THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD

Guy Maddin (Canada, 2004)

DORIS LESSING
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
____________________

Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.

TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL

Guy Maddin (Canada, 1988)

IZUMI SHIKIBU
____________________

Watching the moon
at midnight
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

STUMP THE GUESSER

Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson, Guy Maddin (Canada, 2020)

W. B. YEATS

"The Hour Before Dawn"

____________________

A cursing rogue with a merry face,

A bundle of rags upon a crutch,

Stumbled upon that windy place

Called Cruachan, and it was as much

As the one sturdy leg could do

To keep him upright while he cursed.

He had counted, where long years ago

Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,

A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,

And not a house to the plain's edge,

When close to his right hand a heap

Of grey stones and a rocky ledge

Reminded him that he could make.

If he but shifted a few stones,

A shelter till the daylight broke.

But while he fumbled with the stones

They toppled over; 'Were it not

I have a lucky wooden shin

I had been hurt'; and toppling brought

Before his eyes, where stones had been,

A dark deep hollow in the rock.

He gave a gasp and thought to have fled,

Being certain it was no right rock

Because an ancient history said

Hell Mouth lay open near that place,

And yet stood still, because inside

A great lad with a beery face

Had tucked himself away beside

A ladle and a tub of beer,

And snored, no phantom by his look.

So with a laugh at his own fear

He crawled into that pleasant nook.

'Night grows uneasy near the dawn

Till even I sleep light; but who

Has tired of his own company?

What one of Maeve's nine brawling sons

Sick of his grave has wakened me?

But let him keep his grave for once

That I may find the sleep I have lost.'

What care I if you sleep or wake?

But I'Il have no man call me ghost.'

Say what you please, but from daybreak

I'll sleep another century.'

And I will talk before I sleep

And drink before I talk.'

And he

Had dipped the wooden ladle deep

Into the sleeper's tub of beer

Had not the sleeper started up.

Before you have dipped it in the beer

I dragged from Goban's mountain-top

I'll have assurance that you are able

To value beer; no half-legged fool

Shall dip his nose into my ladle

Merely for stumbling on this hole

In the bad hour before the dawn.'

'Why beer is only beer.'

'But say

'I'll sleep until the winter's gone,

Or maybe to Midsummer Day,'

And drink and you will sleep that length.'

'I'd like to sleep till winter's gone

Or till the sun is in his strength.

This blast has chilled me to the bone.'

'I had no better plan at first.

I thought to wait for that or this;

Maybe the weather was accursed

Or I had no woman there to kiss;

So slept for half a year or so;

But year by year I found that less

Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo

Even a half-hour's nothingness,

And when at one year's end I found

I had not waked a single minute,

I chose this burrow underground.

I'll sleep away all time within it:

My sleep were now nine centuries

But for those mornings when I find

The lapwing at their foolish dies

And the sheep bleating at the wind

As when I also played the fool.'

The beggar in a rage began

Upon his hunkers in the hole,

'It's plain that you are no right man

To mock at everything I love

As if it were not worth, the doing.

I'd have a merry life enough

If a good Easter wind were blowing,

And though the winter wind is bad

I should not be too down in the mouth

For anything you did or said

If but this wind were in the south.'

'You cry aloud, O would 'twere spring

Or that the wind would shift a point,

And do not know that you would bring,

If time were suppler in the joint,

Neither the spring nor the south wind

But the hour when you shall pass away

And leave no smoking wick behind,

For all life longs for the Last Day

And there's no man but cocks his ear

To know when Michael's trumpet cries

'That flesh and bone may disappear,

And souls as if they were but sighs,

And there be nothing but God left;

But, I aone being blessed keep

Like some old rabbit to my cleft

And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'

He dipped his ladle in the tub

And drank and yawned and stretched him out,

The other shouted, 'You would rob

My life of every pleasant thought

And every comfortable thing,

And so take that and that.' Thereon

He gave him a great pummelling,

But might have pummelled at a stone

For all the sleeper knew or cared;

And after heaped up stone on stone,

And then, grown weary, prayed and cursed

And heaped up stone on stone again,

And prayed and cursed and cursed and bed

From Maeve and all that juggling plain,

Nor gave God thanks till overhead

The clouds were brightening with the dawn.

