March 2019

VOL XXVII, Issue 3, Number 311

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editor: Jack R. Wesdorp

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena; Oswald Le Winter;

Heather Ferguson; Patrick White

ISSN 1480-6401

INTRODUCTION

Daniel Morris

CONTENTS

Ae Reiff

Jonathan Beale

SIMON PERCHIK

Paweł Markiewicz

Gary Beck

Michael Ceraolo

POST SCRIPTUM

John Grey

Daniel Morris

Carbon Cycle

Atmosphere

750 + 5.0/yr

90 respiration respiration

60 Reduced 60

Uptake by GPP

Plants 120

0.9

Ocean- atmosphere

exchange Fossil fuel

combustion

9.1

uptake by

Volcanic

And hydrothermal

Emissions

<0.1 rivers Net Consumers

Runoff

0.8 deforestation

<0.1

Oceans weathering Landplants

38,000 <0.1 615

Burial 0il Anthropogenic

Sources

Decomposition

Oceans

Sedimentary rock Fossil Fuel

Extraction

80,600,000 Fossil Fuels

4000

Water Cycle

The Sun’s heat evaporates

Water vapor from lakes

Rain and snow fall clouds forced higher by

Wind and mountains

River, and oceans

On high ground

Atmosphere Clouds

Rain falls over

The ocean water in the ocean

Evaporates and rises

Into the atmosphere

Land surface water flows

Ground water seeps back to the ocean

Through sock and soil water

To join streams and rivers water

Ae Reiff

Songs of Taliesin

Voyage

Taliesin came to storm tossed earth

There in the world between death and birth

It was his to learn that he could not save

God it was in the salt sand wave

If you visit with him in that good night

You know the earth will be filled with light

I will be satisfied when I awake

My deadly wounds they are not so great

In the lingering goodness of God’s heart

He breathes bends bleeds till the heaven parts

The words of God pure silver words

In them he saw the beauty of the Lord

With angel of the Lord that the saint surrounds

We exalt his name with the heavenly sound

He delivers the poor both man and beast

We cease from anger delight in peace

Living and in death it is his mirth

To save by sacrifice and inherit earth

But Taliesin was not told all

I met him in the worlds where no night falls

We shared meat and bread sat on a stone

It was that time that I learned this song

Learned to distinguish the great and least

And that the Lord loves both man and beast

Once I was young but now I’m old

Still I wait in the corner of this old sheepfold

I’m a sort of a shepherd catch sheep for the sun

And I wait in the earth till the Lord should come

Once I thought the universe fulfilled

But it was only my heart that he tilled

Chair of Taliesin

Now time ends, Taliesin

Illustrates the heaven,

Silent the storms of blood,

Eight times the letter proved,

Intent on it he stands,

Listening to his God,

As lost men stop for towns,

Throats clearing, tongues kindling flame.

The bodhisattva twice returned,

Above heaven learned

Love’s sacrifice saves men,

Iesu, creation’s LORD and heaven’s.

Every people, lands and men

Shall look in him they pierced,

Irate behold rejected come,

Neighbors and saints judge all earth.

Merlin

Many were the nights I had seen stars,

Each there among the flowers daring smelled,

Riches I find only in your arms,

Let me not desire then another

In all these hours and come beloved,

None may hereafter this know you so well.

And if I may not leave my prison,

More there like grain in an old barn,

But stored from habitation and old age,

Rooms I keep under the apple tree,

Of stone, where I await my love’s return,

So to rest in her arms under appley boughs,

In fair a wanton, thus my queen

Used to hide me in the woodland,

So that when death took everyone still it could never call me.

Taliessin

Taliessin, bard countenance All of your fame has not been lost

Long did you serve a king, Urien Rheged

Inside a bag among bull rushes

Elphin the Prince took up this gift

Somber the bards of the isle of Britain

So long without peer in the eye of the west

In praising the God of Creation.

Nine are the letters in the name of Taliessin

Notes

-Taliesin means shining brow.

-Rheged means gift.

-Taliesin was found in a fishing weir.

-Elphin is the son of Rheged.

-The bards are somber because of his excellence.

-Taliesin is a double s in the Welsh.

