How brave are our fire brigades?
As they battle bushfires each day,
Yes, it's summer in Victoria,
Not exactly the Waldorf Astoria,
For all the fire brigades,
Our respect they've totally gained,
Laying their lives on the line,
When the weather's too hot and fine,
Burn, Victoria, burn,
El Nino's torrid urn,
Our noble defenders each day,
Real heroes in the news, I say,
As they battle bushfires today,
How brave are the fire brigades?

The radio alarm is a bit too strong
for his afternoon hangover taste.
He goes downstairs, sets the coffee to brewing,
rubs his hands through the hair on his face.
As he sits and he smokes, he can't quite think of the joke
she once told him about wooden eyes.

The coffee is ready, his hands are unsteady
as he pours his first cup of cure.
He tries to be happy he woke up today,
but whether being awake's good, he's not sure.
Outside it's raining, but he's gallantly straining
to keep his head and his spirits held high.

As soft as the flower bending out in its shower,
fiercer than hornets defending their hives,
the memories of sharing her secrets and sheets
run him through like sharp rusty knives.
He decides that his cup isn't quite strong enough,
takes the ***** from the shelf, gives a sigh.

He goes to the porch to put words to the torch
he still carries and knows whiskey just fuels.
Thunder puts a voice to his hammering heart.
Through ink, his knotted mind unspools,
writing of butterflies and of how his love lies
cocooned under unreachable skies.

From teardrops to streams to winter moonbeams
to a peach, firm and sweet, in the spring,
he writes of pilgrims and language and soft dew-damp grass
and how he sees her in everything.
He rambles and grieves, and he just can't believe
how much he has bottled inside.

He writes how the leaves, when they whisper in the breeze,
bring to mind her warm breath in his mouth,
how when walking through woods he loves the birdsong
when they fly back in the summer from the south
because she would sing too and he always knew
he wanted that sound in his ears when he died.

He writes even the streetlights, fluorescent and bright,
make him miss the diamond chips in her eyes,
how the fountain in the park plays watersongs in the dark
when he goes to make wishes on pennies
and while he's there he gets hoping
there will be some spare wishes
but so far there haven't been any.

He writes that the cold makes him think of the old
hotel where they spent most of a week,
lazing and gazing quite lovingly,
and how he brushed an eyelash off her cheek.
The crickets and frogs and all of the dogs
sound as mournful as he feels each night.

He writes about chocolate and fun in arcades,
he writes about stairwells and butchers' blades,
and closed-casket funerals, and Christmas parades,
then sad flightless birds and tiny brigades
of ants taking crumbs from the toast he had made,
and political goons with their soulless tirades,
old-timey duels and terrible grades,
strangers on  buses, harp music, maids,
the weird afterimages when all the light fades,
the pleasure of dinnertime serenades,
sidewalk chalk, wine, and hand grenades.

He writes of how much fun it would be to fly,
and saltwater taffy and ferryboat rides,

sitting on couches, scratched CD's,
pets gone too soon and overdraft fees,

the beach, the lake, the mountains, the fog,
David Bowie's funny, ill-smelling bog,

jewelry, perfume, sushi, and swans,
the smell of the pavement when the rain's come and gone,

and shots and opera, and Oprah and ***,
and tiny bikinis with yellow dots,

stained glass lamps, and gum and stamps,
her dancing shoes on wheelchair ramps,
that overstrange feeling of déjà vu,
filet mignon and cordon bleu,

bad haircuts at county fairs,
honey and clover, stockmarket shares,
the comfort of nestling in overstuffed chairs,
and her poking fun at the clothes that he wears,
and giraffes and hippos and polar bears,
cumbersome car consoles, monsters' lairs,
singing in public and ignoring the stares,
botching it badly while making éclairs,
misspelled tattoos, socks not in pairs,
people who take something that isn't theirs,
the future of man, and man's future cares,

why people so frequently lie
and bury themselves so deep in the mire
of monetary profits when money won't buy
a single next second because time's not for hire,
and that he sees her in everything.