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN

Guy Maddin (Canada, 2006)

STEPHEN KING

It

____________________

Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat.

THE GREEN FOG

Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson (Canada, 2017)

GUO GU

The Essence of Chan: A Guide to Life and Practice According to the Teachings of Bodhidharma

____________________

If we want to know our past, we need only look at the present. If we want to know our future, we also look at the present. Why is it that siblings in the same family sometimes have very different lives, one as a victim and the other as a victimizer? Why is it that, from the same parents, one child follows a spiritual path, while the other wallows in desire, hatred, and ignorance? Why do people live in constant insecurity, victimizing themselves at every opportunity? It is because each of us carries different karmic baggage. We’ve been throwing all the karma that we have ever created into this bag. What we experience in our life is the ripening of seeds in our karmic bag.

PABLO NERUDA

"Death Alone"

____________________

There are lone cemeteries,

tombs full of soundless bones,

the heart threading a tunnel,

a dark, dark tunnel :

like a wreck we die to the very core,

as if drowning at the heart

or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,

clammy slabs for feet,

there is death in the bones,

like a pure sound,

a bark without its dog,

out of certain bells, certain tombs

swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,

coffins under sail

setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,

bakers as white as angels,

thoughtful girls married to notaries,

coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,

the wine-dark river to its source,

with their sails swollen with the sound of death,

filled with the silent noise of death.

Death is drawn to sound

like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,

comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,

comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.

Nevertheless its footsteps sound

and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.

I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see

but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,

violets well used to the earth,

since the face of death is green,

and the gaze of death green

with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf

and its grave colour of exasperated winter.

But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom

lapping the ground in search of the dead -

death is in the broom,

it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,

the needle of death looking for the thread.

Death lies in our beds :

in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,

lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,

blows sound unknown filling out the sheets

and there are beds sailing into a harbour

where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

DRACULA - PAGES FROM A VIRGIN'S DIARY

Guy Maddin (Canada, 2002)

HAROLD PINTER
The Hothouse

____________________

The moon was behind you, in front of you, all over you, suffusing you, consuming you, you were transparent, translucent, a beacon.

COWARDS BEND THE KNEE

Guy Maddin (Canada, 2003)

WOLE SOYINKA

"I think it rains"

____________________

I think it rains

That tongues may loosen from the parch

Uncleave roof-tops of

the mouth, hang

Heavy with knowledge

I saw it raise

The sudden cloud, from ashes.

Settling

They joined in a ring of

grey; within,

The circling spirit.

O it must rain

These closures on the mind, blinding us

In strange despairs, teaching

Purity of sadness.

And how it beats

Skeined transparencies on wings

Of our desires, searing dark longings

In cruel baptisms.

Rain-reeds, practised in

The grace of yielding, yet unbending

From afar, this, your conjugation with my earth

Bares crouching rocks.

CAREFUL

Guy Maddin (Canada, 1992)

DŌGEN

____________________

The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

Andy Marlette

July 2021

DJUNA BARNES
Nightwood
____________________

The words that fell from her mouth seemed to have been lent to her; had she been forced to invent a vocabulary for herself, it would have been a vocabulary of two words, ‘ah’ and ‘oh.’

DENISE LEVERTOV

"Talking to Grief"
____________________

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

PHANTOM LOVE

Nina Menkes

DISSOLUTION

Nina Menkes

USA/Israel, 2010

SEAMUS HEANEY
“Valediction”

____________________

Lady with the frilled blouse
And simple tartan skirt,
Since you have left the house
Its emptiness has hurt
All thought. In your presence
Time rode easy, anchored
On a smile; but absence
Rocked love’s balance, unmoored
The days. They buck and bound
Across the calendar
Pitched from the quiet sound
Of your flower-tender
Voice. Need breaks on my strand;
You’ve gone, I am at sea.
Until you resume command
Self is in mutiny.

bell hooks

Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies

____________________

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else." That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake, and recast you.