Jonathan Beale 1 Down by the cities river The city: unrecognizable The city, no longer what it was As they gather and heap For the final pyre For their memory – left to serve Built on a certain indestructibility Only to be – undone The concept dies as the child Fades in to adulthood Nothing remains no ash no epitaph Just a poetic musing in the ether The dies again burning a path The city: unrecognizable The city, no longer what it was

2 Ophelia As the hours laughing darkness Winds whip the innocent cliff Her mind – in torment From his – And so, who devised this? This torment that can never…. In this frozen state The malleability of flesh Lost And again, she says, and goes unheard. Her words dissolve into the air The end as inevitable as autumns curse Her curse is as her ancestors Carved in tablets of stone.

3 This recently denied fox his cunning His snout – this torpidity Unknown before today. On this dull black wet tar As an elderly woman roams This way and that Her torch seeking her once youthful gaze – unaware of age and death. The fox - center stage and unaware Of his moment of undistinguished glory as cars pause in some mark abstract mark of remembrance. before going on to where they have to go….

4 Chopin Every human emotion; once prized now Conveniently forgotten or now event just lost In this garden of bitter and distracted herbs Why in this world of black and white The sharps penetrate – the serotonin’s rush Dog day afternoons – laying staring at the ceiling The Merlot pulses mingled in the sanguine fluid The strange muse turns her back. Just for a while An unusual delicacy – the fine mixture of air and ice Hoover over the doubt that consumes The inevitable ‘ where’s and ‘why’s ’ and of course ‘Why not’s’ she is there as am, yet still unconnected.

5 An immortality perhaps The child is seen through the fallen eye - The thumb showing what he has become. From the father’s delicate finger and thumb. In capturing the falling baton – so what remains? Just ‘words…words…words….’ In his mind’s eye. And how to become the other side of me, to just die.

6 Reverie To whose eyes do we aim? Are they different or the same? Learning from the patterned path That the old schools taught – Long and hard Breeding wordsmiths and the occasion bard.

7 From Allegory of lost virtue After Antonio de Pereda Empty vessels stand – hollow dry She holds with ease An unknown ease For her or from your eye & mind Untouched bread and wine Long forgotten. Elegance is suffering is virtues song: Each need to fill because it can be Each dime must be spent Each avenue must be explored So that undiscovered country The Future Will become that overwhelming Nightmare you thought Could or would never happen

8 Another Another Spring The moon is dead dead From ‘Two Evening Moons’ by Federico Garcia Lorca It is spring again again Anticipation hangings as the blossom Looking forward There’s a touch of optimism This year will bring Another crop to the fold And still the times Tick along this linear path One more – one less The water will break The sun will the sun shall And again, we here the rhapsody And it is spring again The moon has passed passed

9 Cavafy Still waiting for the Barbarians Within a too closed world Cavafy’s dream Did survive – did grow into another dimension. In this minutiae world woven from… What they could not be bothered with. The severity of the idealized faded away at night. The dawn brings other questions Reduced down to: a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ CHE FECE…IL GRAN RIFIUTOY* From all the windows an oblique horizon only he would ever understand The Barbarians simultaneously his slaughterer and redeemer *Who did the great refusal

10 Harrison (after Tony Harrison) Each epoch has its myth – a rogue ship That emerges from the sludge It unplanned elegance grows under the same sun As you or I. The feet that carried me Just as yours: sovereign or surf “…arr-e-son …arr-e-son”. Some teacher against a silent wall Where Norven cum Italian lingo the: ‘Huh’, ’H’ is lost The foundries make through fire Losing the weak in a biblical torrent And what was your beef? That incomplete epitaph And of the beef, beer, and bread. So, what was it the poet said? End

SIMON PERCHIK

*

More bench than stone

has that scent from ashes

made with wood, painted green

before it should have been

though the grass you stick in your shoes

is new too, knows nothing

except to be closer, warmed

as if it once had arms

is picking up pieces

for later where it’s not so painful

to sweat by dropping things

in the dark and softer.

*

With nothing but head down

you dig your way out

making room arm under arm

the way your cradle was dipped

first in wood then by itself

lifting your hand to be counted

by twos, as yet not missing

and inside a breath still dark

look up to see who comes back.

*

Between their thirst and valleys

you kneel to blanket these dead

with light, air out the stove

weightless and nothing to lean on

–just like that! a small mound

half iron, half opens for rain

driven into the ground, stroked

feeding on faces and edges

though the wood slowly passing by

never stopped being a river

lets you drink smoke

as if once you had two hearts

still listen for an echo, corners

and the emptiness that reaches inside

for eyelids, sawdust and blacker.