Then unexpectedly, unbidden from where it was hidden
comes the punchline to the joke she had told him.
He laughs -- it's too much and his heart finally tears
as a blackness rolls in to enfold him.
The last thing he hears is birdsong in his ears --
the sound brings hope and is sweet as he dies.

PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.

Little Toy Soldiers going off to war
None will ever live to  see age twenty four
None of them even  know what they're fighting for
Little Toy Soldiers going off to war

The world has always been this way
With Emperors and Kings
Fighting with toy soldiers
And the glory that it brings

Land, beliefs, religion
The basis of the war
fought by young toy soldiers
Who all die by the score

Time has taught us nothing
But, it's changed the way we fight
War is a full day job
Now that it is fought at night

The boards of little armies
Are now shown up on the screen
With all the little soldiers
Lit in different shades of green

They used to be all metal
Painted up in nice bright shades
With a General on horseback
Leading all his smart brigades

Then, the men were plastic
glued to bits of wood
Behaving as a unit
Just like a soldier should

Now, the war is different
They're up there in different hues
You can watch them fight in real time
Just like on the nightly news

The only thing remaining
The thing that's stayed the same
Is that nobody in power
Know the Little Soldiers names

Little Toy Soldiers going off to war
None will ever live to  see age twenty four
None of them even  know what they're fighting for
Little Toy Soldiers going off to war

xspacexpotatox 1h
Racism is a lie, your people hate us naturally lol just look at the way you’re responding................ and us “black people” are supposed to be the ignorant ones.... whew
xspacexpotatox  1h
Look at the affliction and persecution. There’s a reason why your ancestors put chains around our necks. It’s because the Bible said it would happen ****
xspacexpotatox  1h
So do me a favor, go learn a bit more. I’m not even gonna laugh at your ignorance, I’ll pray for you. Have a nice one.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
oh so your jewish friend is the authority on this? what does he know about zionism? seems you got your mind made up man. good for you
xspacexpotatox  1h
I want to know why you feel so threatened lol
xspacexpotatox  1h
I won’t let the hate reach me man
Torin Galleshaw  1h
wow, racism is a lie then u stereotype all white people IMMEDIATELY after you say that. ignent? i really wanted to give you a chance bro. but you have been very abrasive this whole time, immature and incredibly offensive. i dont know where in the bible it says that. or, if as i remember when i went to ce williams middle school as a young kid in a poor part of charleston south carolina where i also learned a test can be racist because the only person that did well on it was me, the white kid. ive felt black racism towards me all my life. do you know the history of the celtic people. yeah, slaves were given food to eat, my people died in gutters in the cold because of no mc hiring practices. ever heard of britain, do you know who irelands neighbor is. have you heard of the potato famine, do you know why it happened? william wallace?
systematic opression for over 800 years.