TADEUSZ DĄBROWSKI

"Bunny Slope"

____________________

When I’m writing a poem,

there’s less and less of it.

As I approach the mountains,

they vanish behind a gentle hill,

behind the bunny slope.

And once I’m standing with them

face to face,

they take away my speech.

The very best poem 

finishes half way

 

Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

OSCAR WILDE

"In the Forest"

____________________

Out of the mid-wood's twilight

Into the meadow's dawn,

Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,

Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,

And his shadow dances along,

And I know not which I should follow,

Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!

O Nightingale, catch me his strain!

Else moonstruck with music and madness

I track him in vain!

ELIZABETH M. NOLAN

"My Aldebaran of the Skies"

____________________

You called me your dawn from yonder that breaks your darkest hour,

And here l sit in a sanguine state,

Awaiting my Aldebaran of the Skies,

Addictive discourse of allegiance,

And intentional allurement,

That threatens the very circle of my life.

Yet, my mind pursues the words to share forbidden

Dreams with my gallant knight,

Whose scintillating self,

So full of verse and song and virtue,

Captivates my once blithe heart,

for a handsome flower he,

Who possesses no thorns upon the rose,

Ah, but should l search within my heart and be the

Castigator of my own words and dreams?

Shall my promise of Fields of Gold and the smell of

Sweet Clematis be just a collage in our minds?

My compelling mind entices the languid questions,

To which the answers pierce my very soul

And are leaden with a legalistic commitment to the circle of

My life.

Shall l drink from the river of Lethe?

A penitent to reave you from my heart and mind

I cannot.

For you brighten my sky at night, and l, your muse,

Always waiting to be your dawn.

Forgive me Sir Gawain, my hero, my poet, my confidant,

For l still miss you so.

WOLE SOYINKA

"Telephone Conversation"

____________________

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. "Madam" , I warned,

"I hate a wasted journey - I am African."

Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

"HOW DARK?"...I had not misheard...."ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?" Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar.

It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-

"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT" Revelation came

"You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?"

Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted

I chose. "West African sepia"_ and as afterthought.

"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding "DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."

"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?"

"Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused-

Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears- "Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather

See for yourself?"

MARILYN MONROE

____________________

People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

PABLO NERUDA

"Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew"

__________________

Come with me, I said, and no one knew

where, or how my pain throbbed,

no carnations or barcaroles for me,

only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,

and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth

or the blood that rose into the silence.

O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat

Come with me, it was as if you had let loose

the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:

in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,

of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

DZIGAR KONGTRÜL
Light Comes Through - Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence
____________________

“Not knowing” can be an open, inquisitive, and humble state of mind, full of possibilities—there’s a lot to explore. With inquisitiveness, we engage our intelligence, educate ourselves, and move forward in our lives in a way that satisfies our deeper needs. This is the knowledge that comes through hearing the truth. To do this, we first have to feel the pain of our situation—the antidote is right there, just beneath the surface. 

TED HUGHES

"Crow Hill"

____________________

The farms are stinking craters in

Sheer sides under the sodden moors;

When it is not wind it is rain,

Neither of which will stop at doors:

One will damp beds and the other shake

Dreams beneath sleep it cannot break.

Between the weather and the rock

Farmers make a little heat;

Cows that sway a bony back,

Pigs upon delicate feet

Hold off the sky, trample the strength

That shall level these hills at length.

Buttoned from the blowing mist

Walk the ridges of ruined stone;

What humbles these hills has raised

The arrogance of blood and bone,

And thrown the hawk upon the wind,

And lit the fox in the dripping ground.