*

It was a gull! broken apart

and still you need your shadow

spreading out as a single cry

under an immense wing

though the light it gives off

sticks in the ground –each feather

damp from opening, closing

and opening again, lit

between shoreline and hidden

–you dead know all about lying down

then carried one by one in white

as beautiful as overhead and a small stone.

*

The glare this plate thins out

eats the way each star

tells you it’s still alone

though rim to rim you bring

a rain smelling from a narrow road

holding down the Earth

till everything is dirt and she

is sitting at a table, asks you

to hold her hand, childlike, fill it

lets you swallow the afternoon

even she will remember, your lips

circling down in flames and hunger.

Paweł Markiewicz

The bee in the calyx

there was a tender

muse-like moment of charm such an Apollonian tear

when the cute bee set down on a noble rose

in the kind calyx of the bloom full dreamy splendor

the gentle sun smiled at that time at it fairy-like

oh a sweet morning gracefulness of rays

the owl stayed with the courage that is in the habit

of flying into an ancient forest homewards

there was endlessly angelic-beautiful early spring

a tender March like a breath with pleasant smell of hummingbirds

and in bright nightly moonlight which is fulfilled in splendor of butterfly

the ghosts of open fields are dreaming incredible with the gleaming time of fantasy

dreams about the morning star and this steeped in legend Venus

boasted about the dreamy bee with marvelous native glow

because it experienced something very old such a butterfly-like feeling

as if it had been infinite fledged as the heavenly she-daydreamer

that bee wanted to relish only the dew

take a few drops of an eternal water to itself

easy drinking and it wings dipping

yes the rose was knowing in a gorgeous dream of the primeval delight

as soon as the insect looked in the mild kind dew

it saw there an enchanting minute small mirror

trough the mirror the bee observed the dreamful nature

the hidden spring mermaid from an other time as trace of ontology

that was the boundless wonderful eagle-like eternity

what a melancholic land of spring dream-magic!

the mermaid with the harp was a young poet of muses

that youth forsooth with thousands warm lights of hearts

the bee dreamed like an Apollonian rider

through the March into April

meanwhile the soul of the bee became tender

willing to a starry flight as well as worth the ambrosia

the while in rosy calyx and mermaid´s observation

have enchanted forever the dream of the eternity

Gary Beck

Descent

Before we descend into chaos,

poverty leading to hunger,

desperation leading to crime,

there is still a modicum of hope

that the owners of our land

will relent and moderate

economic oppression,

allowing subsistence for many

expectations of abundance for some,

but some of us fear

the wealthy have illusions

of retreating to protected enclaves

when rioting and disorder

convulses a needy people

submerging into animalism

as they struggle for survival.

Precipitation

Rain falls on the city

neither gentle nor soothing

to the unappreciative

who no longer know

where they get their water,

the essential service

that we can only do without

a little longer than air.

And as we rush to work, school,

shopping, other activities,

we resent getting wet,

fume at any delays,

get overheated,

uncomfortable,

completely unaware

we once lived without shelter.

Scientific Progress

The chaos of the universe

unperceived by most

who go about affairs

unaware disaster looms,

work, play, create, invent

in the blind expectation

that nothing will interfere

with best laid plans,

comforting routines,

triumphs and defeats.

We often do not learn

pleasure is fleeting.

Those who speculate

on the meaning of existence,

ask why are we here,

examine right and wrong,

question the nature of belief,

reach arbitrary conclusions,

except certain scientists

who demonstrate proof

at a primitive level

of demonstrable facts

that make drastic changes

in day to day life

that most of us accept

without understanding.

Madness Unleashed

Insane attacks

with guns, knives, bombs,

increasing

in fraying America

yet we walk city streets

reasonably secure,

expecting

to arrive safely,

at home, school, work,

be unmolested

by a disturbed person

waiting to detonate

for whatever reason

on innocent and guilty alike.

Subversion

The news of terrible crimes

does not disturb us

sufficiently

to do anything about it.

Murder, rape, robbery

are normal events

promulgated

by constant tv broadcasts

of glamorous violence

conditioning us

to accept

the unacceptable.