most important part and key difference between us, besides the fact thta your better than me because you are black, but. you claim im so ignorant im not worth your time, essentially. i think your so misguided i would love to show you the actual way to god and heaven. brother, you need it.
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro you lose don’t message me anymore
Torin Galleshaw  1h
and dont claim im acting like im threatened, first thing, you dont know me. youre acting nearly militaristic on this ****. young malcom X wanna be. im cool tho, you robably never knew someone as chill as me.
maybe we could talk without resorting to personal attacks tho. thats a good sign you are losing an argument.
xspacexpotatox  1h
What’s your point? Mines is simple. I get what I learned from college text books and the Bible, the knowledge coincides and that indicates who my people are.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
do you know of the talmud?
do you know what it is?
do you realize that it contains the only visual description for jesus?
do me a favor, before you try to come at me with some more weak **** why dont you go and see what the talmud has to say about it
thank you brother
xspacexpotatox  1h
Was the visual description a white man? If so I’m not interested
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m a young black man that’s been taught all his life, all I know is truth.
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m not that arrogant, I offered you edification and once I edified you rejected. lol I’m not supposed to be nice and open to you.... I know who my oppressors are.
xspacexpotatox  1h
“GOD” said “and I know the blasphemies of those that say they are Jews and are not” you’re disrespecting my ancestors
Torin Galleshaw  1h
thats the thing only a truly awoken spiritual person will ever recognize. in a past life you were a tiny asian woman bro, you were a fat white guy, you were a cat fucj it. so rn your black. soul dont got color. recognize bro. i dont wanna big boy you on this, but i can. and i will if i have to. or maybe you would either A. apologize for your offensive and rude behavior, or B. and my preferred choice we could ACTUALLY converse. you say you got proof, cite it priest boy
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, fed to alligators, shot in the streets, literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, your language and books taken from you.. You’re not hearing me out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay. I’m OG. I teach people. So far I’ve learned nothing from this conversation. I’m proud of the beatings my people took to get here, and I definitely don’t agree with the whole “you were a white or Asian person in the past life” because that makes no sense. My family is “BLACK”, besides that my moms great grandmother was mixed, and were STILL predominantly “BLACK”. I come from “BLACK” people, therefore I am a HEBREW ISRAELITE, and I know this for a FACT!
Torin Galleshaw  49m
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, starved for hundreds of years, shot in the streets, forced to fight in the civil war after arriving here form ireland starving, (one of the most effective brigades, you see many of the soldiers had to fight in wars against the british already)literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, my last name is not the last name my great great great granparents had. it was too ethnic, it was changed, your language and books taken from you. do they speak celtic in ireland?.. You’re not hearing ME out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay
xspacexpotatox  42m
Oh you guys are actually mention in the battles you fought?! **** there’s no documentation of anything “African Americans” did in the wars we helped win! Atleast you guys got decent credit
Torin Galleshaw  37m
bible told me you just have to accept his love, jesus's love, but even buddahs love, and john the baptists love, and all of gods great prophets. bible taught me that without their love i can never really love any one.
xspacexpotatox  35m
If you believe in the most high, fine with me. That’s all I have to say.
Torin Galleshaw
Torin Galleshaw  33m
yes, there is documentation of both slaves ad freed black men fighting on both sides actually, believe it or not
Torin Galleshaw  32m
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

xspacexpotatox  28m
I never once believed the history teachers in school, I always challenged them because I know that American History is *******. Just like whatever filth you’re trying to show me will only bore me like the teachers bored me in school. I served in the US Army. I did my time for white america and I refuse to go back lol

he blocked me not long after that, final thoughts

Matthew 6:10-14 thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

they get into your pant
sting the fleshiest part
concerns they've scant
if the bitten is hurt
no sooner than dangers they read
quickly inject formic acid.

easily irritable they're venomous
the pain they inflict can't be quietly nursed
don't they ever bother size of victim
elephantine fat or grasshopper slim
just one bite and the crisis is dire
body is engulfed in eruptive fire.

they grip quite strong before they bite
crawl on from left catch you from right
not a fair deal was it deserved to be earned
thrown in the fire thousand times burned
they spread everywhere trees and clothesline
upon this earth they're livid landmine.

fear them you might curse them abhor
can't stop them they're mighty predator
one small sting is sparks of whiplash
leaving on skin swollen red rash
the more you scratch the more leaps the flame
be wary of these creatures fire ant by name.

‘Twas but a rare, snowy day in Paris,
a January day, as all the lights of the city
rested, as dancers of the Moulin Rouge
fixed their make up during the intermission

And in the graveyard of Père Lachaise
there stood a solitary figure of an old man,
his hands gathered together politely,
in front, clenching on to a tattered flat cap

The man stood in front of a grey wall,
“a tomb without a cross or chapel,
or golden lilies, or sky-blue church windows,”
but with an equally lonesome little plaque
that read, ‘Aux mort de la commune,
21 28 Mai 1871’

He lit a cigarette, from which he took just one puff,
stuck it upside-down on a patch of dirt,
then notwithstanding the thunderstorm
of camera flashes from Japanese tourists,
he started to sing, with a hoarse yet firm voice,
“Debout, les damnés de la terre,
Debout, les forçats de la faim…”

