Ken's (Pro)posterous Posts

HERE’S YOUR INVITATION TO THE LA/NLG’S “2012 WINTER AWARDS PARTY”

Saturday, February 25^th, from 7:00-120:00 p.m.

Great food & Drinks!

Dance to the Music of the Popular, “Los Jornaleros Del Norte!”

Location: SEIU Service Workers West, 828 W. Washington Blvd., L.A., CA 90015

Use the Form Below to Reserve Your tickets Now!

Name:_____________________________________________Phone#__________________

E-Mail Address:_________________________________________

Number of Tickets: ____________________Send Check, Payable to “NLG” to, National Lawyers Guild, 8124 W. Third St., Ste. 101,

LA, CA 90048; or e-mail ticket order to: jlafferty@nlg-la.org; or phone in order to: 323/653-4510 (Tickets held at door.)

And please consider buying an extra ticket or two for low-income guests!

This is from the lovely City Lights Pocket Poets Series.  The book is Nine Alexandrias by Semezdin Mehmedinovic.  Mehmedinovic is interesting in his own right given his experiences in the attempted genocide of his people in the Balkans.

What struck me about this piece is the universal dislocation that's a recurrent theme in so much of the art that I like.  There a sense of knowing you're never going to be home, you're never going to be comfortable. But that's OK.  It just is.

Going from one American coast to another,

I saw lonely people, sorrowful and angry,

I saw good people, and even those transmitted the

Only warmth they had to the ring on their finger

 

And I believe I've preserved a sorrowful expression

Within me for the sorrow of a continent

Just like a train preserves the memory of a galleon

Since every message reaches me across my feet

What I mean is, I'm a political 

Emigre every trip I take

Always on ground treading water

I feel like I shouldn't be here

And that I'm standing on the planet Diagonally

Like those kids drawn on greeting cards put out by UNICEF

Always on ground treading water and train preserving the memory of the galleon are my favorite images in this piece.

And now, to the not so beautiful, the features list for a phone system.

Birthday Cake

Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isnit it time to give up this ritual?

although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.

But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
where the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.

I have believed in time
& in time
come
to this meadow
where all the
moments of time are one

"Why isn't there a peace movement?" Western journalists ask me ingenously. How can there be a peace movement when...peace means a daily battle: for food, for water, for shelter, for dignity.

Resignation? Have we lost all sense of proportion? Criminals are not meant to resign. They're meant to be charged, tried, and convicted.

It's disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism.  ....nationalism -in its many avatars: communist, capitalist, and fascist- has been at the root of almost all of the genocide of the 20th century.
 
Each time you defend the rights of an institution, any institution (including the Surpeme Court), to exercise unfettered, unaccountable powers that must never be challenged, you move toward fascism.  Fighting it means fighting to win back the minds and hearts of people. It means keeping an eagle eye on public institutions and demanding accountability. It means putting your ear to the ground and listening to the whispering of the truly powerless.

"...people's lawyers must never forget their underlying purpose: to utilize their skills in order to assist people already in motion to care forward their own struggles." "..the lawyer's activity is rarely, if ever, the primary means of winning the struggle. Victory has to be achieved by the people themselves, through their own organizational strength and activity, and the legal work of the people's lawyer must be directed primarily toward helping to create an atmosphere in which the people can more readily function, organize, and move forward."

Of course, Ritsos says what I meant to say on Christmas morning:

If only you knew how beautiful your mouth is

you would kiss me on the eyes that I might not see you.

Yannis Ritsos Interchanges 1955 trans by Kimon Friar