Reality check!

... to all the men i saw today, gathered in clumps, festering with joy at the death of a dictator... Won't a nubile woman like Libya feel vacant when she accidentally brushes her fingers across the scar on her chest where the cancerous breast was removed?

The Vorticist Manifesto

The manifesto is primarily a long list of things to be 'Blessed' or 'Blasted'. It starts:

1. Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.
2. We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes.
3. We discharge ourselves on both sides.
4. We fight first on one side, then on the other, but always for the SAME cause, which is neither side or both sides and ours.
5. Mercenaries were always the best troops.
6. We are primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World.
7. Our Cause is NO-MAN'S.
8. We set Humour at Humour's throat. Stir up Civil War among peaceful apes.
9. We only want Humour if it has fought like Tragedy.
10. We only want Tragedy if it can clench its side-muscles like hands on its belly, and bring to the surface a laugh like a bomb.

I wake with a lump and the news confirms it!

We're prisoners of war... a war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough to matter!




The God of small things
Arundhati Roy

Always Brenda of the township

Swinging

‎...who danced shamelessly,

dressed like an animal, rolled like water... 

Who we all applauded and joined, making faces at joy!

Sunday Night

They stood like church spires, signalling the hour in fan fare

Shot glass vision

They squatted into the dome of her dresses; hems ran like terracotta geometry lacing all the loose ends. 

Threw the neck

Uncrossed her legs and eyes 

Surrendered

Raised her hands like minarets and belted calls of prayer 

But one after the other they quivered and dismounted

Resuming the gagging bite of palm over begging lips

Her gaze glazed

They kept coming, stretched sick thoughts like cord bridges over what was once remote and then the traffic came, 

Five lanes,

One way,

Flowed like magma, 

Smelt like sulphur,

Stiff

Determined

They gather on certain Monday mornings,

Some times Tuesdays 

I can’t remember the faces

Just when you think there is no more left!