W. B. YEATS

"The Fascination of What's Difficult"

____________________

The fascination of what's difficult

Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent

Spontaneous joy and natural content

Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt

That must, as if it had not holy blood

Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,

Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt

As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays

That have to be set up in fifty ways,

On the day's war with every knave and dolt,

Theatre business, management of men.

I swear before the dawn comes round again

I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

XI CHUAN
"Mourning Problems" 

____________________

an ant dies, and no one mourns
a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn’t a crested ibis
a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn
a monkey dies, and people pry open its skull
a shark dies, and another shark keeps swimming
a tiger dies, and some people mourning are mourning themselves
a person dies, and some people mourn and some people don’t
a person dies, and some people mourn and some even applaud
a generation dies, and the next generation doesn’t really mourn
a country dies, most of the time just leaving apocrypha
a country that doesn’t leave apocrypha wasn’t a real country
if it wasn’t a real country, when it dies no one mourns
no one mourns, and the wind blows in vain
rivers flow in vain, washing over rocks in vain
glistening in vain, making vain ripples
the river dies, and it’s not for man to mourn
the wind dies, and it’s not for man to mourn
the river and wind make their way to the sea, the sea as vast as in Zhuangzi
the vast sea dies, and you will have to die
the dragon king dies, and you will have to die
the moon doesn’t mourn, there’s no one on the moon
the stars don’t mourn, the stars aren’t flesh and blood

—Translated by Lucas Klein

DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
____________________

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

THE SUN

____________________

Issue 547
July 2021

 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
____________________

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. 

 

MARGARET ATWOOD
Surfacing

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

BOBBY SEALE

____________________

I think the American Dream should be about a greater progressive legislation that allows for what I call a necessary future world of co-operational humanism.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
“Letter From Birmingham Jail”

____________________

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

BOBBY SEALE
____________________

A people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere.

My Independence Day Message To Gun Nuts Everywhere

I'm tired of hearing about how carrying guns in public is some declaration of our rights. It's just a way to make people more afraid and used to living in their self-made prison.

By Karoli Kuns — July 2, 2014

Independence Day: When we celebrate the nation's independence by shooting projectiles into the air intended to resemble 'bombs bursting in air.' Or something.

Wouldn't it be great to celebrate the nation's independence by actually living in a society that cared about liberty for everyone instead of just white, gun-toting Christian conservatives?

Let's be honest. States that glorify guns as implements of liberty aren't promoting freedom; they're promoting fear. The best we can hope in their vision of liberty is not to be in the line of fire when someone unloads a few rounds into someone else they're pissed at.

How twisted is it to define liberty as having the right to inflict fear, harm and possible death on someone else?

A life free of paranoia and fear feels much more like independence. Living afraid to go to the movies, the mall, or even out to a fast food restaurant feels much more like prison.

The open carry whackos driven by their need to sport their penises guns in public aren't proclaiming liberty. They're claiming their right to intimidate other people and minimize others' rights in favor of their own. Desensitize everyone, and no one will notice when they start using them to bully people of color, women, and other groups they conquer, right?

News flash: It's not liberty to sacrifice 20 children for one insane person's right to carry a weapon of mass death. It's not liberty for college students to be dead because an entitled, bitter student decided to go out in a blaze of glory. That's not liberty and it's sure as hell not freedom.

They want us all to believe we have to have guns to be free. I don't believe that. I never have, and I never will.

This Independence Day, I'm declaring mine. I won't visit states with laws permitting open carry and I won't patronize national businesses that permit it. We don't have to live by their rules, even if they have guns and I don't. But I'm not stopping there. If they want liberty, they can start by being responsible and considerate of others.

They can leave their guns at home, locked up with the key in their pocket. Liberty is choosing to respect other people, not trampling all over them.

ELIAS CANETTI

____________________

Perhaps what a critic wrote is true, namely that I have found my calling in composing brief “notes.” If that’s true, then I am not a writer and can hang myself.