As the wrinkle on his forehead began to stretch,
the dusty particles of ice piled higher and higher
on neighboring graves commemorating
French members of the International Brigades
and Spanish maquis of the French Resistance
-apparently the 3,400 meters height of Pyrenees
was merely a backyard *****
for ideas and fates to tread over barefooted-

His song was a ballad of unrequited passion;
when he got to the chorus about some final struggle
and the unity of human race in a silly hymn,
a song that was never played on a radio,
for which no cool kid would ever
spend $0.99 on iTunes store,
his voice started cracking in amorous choke

The old man was a lifetime lover
in the truest spirit of a Frenchman,
spent all his life trying to charm a girl named Emma Ries,
and whenever he dreamed of holding
the eloquently bruised hands of that sixteen years old seamstress,
his eyes swelled of nostalgic heart,

And he used to cry joyfully,
dropping tears of bullets back in the days,
whether by the guillotine in Place de la Concorde,
behind the barricades of Belleville amidst the cannonballs,
******* in front of the Gestapo firing squads,
or under the truncheons of gendarme in Quartier Latin

As the expired old ******* moaned wet dreams,
hallucinogic delusions of his bygone youth, however,
the chilly, soggy winter of 20th arrodissement piled on,
the ashen slums of Ménilmontant depressingly ugly as always
with brownish-grey molten snow spattered all over
the streets trotted by drug dealers and wife beaters,
and neither the fiery oratory of Maurice Thorez
nor the sanguine grenade of Colonel Fabien
was around to arson the frost into the proletarian spring

In the same winter that the old man sang
the first, only, and last lovesong of his life,
it had been more than two decades already
since the Berlin Wall had tumbled down
and the ruling parties in Greece and Spain,
both socialists,
had just driven 500,000 workers out of their jobs

-J.P. Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Jean Jaures, V.I. Lenin,
Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, Leon Blum, Abbie Hoffman-
by the time the old man muttered an old pop-song nobody cared for,
all of those names were as relevant as some Medieval knights,
characters from an obscure chronicle centuries ago,
who died by charging horseback into windmills,
mistaking them for giants that held whom they thought as
a princess of an ugly peasant woman,

Eventually, right before his voice cracked
into an embarrassing fuddle of choked-up tears,
impressive for a seventy something years old,
the man finished the song from his memory,
all the way up to the sixth stanza;
yet the curvaceously splintered palm of a seamstress,
it was still so far away from his hands that’s been pleading
since 1871 for that glorious *******
which once stood so proudly in the face of a Czernowitz magistrate

When the cigarette he stuck upside down on the dirt
burned all the way down, he reached into his coat,
took out a rose, laid it softly, like his own infant child,
in front of the plaque which golden inscriptions
turned grey from unwashed grimes of ages
and as the old fool walked away,
his back turned away from the solemn wall,
there was but one little patch of dirt in the whole of Paris
uncovered by snow, still hoping for the spring to come.

Men of the Twenty-first
Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
Weak with our wounds and our thirst,
Wanting our sleep and our food,
After a day and a night --
God, shall we ever forget!
Beaten and broke in the fight,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.
Trying to hold the line,
Fainting and spent and done,
Always the thud and the whine,
Always the yell of the ***!
Northumerland, Lancaster, York,
Durham and Somerset,
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.

Never a message of hope!
Never a word of cheer!
Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept *****,
With the dull dead plain in our rear.
Always the whine of the shell,
Always the roar of its burst,
Always the tortures of hell,
As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck and the guns and the Boche,
When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!"
And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front for the Guards!"
And the Guards came through.

Our throats they were parched and hot,
But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers!
Irish and Welsh and Scot,
Coldstream and Grenadiers.
Two brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem,
We -- we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them!
Lord, I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand!
How should your cheeks be wet,
Such feelin's don't come to you.
But when can me or my mates forget,
When the Guards came through?