Michael Ceraolo Labor and Capital in the Gilded Age Washington, D.C. August 7th, 1882 "Resolved, That the Committee on Education and Labor is hereby authorized and directed to take into consideration the subject of the relations between labor and capital, the wages and hours of labor, the condition of the laboring classes" and "visit such places in the United States as they may deem proper" Adopted unanimously by the Senate The Committee visited a tenement occupied by workers a step above common laborers: one hundred fifty-six rooms, no bathrooms "The public mind (and by the public mind I mean the property owners) was not much disposed to make improvements in the interest of health" "Do you think that the working people devote more time to labor or less time than the employers?" "Less" said an employer "Too many people are trying to live without labor" said another representative of capital "What is your opinion as the whether that idea of regarding the laborer as a machine exists more now than it has existed in the past?" "I think . . . that it is intensifying and increasing even as we go along" "The old . . .idea of the nobility of labor is fast passing away" "Then it is the exceptionally high wages that induce men to engage in the business?" "No" "The average . . . earnings do no amount to more than $350 a year" "Don't you think that is because they cannot afford to pay more?" "judging from what is currently reported as their dividends,

they are more than capable of paying it" "Now why is that not enough?" "Because it will not purchase the common necessaries of life" "there is no earthly obligation on us to pay a man's widow anything after he dies in our service" even when it is demonstrably our fault, "yet we are doing that continually for a limited period" "one, two, or three months' salary, as the case may be" "I have never known a single instance of bribery in the House of Representatives or in the Senate of the United States" Summary of the Report on the Hearings: " " Recommendations for Action: " "

The Pullman Strike "Employees . . . were to depend on his generosity and foresight in all things": living in "the Pullman house" shopping in "the Pullman shop" worshiping in "the Pullman church" being buried in "the Pullman cemetery" and then going to "the Pullman hell" You didn't have to live in the company town, but those who didn't were the first laid off and were rarely, if ever, promoted And when he reduced wages by twenty-five percent during the depression of the eighteen-nineties but didn't reduce rents, ludicrously claiming the two were unrelated to each other (even collecting a sixty-dollar debt from Jennie Curtis, one of his workers, because her late father owed Pullman that amount), the workers struck in May 1894 Some of the striking workers were members of the new American Railway Union, some weren't Six weeks passed, peacefully, then, on June 26th, members of the ARU began refusing to handle Pullman cars in a show of solidarity with the strikers Such a state of affairs couldn't be allowed The General Managers' Association, an illegal combination in restraint of trade if ever there was one (though of course not considered as such by the powers-that-be) started attaching Pullman cars to freight trains, mail trains, etc., knowing such a move would enlist the government to help break the strike The U.S. Attorney General, a railroad attorney, and his handpicked assistant, a railroad attorney, appeared before a judge who had recently called unions a menace, seeking an injunction that would in effect bar all union activity; the injunction was granted the same day Eugene Debs and other union officials were convicted of contempt of court for violating the injunction; the criminal trial on the related charge was ended when one of the jurors got 'sick', and was never resumed

The Supreme Court upheld, unanimously, the injunction violating the rights of labor, and Debs and the others served six months on the contempt charge

The Court-Martial of Mother Jones Yes, you read that title right You may be wondering how, fifty years after Milligan, someone not in the military could be subject to court-martial when the civilian courts were not closed down Here's the story It was one more battle in the longest and deadliest war (usually unacknowledged, and still ongoing) in American history, and short of outright murder the declaration of martial law was the most extreme weapon used by capital through their puppets n elective office (and that it was a weapon used only by capital is shown by the fact that no mine guard or operator was ever arrested, much less tried, for violating the martial law declaration) "back of all the violence, and indications of violence, were the greed and rapacity of the operators" Those operators pulled the puppet strings, and three times the Governor of West Virginia declared martial law in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek areas, to preserve the operators' idea or order after a strike that began in April 1912 And for Mother Jones the third time was the harm She was arrested on February 13, 1913, while in Charleston to present a petition to, and seek an audience with, the Governor concerning conditions in the strike area Charleston being outside the martial-law district mattered not at all to the powers-that-be: she was delivered to the military authorities back in the martial-law district, where a few weeks later she would be tried by a military commission for violating the law The charges were for conspiracy and murder: it was alleged that her words (and words only) were an integral part of the so-called conspiracy She, in her late seventies or early eighties (there has always been some confusion about the exact year of her birth), with a lifetime of activism behind her, knew the score: "You know why they have locked me up charging me with inciting to murder It is merely because they cannot bear to permit me to talk to you"