KNUT HAMSUN

Hunger

____________________

The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned.

IRIS MURDOCH

____________________

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

ANAÏS NIN
The Early Diaries, Vol 2 (1920-1923)

I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.

L. J. SMITH
____________________

People die ...

Beauty fades ...

Love changes ...

And you will always be alone.

CLIVE BARKER

Books of Blood

______________________

Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.

WILLIAM JAMES
____________________

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours, or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

JOHN STEINBECK
____________________

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
____________________

If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.

SUSAN SONTAG

“Literature and Freedom”
____________________

One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.

Writers can do something to combat the clichés of our separateness, our difference - for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but countermyths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

-

“Literature and Freedom” was Susan Sontag’s acceptance speech after being awarded the Friedenspreis, the Peace Prize of the German book trade, in 2003.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR
“Everything That Rises Must Converge”

____________________

He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.

WILLIE NELSON
____________________

I don’t really think about it. I know some day I’ll move on. Everybody does. But I don’t worry about it. I like where I am now. Everything’s fine. And there’s nothing I can do about anything that’s happened. The only thing I have any control over is what’s happening right now. So I don’t worry about a while ago or after a while.

KO UN
“Sunlight”
____________________
It’s absolutely inevitable!
So just take a deep breath
and accept this adversity.
But look!
A distinguished visitor deigns to visit
my tiny north-facing cell.
Not the chief making his rounds, no,
but a ray of sunlight as evening falls,
a gleam no bigger than a screwed-up stamp.
A sweetheart fit to go crazy about.
It settles there on the palm of a hand,
warms the toes of a shyly bared foot.
Then as I kneel and, undevoutly,
offer it a dry, parched face to kiss,
in a moment that scrap of sunlight slips away.
After the guest has departed through the bars,
the room feels several times colder and darker.
This military prison special cell
is a photographer’s darkroom.
Without any sunlight I laughed like a fool.
One day it was a coffin holding a corpse.
One day it was altogether the sea.
A wonderful thing!
A few people survive here.
Being alive is a sea
without a single sail in sight.

PAULA SPAN
“Martha, In the Soup”

____________________

Marilyn Scott-Waters turned against Martha Stewart Living around the time Martha advocated glue-gunning fresh pansies onto children’s Easter bonnets:

“I’m thinking, Jesus, you can make your life way more complicated than you need to. My mantra now is Inner Peace Through Lowered Expectations.”

BOB SMITH
____________________

Lesbians can afford to be ruthlessly discriminating when picking their sperm donor. In fact, if all women were as selective as lesbians, we’d have evolved into a race of gods by now.

VEGAN INDIAN COOKING
140 Simple and Healthy Vegan Recipes

____________________

Anupy Singla

KURT VONNEGUT
From a 2003 speech at the University of Wisconsin - Madison

____________________

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, “If you really want to hurt your parents - and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual - the least you can do is go into the arts.” But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

HỒ XUÂN HƯƠNG TRADITION
“A Hermaphrodite”

____________________

Which squabble among twelve midwives
Caused them to throw your love-thing away?
To hell with that squeaking mouse.
To hell with that droning wasp.
Who knows if it’s smooth or bumpy?
Who can tell if it’s stem or bud?
Whatever it is, it must do.
You’ll never be called a slut.

WOLE SOYINKA

"Your Logic Frightens Me, Mandela"

____________________

Your logic frightens me, Mandela,

Your logic frightens me. Those years

Of dreams, of time accelerated in

Visionary hopes, of savouring the task anew,

The call, the tempo primed

To burst in supernovae round a “brave new world”!

Then stillness. Silence. The world closes round

Your sole reality; the rest is… dreams?

Your logic frightens me.

How coldly you disdain legerdemains!

“Open Sesame” and—two decades’ rust on hinges

Peels at touch of a conjurer’s wand?

White magic, ivory-topped black magic wand,

One moment wand, one moment riot club

Electric cattle prod and club or sjambok

Tearing flesh and spilling blood and brain?

This bag of tricks, whose silk streamers

Turn knotted cords to crush dark temples?

A rabbit punch sneaked beneath the rabbit?

Doves metamorphosed in milk-white talons?

Not for you the olive branch that sprouts

Gun muzzles, barbed-wire garlands, tangled thorns

To wreathe the brows of black, unwilling christs.

Your patience grows inhuman, Mandela.

Do you grow food? Do you make friends

Of mice and lizards? Measure the growth of grass

For time’s unhurried pace?

Are you now the crossword puzzle expert?

Chess? Ah, no! Subversion lurks among

Chess pieces. Structured clash of black and white,

Equal ranged and paced? An equal board? No!

Not on Robben Island. Checkers? Bad to worse

That game has no respect for class or king-serf

Ordered universe. So, scrabble?

Monopoly? Now, that…! You know

The game’s modalities, so do they.

Come collection time, the cards read “White Only”

In the Community Chest. Like a gambler’s coin

Both sides heads or tails, the ’Chance’ cards read:

GO TO GAOL. GO STRAIGHT TO GAOL. DO NOT PASS ’GO’.

DO NOT COLLECT A HUNDREDTH RAND. Fishes feast,

I think, on those who sought to by-pass ‘GO’

On Robben Island.

Your logic frightens me Mandela, your logic

Humbles me. Do you tame geckos?

Do grasshoppers break your silences?

Bats’ radar pips pinpoint your statuesque

Gaze transcending distances at will?

Do moths break wing

Against a light-bulb’s fitful glow

That brings no searing illumination?

Your sight shifts from moth to bulb,

Rests on its pulse-glow fluctuations—

Are kin feelings roused by a broken arc

Of tungsten trapped in vacuum?

Your pulse, I know, has slowed with earth’s

Phlegmatic turns. I know your blood

Sagely warms and cools with seasons,

Responds to the lightest breeze

Yet scorns to race with winds (or hurricanes)

That threaten change on tortoise pads.

Is our world light-years away, Mandela?

Lost in visions of that dare supreme

Against a dire supremacy of race,

What brings you back to earth? The night-guard’s

Inhuman tramp? A sodden eye transgressing through

The Judas hole? Tell me Mandela,

That guard, is he your prisoner?

Your bounty threatens me, Mandela, that taut

Drum-skin of your heart on which our millions

Dance. I fear we latch, fat leeches

On your veins. Our daily imprecisions

Dull keen edges of your will.

Compromises deplete your act’s repletion—

Feeding will-voided stomachs of a continent,

What will be left of you, Mandela?

A. ABRAHAM

____________________

Don’t ever
let anyone
oppress you,
Stand up
for your
Fucking
Rights!
life is too short only if you are having fun
but way too fucking long if you are suffering.
don’t live in fear,
only fear to lose self-respect
and your right to be free.
claim what is rightfully yours and
please be proud of yourself,
be humble and
learn,
keep learning,
learn some more,
strengthen your mind
and love in abundance. 

HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight
____________________

FRED
You were writing poems when you were a mere child, isn’t that right?

JAKE
I was writing poems before I could read.

FRED
Listen. I happen to know that you were writing poems before you could speak.

JAKE
Listen! I was writing poems before I was born.

FRED
So you would say you were the real thing?

JAKE
The authentic article.

FRED
Never knowingly undersold.

JAKE
Precisely. 

GUY DAVENPORT

____________________

When a man owns a lion, a lion owns a man. This is the thing about technology. It owns us.

ELIAS CANETTI

____________________

The painfulness of the stars since we started trying to actually reach them. They are no longer the same stars. 

Now covered with the leprosy of death, they give off a different light.

ANNE SEXTON

"The Poet of Ignorance"

____________________

Perhaps the earth is floating,

I do not know.

Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups

made by some giant scissors,

I do not know.

Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,

I do not know.

Perhaps God is only a deep voice,

heard by the deaf,

I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.

True, I have a body

and I cannot escape from it.

I would like to fly out of my head,

but that is out of the question.

It is written on the tablet of destiny

that I am stuck here in this human form.

That being the case

I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,

clutching fast to my heart,

a huge crab.

The doctors of Boston

have thrown up their hands.

They have tried scalpels,

needles, poison gases and the like.

The crab remains.

It is a great weight.

I try to forget it, go about my business,

cook the broccoli, open and shut books,

brush my teeth and tie my shoes.

I have tried prayer

but as I pray the crab grips harder

and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,

perhaps it was a dream,

that the crab was my ignorance of God.

But who am I to believe in dreams?

GARY SOTO

"Graciela"

____________________

Wedding night

Graciela bled lightly—

But enough to stain his thighs—

And left an alphabet

Of teethmarks on his arm.

At this, he was happy.

They drank mescal

In bed like the rich

And smoked cigarettes.

She asleep

And the bottle empty, he hid

A few coins in her left shoe,

Earrings in the right.

They worked long hours

Hoeing crooked rows of maize.

Evenings she wove rugs

And embroidered curtains

To market in Taxco.

In short they lived well.

However in the 7th month

With child, her belly

Rising like a portion of the sun,

Something knotted inside her.

The ribs ached.

A fever climbed like incense.

Manuel summoned the Parterna

And though she burned pepper,

And tied belts around

The stretched belly,

The child did not ease out.

Days later she turned

Onto her belly

And between her legs

Unraveled a spine of blood.

RANDALL JARRELL

"A War"

____________________

There set out, slowly, for a Different World,

At four, on winter mornings, different legs…

You can’t break eggs without making an omelette

—That’s what they tell the eggs.

BRET EASTON ELLIS

American Psycho

____________________

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

SIMPLY PHO
A Complete Course in Preparing Authentic Vietnamese Meals at Home

____________________

Helen Le

THE SUN

____________________

Issue 546

June 2021 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Macbeth

____________________

2nd Witch:

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes. 

          [Knocking]

Open locks,

Whoever knocks!

          [Enter Macbeth]

Macbeth:

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

What is't you do?

DORIS LESING
The Golden Notebook
____________________

Art is the mirror of our betrayed ideals.

JOE HILL

____________________

All the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what man could think up.

Forty years ago today.

The Los Angeles Times acknowledges what would become HIV/AIDS.

June 5, 1981

AMY SISKIND
____________________

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

____________________

There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.

ELIAS CANETTI

____________________

What will become of the images of the dead that you hold within your eyes? How will you leave those behind?

CAMERON JACE

Snow White Sorrow

____________________

Stare at the dark too long and you will eventually see what isn’t there.

HỒ XUÂN HƯƠNG TRADITION
“Ba Doi Gorge”
____________________

A gorge, a gorge, and yet, the same old gorge.
Praise to whoever has gouged out this scene:
A lurid cave with a stubby arch,
And rich green boulders covered with algae.
Now the stiff wind blows, shaking pine branches.
Dew-drops dripping from willow leaves.
You who are virtuous, or saintly, who hasn’t tried,
Even with weak knees, exhausted feet, to mount it?

ANAÏS NIN

The Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Vol 2 (1934-1939)

Man today is like a tree that is withering at the roots. And most women painted and wrote nothing but imitations of phalluses. The world was filled with phalluses, like totem poles, and no womb anywhere. 

I must go the opposite way from Proust who found eternal moments in creation. I must find them in life. My work must be the closest to the life flow. I must install myself inside of the seed, growth, mysteries. I must prove the possibility of instantaneous, immediate, spontaneous art. My art must be like a miracle. Before it goes through the conduits of the brain and becomes an abstraction, a fiction, a lie. 

It must be for woman, more like a personified ancient ritual, where every spiritual thought was made visible, enacted, represented.