"Five yards left extend!"
It passed from rank to rank.
Line after line with never a bend,
And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,
Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle and glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,
With the shrapnel right in their face
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front!

Man, it was great to see!
Man, it was fine to do!
It's a cot and a hospital ward for me,
But I'll tell'em in Blighty, whereever I be,
How the Guards came through.

Behind the pomp and circumstance
The celebrations and parades
Remember those who battled
The platoons and the brigades
Take some time to think now
Of the freedoms we possess
Of who fought the battle
Those who didn't second guess
Respect the soldiers duty
Give thanks to those who served
A handshake and a smile
Is worth a thousand words
It might be a long weekend
That many now will never see
Think of them this weekend
And give their life some dignity
Now, go and have a hotdog
Ride the float in the parade
Enjoy the fireworks exploding
Have a Happy Memorial Day

Le cri d'Alep ; ce principe   d’égalité dénié entre les Humains qui nous interpelle  

Combien sont-ils réfugiés dans les caves
À tromper provisoirement la mort
en se promettant une vie meilleure, où leur voix soit entendue
ou en songeant au paradis promis aux martyrs ?

Et ce cinéaste kurde qui vivait à Paris et voulait voler des images à l’anonymat de la grande faucheuse.
Il est parti là-bas muni de l'espoir fou que parfois les images savent atteindre le cœur des hommes.
Certains les appellent des «Djihadistes» et tremblent pour leur propre liberté d’opinion, pour les femmes qui sont traitées comme moins que rien par une masculinité égarée et pour leur rêve d’un nouveau «Califat» qui relève plus d’une blessure historique que d’un projet concret et réalisable.

D’autres défendent tout simplement un même « droit des gens» pour tous les êtres sur la Planète
Pourquoi être né Arabe, Juif, Kurde ou noir ou même apatride, devrait-il à jamais vous rendre la vie plus précaire et vous priver du Droit de choisir vos gouvernants ?
Il fut un temps où des évêques catholiques bénissaient les armes des troupes de Franco et appelaient à libérer l’Espagne des «rouges».
Il fut un temps où l’on enfermait dans le camp du Vernet les courageux combattants des «brigades internationales» ; ceux venus de tous les lieux du Monde qui ne croyaient pas en Allah mais avaient bien une forme de foi terrestre.
Durant ce temps Orwell, Hemingway, Malraux, ceux de la brigade Lincoln, les poètes de vingt ans assassinés tels, Sam Levinger, mort à Belchite, et Joseph Seligman, lors de la bataille du Jarama. Ils avaient vingt ans. Et bien d’autres quittèrent leur quiétude pour défendre l’Humanisme et l’Humanité aux prises avec les cris du «Viva la Muerte» des fascistes.

Que l’on m’explique, aujourd’hui pourquoi, la circonstance de naître dans le croissant fertile devrait vous valoir la servitude à vie et supporter un dirigeant criminel qui va qu’à user du gaz «sarin» contre une partie de sa propre Peuple qui le ***** ?
Et de vivre perpétuellement et sans espoir que cela ne change dans le servage de régimes militaires et de tyrans corrompus ?
La question de la Religion et des «communautés» ne masque-t-elle pas une comptabilité inégalitaire et sordide faite entre les hommes qui vivent sur une même planète ?
Là, en terre d’Islam, vous seriez condamnés à courber le dos entre le bâton et les balles du policier ou la vision et les sermons réducteurs des théocrates et de ceux qui osent se nommer : «Le parti de Dieu» ?
Qui ose ainsi trancher dans l’Humain et réduire le besoin et le souffle des Libertés à certains Peuples ; blancs et riches, de préférence ?

Allons mes ami(e)s, n’oublions pas le message universel des Hume, Paine, Voltaire, Hugo, d’Hemingway qui permit à nos anciens de prendre les Bastilles.
Le Droit à la vie et à la liberté n’est pas d’un continent, ni d’une couleur de peau, ni d’une religion ; il est Universel comme le sourire du jeune enfant à sa mère.
Assez de discriminations et d’hypocrisies ; dénonçons l’imposture des tyrans et les veules par trop intéressés qui nous voudraient taisant et tranquilles.
Il est un «Monde nouveau» qui ne demande qu’à grandir et à vivre si bien sûr, on ne le tue pas avant ou si on ne lui met pas le bâillon.
Ami(e)s ne te fait pas dicter ta conduite par ceux qui sont payés pour écrire que l’ordre immuable doit toujours se perpétuer.
Ose ouvrir les yeux même aux spectacles les plus insoutenables et entendre ce long chœur de gémissements qui est l'Humanité souffrante dont tu fais intrinsèquement partie toi-même, avec les mêmes droits et devoirs.
C’est l’Humanité souffrante qui frappe, devant l’écran de ton téléviseur quand ta journée de travail finie tu t’assoupis et il est trop facile et fallacieux de te dire que des spécialistes vont régler les problèmes à ta place.
Hélas si tous raisonnent ainsi ; rien ne bougera et les Tyrans succéderont aux Tyrans comme les malédictions de Job.
Peut-être ta faible voix comme celle du rouge-gorge doit se mêler à la symphonie du Monde pour qu'enfin puissent tomber les préjugés entre les êtres et les murailles de Jéricho ?

Paul d’Aubin (Paul Arrighi (Historien, Homme de Lettres et Poète) - Toulouse, Toulouse (France) le mardi  1er  octobre  2013.

Paul Arrighi, à Toulouse, (Historien, Homme de Lettres et Poète)

Soft shelter
I urge your preternatural
brigades of perspective
to ground my resignation
in some hypothetical
formation of inclined leisure
If I'm treading mere chance
in my hope then I urge you
not to simply humour me with
sly tomorrows assuring
optimism in the brittle molts
of days shrinking to reveal
solar aspirations
I'll turn my back
to the broken weather like
a naked sibling
There is nothing humourous
in humouring
though I've taken it
in self-destructive perpetuity
Tie me to the rack of realism
like Odysseus before the Sirens
I'll sigh and swallow
yet another new medication
one for soft shelter
in compounded sleep
where perspectives hide
and the chemicals of moods
long dismantled
congregate behind blindfolds of
destiny's clumsy executioners

My femininity is not found in submissive glances to the handsome gentleman standing next to the apples. And as I’m gingerly picking up bananas, hoping he notices how I slowly caress the yellow skin.
My femininity isn’t found in hours spent in front of my mirror every morning putting on a face full of makeup, enhancing my natural beauty amongst the lipstick and perfectly applied winged eyeliner.
My femininity isn’t found in clothes that hug my curves and accenting my child bear hips; inviting you to take a second glance.
It isn’t found in a well placed compliment and a giggle and a smile that’s strokes your ego and make your testosterone burn in your veins.
It’s found in my laugh, my tears, my passionate screams when the rest of the world lay quiet. It’s found in bubble baths and empowering women and teaching little girls that their power isn’t held in the palm of a man.
It’s found in my presence as I walk in a room, unapologetically powerful as I need no compliments from you.
It’s found in my words, nurturing ways and my refusal to let you not be accountable for your *******.
My femininity smells of tears, whiskey and cigarette smoke; if it makes your eyes water I implore you to leave the room.
It’s laughs that are too loud, words that are too offensive and a mind that will make you question your ideas of the world.
I smell weakness and I revolt out the back door, I have no use for the likes of small minded individuals. I know my worth and I refuse to lower my standards so your ego can swell.
It’s found in leggings and sweats and braless brigades. It’s found in wild untameable hair that is full of secrets that I guard with a seething vengeance.
It’s found in arms outstretched to my children who I will raise to be good men, who if they so much as make another woman feel uncomfortable will deal with the wrath of their mother and they will be sliced into hero’s. My boys will know how to find a woman, and if found she must be treasured and held to the highest of respect.

My femininity’s foundation is found in power and preservation. It is found in a smart forked tongue with a wild and brilliant mind; you will feel it as I walk through the door and I do not need to prove it to you.