and "whatever the military court may say I maintain that no body of men in West Virginia has the power to suspend the Constitution of the United States" were two of the statements she was able to smuggle out from her captivity while awaiting trial, waging a campaign in the media She would maintain that stance at trial, saying in her opening statement: "I have done it in West Virginia, I have done it all over the United States, and when I get out, I will do it again" Similar statements from her speeches were entered into evidence at the trial Witnesses were questioned about those speeches, one of which was given outside the martial-law district and another of which was given after the events that led to the charges against her The most inflammatory thing in her speeches was advising the miners to keep their guns "The Supreme Court of West Virginia may claim the dubious honor of having pioneered this line of reasoning" that allowed the court-martial to proceed She and her co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to three years' imprisonment The sealed verdict was sent to the new Governor, who had taken office on March 4, 1913, a few days before the trial had started The Governor's signature was required to complete the process and begin her imprisonment, but the Governor held off signing, keeping the specter of imprisonment alive, holding Mother Jones and her co-defendants hostage until the strike was settled Once it was, she and the others were freed, and she resumed her life of agitation

John Grey

THE PHOTO ALBUM OF MYSELF

All I can make out of this photo

is a vegetable.

One admission of plain fact:

fine art is a long way

from snapshots of my youth.

I don’t envy any of these

versions of myself.

Here’s a mug with a moustache,

part of a sequence of training exercises

in looking older.

This one ought to be a target in a shooting gallery.

There were times I thought he was.

Here’s the five-year-old playing with his crayons.

And the seven-year-old in a cowboy suit

ready to clear the town of bad guys.

More self-portraits here

than Van Gogh ever painted

but none, at least, are missing an ear.

So which is me.

Options line up like ducks

but none with enough clarity

to face the world.

So back to the 70’s,

bell-bottoms, afro,

silver silk shirt unbuttoned,

little satisfaction in knowing

I looked like broccoli.

All these studies grin secrets

that I’m supposed to share.

I don’t

so I close the photo album’s cover,

replace it on the shelf.

The years can sleep until the next time.

It’s today.

I’m the only me left standing.

So when do I say “cheese”?

SCHOOL DANCE

Head high,

dressed in pink saffron,

lips pressed tight

against her braces.

One day,

that iron cage will fall away.

One day,

her partner will be so much more.

For a moment.

her blue eyes

find new ways

of portraying light.

At last a life

that seems more

than it’s been already.

QUOTE

"I believe that you would've wanted to stay with me,"

- the question of the day –

-

- of its honesty

along time's length,

And romance!

and the first tunes

And through the town

as if never blossomed.

The scents of fall,

bad faith, breakdowns, sleaze -—

but it wasn't likely,

understanding of the soul! Childhood!

fields and lakes bloomed to be a moment of your time

last fading notes, for years concealed

from an ancient harp,

soft and plucked,

Woods, lilac and unfruitful,

I absolve you of all blame—

enlightenment that goes nowhere,

in overload,

in confusing light

shy flowers,

reckless and oblivious of the end,

once more to be as before:

flower by flower.

So ends the looking, the remembering:

so roses die,

that soon sadly wither

the dark side of fortune,,

the street-sweepers convey

The large trucks stumble

then self perfected

This is Nature,

till one of us is dead -

we keep saying to one another: "don't forget,"

what's not placated? Just negligible loops!

with excitation, hunger and desire

and yes, Love

DID WE REALLY BOTH SAY "I LOVE YOU"

It’s a major event surely.

It should be jack-hammered into marble

by poets on a metaphor bender.

What is civilization doing at the moment?

Shouldn't they be involved?

At the very least,

it demands a parade and streamers,

people hanging out of office buildings,

schoolgirls lining the route.

And where's the mayor? The governor?

And who's the president anyhow?

Fireworks have a reason for living.

Marching bands are hot to trot.

Shouldn't we pick and choose from

the Hollywood A list for our hosts?

This makes every other declaration of feelings

look like outtakes from The Little Rascals.

I'm expecting to be called up to the podium

any moment now.

Don't worry. We both can grip, hold up the statue,

thank everything from soul to heart to head.

I can just hear the critics.

"Made me think of summer days,

blue lakes, Schwinn bicycles and the

pretty blonde girl in the hip-hugging jeans."

I'm on stage. You're on stage.

And what an audience. . .

the ones who keep it to themselves.

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