Our Lady of the Harbour

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The Statue of Liberty symbolizes a refuge from the nightmare of history. She shines her light on those who fight for democracy in faraway lands, yet also on those within her own harbour.

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Arms Race to the Grave (2023)

I see her stranded, as the harbour waters lap beneath her metal skirt.

Her crown, a multi-pronged antenna, buzzes with the sound of Mig and Raptor.

Far above, she hears the hum of Tupelov and B-52 —

specks in the distance, throwing darts across the gathering gloom.

The sky is full of Phantoms and Felons, Typhoons and Mighty Dragons,

flying faster and faster, ready to drop their payloads of doom.

From Earth to Heaven, there’s nothing but an angry Chaos.

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Crossing the Water (July, 2023)

We imagine we can safely cross the water, Bosphorus or Rio Grande, with the scorpion on our back. It doesn’t matter if people say, “Watch out for the narcotraficantes! Watch out for the express kidnappings! Haven’t you seen Midnight Express?”

Back in 1989 I visited my ex-girlfriend in Geneva and she all but forbade me to go to Turkey. She worked for Amnesty International and gave me a head-ache-full of statistics. I responded nonchalantly, heroically even: It doesn’t matter. Life’s dangerous. We have to see the world. I had a passport and money, and didn’t want to waste time thinking about an unlikely scenario concerning a frog and a scorpion. After my friend and I went over to the eastern part of Istanbul and were beaten up and robbed, I was forced to admit she might have had a point.

Nor did I know until today when I just looked it up: the story about the frog and the scorpion comes to us from a 1944 novel by the Russian Lev Nitoburg, who probably borrowed it from the 15th century Persian Khashifi.

The French sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron saw the scorpion as a metaphor for Machiavellian politicians [LIKE VLADIMIR PUTIN] who delude themselves by their unconscious tendency to rationalize their ill-conceived plans, and thereby lead themselves and their followers to ruin. (The Scorpion and the Frog )

From the Persian. Like Shahed drones. Poor little frog. Such a dreamer.

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The International Sky (2023)

She sees the B-52 lift its heavy Nazgul wing and fly at sun’s zenith,

unseen over the jungles of Vietnam and the deserts of Iraq.

She sees the Tupelov 95 flying over the debris of Grozny and Aleppo,

Mariupol and Bakhmut.

Looking across the burning plains, she sees the ancient demons crouching in their silos.

Beyond the sands of Uruk and the walls of Jericho

lie the beckoning graveyards of Malstrom and Uzhur.

As if the world had never moved an inch on its axis, the gods of darkness lie,

silent, as if without breath.

So many forms of mechanized death.

Was it for this that she opened her arms to the world?

Questions (Feb 21, 2023)

How now to deal with Kabul and Khayyam’s ‘babbling sects’? How now to deal with Engels and Sevastopol, and Putin’s announcement today that Russia is suspending the only remaining nuclear treaty? Can we stop, or even slow down, the coming arms race? Or has that ship already sailed?

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Setting Sail (2023)

The boat sets sail, away from the skyscrapers and the hole in the ground.

It all falls behind us, like victories and defeats we leave in our wake.

The words Mission Accomplished and Special Military Operation ring in our ears,

echoing off the steel walls of the super-carriers, like church bells out of tune. 

The rings we make in the water expand outward from New York and Richmond,

to the harbours of Manila and Managua, in episodes of history no one remembers.

If a tree falls on someone else and we don’t see it, and we don’t talk about it,

do we have to admit that it ever fell?

And if Putin continues to talk, and to lie through his teeth about the meaning of history and time,

all the while distracting us with this Blancpain Grande Date Aqua Lung watch,

will those around him ever see that the emperor is only wearing a suicide vest?

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Our Boys (2003)

I met an old man in an antique land where the lone and level sands sands stretched far away. I asked him, “Do you really want to fight our boys? I’m not sure you know what you’re getting into.”

“First off, our boys are just as tough and stubborn as yours, despite the fact that the madrasas from here to Waziristan teach the same thing over and over, and have no hot water, and your students walk three miles to school in their bare feet over rocks sharp as glass.”

“You think the Red Guards were single-minded? Wait till you get a load of our Nintendo monkeys who have every advantage in the world: they have the smartest technicians and the sharpest strategists; they’re stoked on WWE Wrestling and blonde bombshells wrestling in mud, which they’ll wade into, up to their eyeballs, if the commander tells them to.”

“Don’t flatter yourself that our boys are soft, or that your Pathans in their mountains will get the best of them. If our boys pump enough iron and have enough iron to pump and muzzles to load and kevlar to protect them, and if our Army has over half a trillion dollars to spend per year and over 40 billion to spend on the latest bunker-busting bombs that our flying monkeys will drop with utmost stealth from Super Hornet and Strike Eagle, from Phantom and Demon, from Nighthawk and Raptor, then they hardly need a diet of flat bread and lamb to be scary.”

“Think about it and choose your enemies wisely. Do you really want to fight our boys?”

The old man shook his head and said to me, “Come, let me show you our boys.” 

1987

2011

2005

2003

1866

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Next: 🌉 Jovanka on the Bridge

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