Skip to main content

safe on face

Mark yourself safe on face
Discuss the cowards and the brave
Confuse sympathy with blame
Flatten it all on a plain

When grief is impossible
Yet compelling and respectable
Make the survivors perishable
Even if it's improbable

Mourn for those you'd ignore
Fear to walk the same floor
Let the dark city roar

Then multiply the tolls
Let uncertainty loll
Over the coming polls







Popular posts from this blog

The boy and the soldiers

Sitting on the riverbank I watch what floats by. The stream brings a child sitting on a hospital bed. He must be 12, about my son’s age. A bandage hangs from his left shoulder where his arm should be. He cries conpulsively, in a foreign language, so I can only imagine what he is saying. His wailing reminds me of phantom pain, and the tearful words seem to mourn the sudden amputation of his childhood, possibly performed without anaesthetic. But then I realise that his cries may refer to a deeper pain. Maybe the blast that took his arm also took his mum. Maybe all his family, as many in Gaza these days. Before this story enters into a loop, I flick it away with my thumb, making the stream move forward. Another image stops in front of me. Three young men on a desert road dance to Staying Alive by Bee Gees. Their faces look very familiar to me. But it’s not easy to see their faces. They are partially covered with helmets and their bodies are surrounded by military gear. They don’t sp...
Read more

Aprender a Contar

Até agora pudemos dar-nos ao luxo de sermos indivíduos. Tipo, Apareceu-me hoje um indivíduo lá no escritório… Ou tipo, O que me interessa é estar de bem com a minha consciência individual. Pudemos ser indivíduos, cada um com o seu perfil. Cada um mais um comentador politico competindo por atenção na rede, imitando aqueles indivíduos que na televisão e na rádio criticam outros indivíduos sem serem capazes de se entenderem com qualquer grupo para fazer seja o que for. Até agora, fomos indivíduos, relacionámo-nos singularmente, com sistemas burocráticos, cada uma de nós mais um eu, todas diferentes todas iguais, todas jogando o mesmo jogo de singulares.   Até agora temos sido livres para sermos indivíduos, todos com objectos iguais nos nossos espaços privados: cada um com a sua TV, o seu micro-ondas, o seu computador pessoal, a sua chaleira eléctrica, a sua torradeira, o seu telefone esperto e a sua rede de WIFI separada da dos seus vizinhos por uma password super secret...
Read more

Love Thy Neighbour

Sigmund Freud's clothes hanging from Jacques Lacan's window; St Paul's rope hooked to Zigmunt Bauman's wall; Richard Sennett walking alongside Shylock, the Jew in the streets of Venice
Read more