in good hands. It ends like this.
- from "Evening Man"
A football spirals through the oyster glowAnd from Ooga-Booga:
Of dawn dope and fog in L.A.'s
Bel Air, punted perfectly. The foot
That punted it is absolutely stoned.
-from "1968"
Anything is better than thisIf record albums were personalities, Sticky Fingers would be Seidel.
Bliss.
Nursing on a long-stemmed bubble made of crystal.
I’m sucking on the barrel of a crystal pistol
To get a bullet to my brain.
I’m gobbling a breast, drinking myself down the drain.
- from "Drinking in the Daytime"
His poetry is caught in the sway of a demon life, laid out on the tiles with a needle and a spoon drifting down that moonlight mile....
"Electric word life...it means forever and that's a mighty long time..."Dig if you will, Prince in strawberry polka dots and silver cuff links summoning the music of the spheres. And he likes what he hears...It's been 25 years since Purple Rain dropped. The hairs on the back of my neck still stand up every time I hear The Kid's falsetto soaring above the guts of that wounded guitar solo...
"I only wanted 2 be some kind of friend"...a brilliant anthem to a youth well misspent, burning the candle at both ends.
“I’m not a woman, I’m not a manThe purple cowboy was a seamless blend of genres and genders, the Hendrix frenzy...
I am something that you’ll never understand”
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -MLKTime is the great revelator -- it uncovers everything, eventually. One of the more profound ironies to have emerged from the 1989 Tiananmen massacre is the enduring image of the "unknown rebel" halting a procession of tanks with nothing more than a couple of shopping bags in his hands.
"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." -MLKOn June 4, the anniversary of the day the Chinese government tried to crush the spirit of its people, the legacy of tank man lives on. Let those who perished remind us of our mutuality, our single destiny.