THOMAS MERTON

I've been taking a look at a book I read years ago by Thomas Merton called Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. There's just one highly illuminating and quotable passage after another. Take a look at this, for example:

"We believe, not because we want to know, but because we want to be. And supernatural faith responds to the mystery of that natural faith which is the core and center of our personal being, the will to be ourselves that is the heart of our natural identity. The higher faith is the will not only to be ourselves, but to find ourselves truly in Christ by obedience to His Father."

This is just so much better than that self-effacing swill Christianity is always preaching. I find matters of humility and the self highly problematic.

HURRAH, EGYPT!

Let the cynical bourgeois pundits yatter on about "stability" as much as they like: the people of Egypt have enacted their GOD GIVEN right to impose their will on the government and have forced the unholy fascist fuckwad and Yankee ally out of power.

Let the mealy-mouths of Western nabobism learn this lesson, if they are capable: "stability" does not mean 30 years of dictatorship; "stability" does not mean gunning down peaceful demonstrators; "stability" does not mean censorship and torture. What was not supposed to happen has happened: the people have prevailed, and by bypassing the machinery of "stability."

Doubtless, once heaven does not descend on Egypt by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, we shall hear the habitual "realist" cynics blither on as if nothing wonderful or idealistic has really happened. But these are the people who breed death within, speak it daily -- these are the mini-Kissingers, the blind men of the bourgeoisie who hate the Kingdom of Heaven with a passion: if, indeed, they are capable of passion.

God bless the Egyptian people! Let's learn something in sleepy Canada: the authorities can have their asses kicked, and hard.

MR. STALIN?

The image above is taken from the November 2010 issue of SCALE MILITARY MODELLER. It is a captioned close-up of part of a diorama featuring battle between Soviet and German troops in WWII.

Now, I peruse this magazine pretty often, and I can say these guys know their tanks well and would never, for example, mistake a Panzer II for a Panzer III or a Sherman for a Chaffee. The modellers featured in this publication build stuff that is way out of my own very humble league.

But mistaking Lenin for Stalin? We modellers are known for our pedantry -- endless debates have occurred, for example, about what just the right shade of olive drab is appropriate for a Sherman tank. So I think I can be excused if I express my own dismay at a historical faux pas that makes one wonder just how much the buttons and badges crowd really understands about the war in its larger and more important contexts. Hopla!

TALK IS CHEAP?

When you say something is wrong and something must be done there will always be those who say "talk is cheap." Ask these people what they would have of you: do they want you to act, as they pretend they want? Or do they really want you just to shut up? And ask them what they themselves are doing about the injustice. Are they speaking out against it? Acting against it? Both? Neither? Usually it is neither. Those who decry those who decry injustice are almost always not the bold fighters against it, but its defendants.

And if talk is cheap, why do the rich insist on owning the media?

RAPTURE

You are a chalk
mark
on the ground
marking you
once were

Dust
powders the air
you breathe in

Wind
breaking
you field over
and through the plains
fleeing
the divine ghost

shadows
on the walls
behind
empires


Roxy Katt

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS, FOLKS . . .

An Obscene, Crapulent, and Absurd poem
(i.e. One poem, a formal unity that is, but with the above
three characteristics. To whit: Obscenity, Crapulence, and Absurdity.)


Fuckulation!
Bodgigalupe?!
Virgil Eclogues (37:37: viii, 15-6)


Fuck you, Doctor Zhivago,
Fuck you, Doctor Zhivago,
Fuck
you, Doctor Zhivago, you
Fuck off you
Fuck off, Doctor Zhivago, you
Fuck Doctor Zhivago, you
Fuck Doctor Doctor
Doctor Fucker you
Fuck off you,
Doctor Zhivago
you ignorant fuck, you
Fuck off you
Doctor Zhivago.

Doctor Zhivago has been sent to Hell.

Fuck Doctor,
Fucker Doctor Fucker
Doctor Fuck
Zhivago Fucker
Doctor Vago
Foctor Zhivocto
Fucker Doctor
Focker Doctor Zhi
vago Fuckeroon er
Fucko Bi-Focofuckulationatorial
istization Doctor Fucko
Fuck the Doctor, the
Doctor Zhivago Fucker the
Fucking Zhivago the Doctor Fuck-
o the Doctor O Fuck
O

Doctor Fuck Hole!

I had the making of
an honourable man,
but only heroes
were workable then,
so I failed.

(Like a Dutchman. Alas!
In the wilderness, our
voices are
quiet, and meaningless,
glass sunk in the ocean, a
Frenchman crying in the
dark:
O lieuh! O blancmontagne! Je
tu de rochera ma petitcoat!)

Yibble!
Yi-bibble!

Crying like a Frenchman
in the woods!

Croaking like a toady
in the forest, like a virgin
in the fields of love
forlorn, like
a hero inthe pages of
a magazine for next Tuesday and
the following Thursday
in a milk bucket on the verge
of all our tomorrows.

(In
the
round window of all our tomorrows, yes, a
round window of all our tomorrows and tomorrow
and tomorrow,
until the last vestibule
of regarded lime
in the eye of a beggar already buggered by
the historicity of the
effluvia of

SUCK MY OFF, OFF YOU OFF DOCTOR
ZHVIKAGO

(Goffuparapalencia! Go bugger the Queen!
Go bugger the Queen, I say, go
Bugger the Queen!)


Roxy Katt

THOREAU'S LILY

"Although it seems at first a sudden shift of focus, Thoreau's discovery of the flower actually broadens his political reference by underlining the fact that progressive change can emerge from what seems a defeated and hopeless position. Political critique must retain the capacity for hope, or it is futile. Thoreau's lily adds hope, and therefore purpose, to his rage. The perfume of the water lily, the 'confirmation of our hopes,' signals the unending energy of nature and also the ever present possibility of creating a better nation and community." (italics mine)

David M. Robinson Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism