In this chapter, the researcher reviewed the opinion of some past and recent writers on the subject and also added their own ideal under the following sub-headings:
- Conceptual frame work
- Theoretical frame work
- Empirical frame work
- Summary

2.1. CONCEPTUAL FRAME WORK
CONCEPT OF ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN

The concept zoological garden is a form of ex – situ conservation, which primarily involves keeping of animals alive outside their natural environment for aesthetic educational researches and recreational purpose (Varadharajan and Pythol 2000). Nigeria is blessed with abundant wildlife species which needs to be properly managed in a sustainable basis to prevent depletion (Opara et –al 2010). Hence the need to adapt strict management of resources, repopulation of endangered species and conservation of wildlife park and zoological garden and management strategies (Ajebede et – al 2010).
Throughout history, human have given value to other species of animals as means of entertainment, education and spirituality in addition to being source of food and clothing (front 2011, 69) collecting and exhibiting and exhibiting animals originated from Ancient Egypt where private collection were reserved for the higher class population as a symbol of wealth and power (wearing and jobberns 2011, 19 – 50). In the 1900’s, zoo’s based themselves as conservation movement, with focus on scientific study of endangered species. In the beginning of the 20th century, zoo became an attraction of mass audiences (Beardworth and Bryan 2001, 88). By the late 1900’s there was a shift in the natural of zoo with public attitude and interest changing nature and conservation, with concern for ecosystem and awareness as they protect endangered species (Wearing and Jobbern 2011, 50.

ROLES OF ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
(Mason 2011, 189) reveal that the roles of zoo are:
a. Educating people about animals.
b. Conservation of endangered species
c. Safeguarding the welfare visitors
d. To generate revenue
e. Providing visitors facilities such as catering and merchandising
f. Re – introducing captive breeding into the wild and carrying out zoological and veterinary research to improve animal welfare in the wild and in captivity.
On the other hand, zoos served as scientific research, for example, zoologist learn more about animals habit and diseases by studying them in zoos studies of animals living kin zoo, together with examination of those that have died have provide zoologist with information about the structure and function of animal bodies (Usher M.B 2000). Keeping wildlife animals in captivity bring visitors from different parts of the world for different purposes such as to provide sources of recreation in the city, to provide biological specimen to constitutes, a learning resource for secondary school, colleges, and universities. It also provide employment and game reserve, provides sources of protein revenue, esthetics recreation, education and scientific values (Presley 2001). The captive animal propagation is one way of encouraging growth of depleted wildlife species population and so properly planned program of zoo establishment and development is considered as one of effective method for conservation of wildlife (Okpiri 2005). Educational environment study and conservation of the  environment have become a subject of major importance all over the world, not only from the point of view of preventing population, but also from the point of conserving water supplies by protecting water shed, conserving soil, vegetarian and Fauna. (Comphell 2007). Comphell also stated that conservation zoos can provide an important facility for research at both pure and applied levels in both the field and laboratory in colleges and universities. Bigot (2000) emphasized that the primary function of zoo curators is to make visit a leaving experience. The attention and effort given to wildlife conservation and tourism in both state and federal levels have been noted.

CONCEPT OF TOURISM
According to UNWTO 2020 defined as the study of man away from his usual habitat. Activities of a person traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes, tourism contributes to specie conservation, communities project in developing countries like: Nigeria, environmental education, awareness and economies development (Klutzy, 2000). Filton et al (2000) reported that 20 – 40 percent of international tourism is related to wildlife. In Nigeria, tourism contributed 3.3 percent of total GDP in 2011 with forecast of a 10.8 percent increase for 2012 (WTTC 2012). Smith et al (2012) recognized the role of wildlife tourism as building breeding species management and influencing visitor’s behavior for the benefit of wild animals. Fibs (2007) underscored the value of zoo visitors and their feedbacks for the planning and designing of zoo and more importantly to decision making in zoo management by showing on – going treads. He therefore stands to reason that visitors’ preferences should be seriously considered by policy makers and management of zoo and other similar institutions. An area in which visitors’ preference is highly important for a zoo in particular is choice of animals desired. Woods (2000) observed that humans have definite preference for different species of animals. Knowledge of visitors desires in terms of animals and the features that make the animals appealing will assist zoo management in animal acquisition and also in development of education and interpretation programs listening physical features, behavioral characteristics as factors influencing animals preference (Wood 2000, Wentworth 2012). Wild tourism can be described as tourism undertaken to view and or encounter non – domesticated animals in captive, semi – captive or in their natural environment (CRC 2001, Newsome et al 2005). According to Durbary (2004), it could be non consumptive such as viewing, photographing and fishing.

CONCEPT OF ZOO AND EDUCATION
In zoo and education, a study by Patricia et al 2007 states that conservation and education are key elements in the mission statement of zoos. A survey conducted by the Association of zoo and aquarium (AZA) reveals that the general public rate conservation and education as the most important role of zoo (Frasers and Stickler 2008). Zoo primarily deals with three aspects of conservation practice i.e practice, advocacy and research. Conservation practice entails captive breeding, species rein-introduction programs, species survival plans and the use of zoo revenue for conservation programs in wild. Conservation advocacy include: public engagement, promoting awareness, advocacy, stewarding and fund raising events and schemes, a good example of which is like “Adopt animal scheme at most modern zoos”. Moreover, conservation research is conducted on wildlife biology, population dynamics, animal behavior, health and welfare and there are also publications generated by zoos animals care captivity. The preservation of animals in zoos makes it easier for more people to see them.
As well, zoos have been used to preserve various endangered species. However, zoos have become powerful educational tool for many scholars, biologists and researchers (Falk and Dierking 2000).  Individual who visit a zoo get the rare opportunity to examine the relationship between man and animal (Wagoner and Jenson 2010). Students can learn a lot about certain animals that might not be locally available. Many specimen and animals (Wagner and Jensen 2010) argue that zoo makes it possible for researchers to conduct their studies, for instance, researchers can use caged animals to make various observation about wildlife or animals. The acquired knowledge can be used to support the survival of the wild animals in their natural habitats. It is therefore agreeable that zoos have an important educational role in every society. This because, learning is ever – changing process (Falk and Dierking 2000). In the 1970’s the primary educational target for most American zoo was elementary level children. The idea was that building understanding would lead to appreciation which would eventually produce a generation that was concerned about wildlife and the environment (Wheatly 2000). Wheatly emphasized that although children are still a primary audience, zoos are extending themselves to reach many others audience that can make difference in action today. This initiative includes the membership, governance and employee of zoo.

CONCEPT OF ZOO AND CONSERVATION
In zoo and conservation, according to Max – Planck Gesell Chaft (2011), Zoology garden breeds animal from threatened populations and and thus makes greater contributions towards biodiversity conservation. According to UN (2020) on global biodiversity warned that 1 million species are at risk of extinction with decades, putting the world’s natural life support system in jeopardy. Unfortunately, loss of plants and animals habitat leads to from species extinctions and loss of diversity from ecosystem. Fortunately, not all of the extinctions occur at once. Conservation action may still be able to save threatened species (John M et al 2016). At October 2010, meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, delegates discussed a plan to reduce pressure in the planet’s biodiversity. Key targets include expanding coverage of protected areas, halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, and preventing extinction of threatened species. Species whose habitat is severely threatened, however, the outlook is so bleak that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the US Endangered Species Act and the CBD (Article a) recognize that In-Situ conservation action (ie, in the species natural habitat) will need to be combined with Ex-Situ approaches, such as captive breeding in zoos, aquariums and so on (Conde et al 2011).

THE THEORETICAL FRAME WORK
The animal welfare and management (Dakin 2001) is a state of being that can be measured, recognized that its ranges from very poor to very good, introduces the concept of coping, allow measurement separate from moral consideration and refer to feeling as well as physical and psychological health. The definition of welfare that we use also emphasizes that it relates to an individual and thus welfare can differ between different members of the same species, even when exposed to the same condition (Horsey et al 2009). In the case of zoo animals, which have often come from very heterogeneous background, individuals may vary greatly in this previous life experiences and this can influence their ability to cope with certain challenges, by using each animal as its environment and thus an individual’s welfare can be measured.
There are also some species – specific characteristics that have evolved to enable animals cope with different, environment and thus we should also consider welfare at the species level; such species level adaptation could relate to dietary needs, hearing sensitivity, thermo-regulatory needs and so on. The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the origin of species” in 1859, this theory states Organisms change over time as result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it to survive and have more offspring. The physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and gene, such changes are called Mutation. “Mutations are basically the raw materials on which evolution act. Pobiner said, mutation can be caused by random error in DNA replication or repair, or by chemical of radiation damage. According to Chinaka (2019) in the book concept of evolution, Charles Darwin proposed the concept of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution. The main postulates of Darwinism are:
1. Geometric increase: According to Darwinism, the populations tends to multiply geometrically and the reproductive powers of living organism (biotic potential) are much more than required to maintain their numbers.
2. Limited food and space
3. Struggle for existence
4. Variation etc
Both natural animal populations and those in captivity are subject to evolutionary forces. Evolutionary changes to captive populations may be an important, but poorly understood, factor that can affect the sustainability of these populations. The importance of maintaining the evolutionary integrity of zoo populations especially those that are used for conservation efforts including rein-introductions is critical for the conservation of biodiversity.
Greater appreciation for an evolutionary perspective may offer important insights that can enhance the reproductive success and health examples and associated strategies that highlight this approach, including minimizing domestication (ie genetic adaptation to captivity), integrating natural mating systems into captive breeding protocols, minimizing the effects of translocation on variation in photoperiods and understanding the interplay of parasites and pathogens and inflammation. Captive populations can adapt rapidly to captive environments through demonstration, in which human impose artificial selection in order to increase the prevalence of desired traits in the domesticated population.
For domestic animals, human breeders choose to breed only those individuals that thrive in the captive environments, leading to trans-generational changes that result in a population that is adapted to breed and survive in the conditions imposed by the breeders. Among captive population of animals, zoo populations are unique in that they are maintained to educate the public regarding wildlife and their habitat or to preserve critically endangered species through captive breeding and reinforcement program. Although assessment and preservation of genetic diversity is a top priority for most conservation breeding programs, fundamental to these goals is the maintenance of the genetic variation of these captive populations (Lacy 2009). Whether used to further educational or conservation goals, it is critically that these captive population are representative of the natural populations from which they are desired (Ashley et al 2003). However, maintaining captive population, such that they are reflective of the wild phenotype of the animals, can be challenging in zoos because of the mismatch the environments that the zoo population is originally from and the captive content in which they are been housed. Hendry et al 2015 carol et al 2014, for example, solitary animals with large territories that only encounter sexually mature counterparts during estrus may be housed in proximity of their mate year round, potentially leading to the behavioral issues, including ****** aggregation or ****** incompatibility. Other stressor can exist in captive environments for which animals are not adapted, including the acoustic environments, physical substrate and even availability of food (Morgan and Tromborg 2007). Minimizing the mismatch between the natural environment and the captive environment and they should limit the decline and poor performance of captive populations (Hendry et al 2011; Carrol et al 2014). Captive environments are very different from the wild and can impose different selection pressures that can lead to genetic adaptation in the captivity that affects behaviors (eg: temperaments; MC Douglas et al 2006), morphology (eg; size, skeletal morph metric O’ Regan and Kitchener 2005); and reproductive output (eg; age at ****** maturity, letter size). In particular populations of species with short generation times will adapt more rapidly to captivity than those with long generation time (Frankham 2008).
Social learning theory is the idea that children from observing. According to the learning theory, learning is based on social interaction with the environments (Nwamuo et al 2006). As children walk around the zoo, they are exposed to words and concepts. It also encourages dialogue between parents, siblings, friends and zoo guards (Jessica 2014)  visiting the zoo help the children and other visitors to understand the importance of taking care of the environments as it has a significant impact on lives and welfare of animals and importance of conservation and animal care which will never be forgotten. According to (Nwamuo et al 2006) social learning theory plays a big role in how people and especially learn. There are four elements to social learning theory including:
• Attention: Children can’t learn if they aren’t focused on the task. Students who see something unique or different are more likely to focus on it, helping to learn just as in zoo.
• Retention: people learn by internalizing information later when we can recall that information later when we respond to a situation in the same way which we saw.
• Reproduction: in the way we are able to reproduce our previously learn behavior or knowledge when it’s required. Practicing our response in our head or in action can improve the way we response.
• Motivation

Operant conditioning of behaviors theory of B.F Skinner, enclosure design and environmental enrichment strategies have all been suggested to improve the welfare of zoo animals by reducing stereotypical behavior and rein-introduction success of wildlife species. (WAZA 2015). Thus, the use of these strategies has important consequences for zoological collections. Despite the recognition and wild-scale implementation of such strategies, however, concerns around global zoo animal welfare remain and behavioral pathologies are common in many species. (Luhrs 2010) using operant conditioning, some of the barriers to delivering positive welfare experiences through holistic behavioral management strategies to zoo animals and make recommendations for institutional approaches towards improving zoo animal welfare using examples of Abnormal Repetitive Behaviors (ARBs) through targeted behavioral management.

EMPIRICAL FRAMEWORK
According to P.A Anadu (2000) on his study wildlife conservation in Nigeria: problems and strategy a case study of wildlife reserve of University of Benin, the major treats to nature conservation in Nigeria and he reviewed critically the measures adopted for the protection of wildlife. According the study, the major problem includes habitat degradation (through uncontrolled logging, agricultural projects, industrial plantations, highway and urban development’s and exploitation for fuel wood) over hunting and poaching.
He suggested that to protect wildlife include the creation of more game reserve, enactment of wildlife laws, signing of international treaties and manpower development. According to his research through interview with about 10 workers or staff of the wildlife reserve, the major treats to the area include poaching and hunting, indiscriminate feeling of forest trees, low funding, inadequate game laws and weak enforcement of the existing legal provisions.
It is suggested that the Federal Government should intervene more positively in favor of conservation by creating more national parks and assuming joint responsibility with the states for formulating wildlife laws. Furthermore, the role of nongovernmental organizations in influencing conservation policies and mobilizing public opinion will be cruial in different years ahead.
In the journal “A synopsis of wildlife conservation in Nigeria by Timothy A Afolaya  2009, this article emphasized the recent developments in the overall conservation program in Nigeria as it describes the important role which wildlife is playing in helping to feed the nation, in creating employment opportunities, in education in research, in recreation and in local medicine. Inadequately of Nigerian wildlife legislation and of the trained manpower to protect and manage the wildlife resources are among the crucial wildlife management problems identified. It is also stressed that the basic information for effective management is often lacking where Nigerian wildlife reserved are concerned. It also stressed that the main problems facing wildlife conservation in Nigeria include poaching, over exploitation, lack accurate data, bush burning that destroys wildlife habitat. There is adequate reliable database to facilitate forestry planning and development. Weak forest policy and implementation, forest policies lacks legal backing and hence its enforcement is difficult. The Nigeria forestry policy Act, 1937 is subsumed in the National Agricultural Policy of 1988. Forest tariffs are relatively low and are not revised frequently penalties under most laws are low and seldom enforced. It suggested that Nigeria forestry policy act should be reviewed or renew and encourage the government to implement the policies adequately and enforce penalties on the offenders.
Jonathan (2009) in his own study animal wildlife conservation under multiple land use system in Nigeria reveals that out of 6 selected zoological garden and game reserves in six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The situation of wildlife in Nigeria is nevertheless different. Except in the Yankari, upper Ogun and Kwiabaha, Game Reserves and the Kainji lake National park, little efforts have been made to protect the Nigerian animal wildlife resources from human pressure and wide spread extinction. To many, what remains of the wildlife animals are best seen in the few state owned zoological gardens in Nigeria?
However, because most indigenous large animal species including Elephant, Buffalo, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Rhinoceros, Leopard and Ostrich have not been able to reproduce in the various zoological garden so far, the hope to conserve this animals are brittle.
According to his work, animal wildlife is a declining resource in Nigeria because of unplanned land use practices. For example, land uses in game reserves are often conflicting and contradictory for land uses, timber extraction, hunting; food crop production and settlement are simultaneously going on in game reserves with little or no control measures and with no management plans. The excessive demands for land these conflicting uses have greatly disturbed the ecosystems involved, thus making the survival of the wild animals uncertain. Specially, the problems of wildlife conservation in Nigeria are:
a. Poaching
b. Indiscriminate burning of the vegetations
c. Uncontrolled grazing activities in the reserves
d. Intensive logging for domestic and industrial uses
e. Users rights on the reserves enjoyed by the traditional owners of the land before reservation
f. Lack of adequate fund to manage the reserve
g. Ineffective legislation
h. Lack of trained manpower
i. Urban sprawl
j. Infrastructural development of roads, electric and telegram lines and irrigation schemes.
k. Lack of modern enclosure or caging
l. Inability of animals to breed within the captive environment.

He then emphasized that the picture for Nigerian animal wildlife depends on the nation’s ability to conserve what is left either in their natural habitat or at least, in zoological gardens. The game reserve should be reduced to manageable numbers while state governments should win public sympathy through adequate conservation publicity and the provision of sufficient vehicles and personnel to manage the game reserves. The policy of land use in game reserves should be conducted on:
a. The number and species of animals hunted per year
b. The population of animals species in the game reserves and their habitat sustainability
c. The endangered and extinct animals species and specific reasons for the decline in their population
d. Human problems peculiar to each reserve and ways of minimizing them.
e. Establishment of rein-introduction programs.

SUMMARY
The establishment of zoos in a society is premised partly on the idea of bringing man close to wild animal’s species (Yager et al 2015). This establishment has various roles to play in the ecosystem and all endeavors of life. The role of zoological garden as well as wildlife conservation is as follows:
1. Education: zoos are established for the preservation of animal to make it easier for more people to see them and learn their characteristics and habitat. Zoo animals are used for specimens both for secondary schools students and tertiary institution as well as teaching the public the benefit of wildlife. A survey conducted by the Association of Zoos and Aquarium (AZA) reveals that, the general public rate conservation and education as the most important role of zoo (Fraser and Stickler 2008).
2. Conservation: of endangered species to avoid extinction of such animal.
3. Tourism:  it serves as a centre of tourism as people from different parts of the country visit to learn about nature at their leisure.
4. Generating revenue for the government as well as provides employment opportunities individuals etc
Most problems encountered in Nigerian zoos include:
• Poaching
• In availability of breeding species
• Lack of trained personnel’s
• Lack of fund by the Government
• Lack of infrastructure and conservation facilities.

you can go for a weekend to Paris,
sit by the Eiffel tower,
eat cheese, baquette and dollop it all
with cheap wine...
   but you'll never read
        Victor Hugo in french...
            otherwise?
you'll travel to an obscure part of
Poland...
             and you will not see anything
culturally motivating...
    you will not see Warsaw's Palace
of Culture...
               or you will not see
the castle at Wawel...
   you'll take to a literary tourism...
    luckily...
                          you''ll take to
reading Kraszewski, saying:
       and on the same topic, Sienkiewicz
also wrote, the coming nadir of
   the Polish (crown) and Lithuanian
(duchy) commonwealth...
    the rzeczpospolita...
                         and everything else you might
consider being a tourist about
suddenly disappears...
    or you'll travel to Edinburgh and forget
the touristy-*******...
instead downing a warm brew of amber
and the tri-combo of: 'aggis neeps & tatties
in a pub on the royal mile: spotty ****'s.
        3 years of my life in Edinburgh,
and here i am, in an Essex *******...
                but i feel nothing concerning
this scenario, it's a Spartan clue:
if you come from an even bigger *******,
a ******* like Romford is a bit like:
    Larkin and Hull.
                             i mean... who would take
to visiting Ostrowiec Siwy
                 Św.                         ?
  from a lineage of metalworks,
   the satanic turbines and molten iron...
   which is why you take to literary tourism...
you read - by general consensus -
the unbearable Kraszewski -
      because you've seen the film adaptation of
the same story by Sienkiewicz...
               with fire & sword...
potop (the swedish deluge) -
                        and said: give me the alternative!
it really is a tourism of a different kind,
    and if that be a case for a trilogy:
     king Piast... and Jan Sobieski...
   Vienna: winged hussars and the Turk canon...
           later a brand of *****...
        can this be a case of romance?
i don't know... given the global
isolation tactic
of censoring certain regions, obliterating them
as vaguely ''there''...
                          you'll never really know.
but then again i did read Kraszewski
in order that i didn't have to read
   paweł Jasienica's history book...
      but primarily because i already seen the
Sienkiewicz adaptation,
     concerning the monarchical experiment
of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth...
  from the line of Sweden... the house of Wasa...
    and that famous ship in a museum in
Stockholm, which sank after a voyage of a mile..
            the brothel of kings and queens,
that's what the p-l commonwealth was...
               a mere experiment...
                       no wonder it was carved into
three pieces at the end...
                          if indeed it was as ******
as the english monarchy,
it would have been the totalitarian chapter in
that geographic region...
                     but in reality,
it was nothing more than a playground for
monarchs...                 who spoke no Polish...
         or Lithuanian...
                           and yet they ruled the land...
          and yes: Yan Casimir was a laughing stock...
bethrothed to the widow of his brother:
        władysław IV -
                                      my stance with history?
a persistent itchiness...
                             human history is taken to bed,
a bed festering with bed bugs, gnats and dandruff;
tomorrow will not be any easier...
                      teeth lodged into stone...
             yesterday: a skeleton dance,
  and a xylophone ribcage.

The Butler Model of Tourism

I come back year after year
cracked black valise, busted zipper
spring-shot lobby divans drained of color,

to press crisp bills into Monte’s hand
come up for air from the tortoise shell
of his thread bare uniform, ease myself

down on a sagging mattress
wait for the clatter of ancient bones
his creaking cart and shuffling feet

to recede into absolute silence down
the dimly lit hall, broken only by a spate
of conversation between the couple

I can just make out in the water
stained fresco above the bed
two of them lost in a heated row

as if I couldn’t hear their bald appraisals
shockingly frank in this flocked walled room
with musty corners and milky windows

disagreeing only on the degree of my
progression through the dismal stages of
“The Butler Model of Tourism”

him making a half-hearted case for
Rejuvenation, the woman straddling
the thin line between Stagnation and Decline.

Not a poem but in protest of flagging truth about racism in Traverse City, Michigan


Traverse City, Michigan: Racism is still alive and well in our area.

We weren't always welcoming
Cross burning's (City of Traverse City, MI)
I'm born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan and still living in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember when blacks were not welcome in most parts of town and the one or two around were military visitors.

We had two known cross burning incidents. One back in the late 80's or early 90's the other was around 1924, ******* groups like Ku Klux **** was behind both cross burning incidents. I found old articles on the earlier one but someone is trying hard to white wash history of Traverse City by hiding evidence of the most resent one. Ones like me who were there remember those dark days like it was yesterday. It don't bode well for tourism or the Cherry Festival if there's a record of racism in our city.

Copy pasting one two different retelling of story reported by our sometimes biased Record Eagle articles regarding the first and and will continue to dig for the other one.

January 31, 2009
KKK was active in early '20s

The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first **** activity in northern Michigan.

The Record-Eagle reported flaming crosses in the Mancelona area on Aug. 1, 1923, a full year before. Six weeks later, Traverse City commissioners refused the **** permission to hold a Sept. 17 open-air meeting at the corner of Front and Cass.

About 300 people showed up anyway and marched to a vacant lot west of Front and Union after the unidentified property owner gave permission, carefully noting that it "did not commit him to any relationship with the organization," the newspaper said.

The Record-Eagle also passed on information from an identified **** source in its Sept. 17 report:

Two, maybe three organizers had worked for weeks in Traverse City. About 150 Traverse City men from "among the leading citizens" had joined. An open-air ritual with the traditional fiery cross burning on a hillside would be held "sometime but not yet" in or near Traverse City, and it would be "merely a part of the **** ceremonies and have no special significance."

People who expected to see hooded men in white robes performing rites at the Sept. 17 rally were bound to be disappointed, the paper said. A new state law banned wearing masks in public. It also would be difficult to tell how many in the audience were KKK members because "every person who has signed the Ku Klux card has pledged to keep his membership an absolute secret."


Traverse City, Michigan wasn't always welcoming to people of color.


Traverse City Record-Eagle

February 1, 2009
Ku Klux **** terrorizes TC in 1924

KKK cross burnings, explosions rock city

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Black History Month has special significance, since it begins fewer than two weeks after the nation's historic inauguration of its first black president, Barack Obama.

But there are parts of that history that Traverse City, like the rest of the nation, would rather forget. The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux **** during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.

Traverse City has never seen anything like that night of terror. Buildings shook. Store windows cracked and shattered. Houses as far away as 16th Street quaked, the Record-Eagle reported.

And though outside agitators were blamed, some local people may have been involved.

It started about 8 p.m. after three explosions went off across the river from the Lyric Theatre, where the State is today.

The crowd at the Lyric all but stampeded toward the door as women and children screamed. Panicked shoppers spilled out of downtown stores. City police phones jangled with alarm.

A large cross burned on the north side of the Boardman River near Cass Street. About 50 smaller burning crosses appeared almost simultaneously at the centers of intersections across the city. Each was crudely nailed together and swathed in oil-soaked rags. Sparks flew when several cars struck them. A city fire truck raced through town to douse flames.

Then, a "touring car" with four men, robed and hooded, though not masked, slowly trolled down Front Street carrying a sign surrounded by red flares blazing three letters: KKK.

Copies of the Ku Klux **** newspaper, "The Fiery Cross," later were found downtown, and police determined that at least two cars were involved in planting and lighting the crosses.

**** leaders called the explosions and flaming crosses a recruiting gimmick, but it was more than that. The 1920s was a reactionary time in the United States. The **** had risen again, starting in 1915, widening its anti-black focus to Jews, Catholics and immigrants, particularly those from southeastern Europe. Its membership was strongest in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The ****'s most powerful year was 1924, when it reached an all-time high of 5 million members nationwide and virtually controlled the government of Indiana. Its most popular slogan was "100 percent pure American."

The **** had a solid base of support in Michigan. The **** fielded two candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1924 and a ****-backed candidate was elected mayor of Flint. A write-in **** candidate even made a strong showing in a Detroit mayoral race.

In June 1924, 1,000 men joined the KKK in an Oakland County cross burning attended by about 8,000 people. Traverse City's demonstration took place just two months later. But who was really behind it?

"There is some doubt among the authorities as to whether the offenses were actually committed by local people or men from outside. They believe that local people were associated in the affair," the Record-Eagle reported.

An unidentified spokesman for the local **** denied responsibility, speculating that it was the work of **** enemies or rogue Klansmen. He told the Record-Eagle that the **** repudiated terror tactics and burning of "unwatched crosses."

Two weeks after the bombing, city police obtained felony and misdemeanor arrest warrants accusing Ku Klux **** organizer Basil Carleton of Richmond, Ind., of setting off explosives. Indiana police arrested him on Aug. 29.

Witnesses testified in two trials in December and January that Carleton had purchased 25 pounds of dynamite, fuses and three caps from Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. about two hours before the explosions. A Park Place Hotel clerk said he saw Carleton hurrying away from the direction of the explosions about 10 minutes later. Two **** members testified that Carleton was not at the scene.

Yet he was never convicted. Juries acquitted him in both cases because the prosecutor could not prove to their satisfaction that he was at the scene of the explosion or that he personally set off the dynamite.

The bomber escaped justice. But the good news was that in Traverse City, no night of terror like that happened again.

It was this event that sparked the cross burning in Traverse City. We had only one black family in our city, when Betty Ponder and her family left Traverse City for the first time due to no one wanting to rent to them, population of blacks in our predominately white city drop to zero.


******* Movement Targets Northern Michigan

by Robert Downes

National Alliance advocates the creation of "two Americas"

Traverse City, Mich., noted primarily for its beaches, tourists and cherry pie values, appears to be erupting as a national battleground of opinion over the ******* movement, with forces on both sides of the issue coming out of the woodwork to vent their outrage over racial issues.
On Thursday, June 5, residents along stretches of Washington and Front streets in town came home to find a slick package of information from the National Alliance hanging from their doorknobs. An outgrowth of the American **** Party, the National Alliance is a ******* group which advocates the creation of "two Americas," one of which would be "White Space only with no Jews or blacks." The Alliance, advocates genocidal practices if need be to achieve its goals, and plans to distribute 1,000 information packets in Northern Michigan.

Protest organized to oppose July "NordicFest"
The incident arose only a day after more than 150 people from throughout Northern Michigan gathered at a "Hate-Free TC" meeting to oppose the NordicFest, a skinhead rock festival sponsored by the Ku Klux ****, to be held at a secret location 20 miles south of town, July 3-6.
The NordicFest is being advertised on the Internet and will feature at least six skinhead bands featured on Stormfront Records and Resistance Records -- both of which are purveyors of neo-**** hate music. It will also reportedly feature speakers from the Ku Klux **** and Aryan Nations.

Thus far, the NordicFest's location has been a closely-kept secret by David Neumann of Bloodbond Enterprizes, the concert organizer and a former director of the Michigan Knights of the Ku Klux ****. Neumann has told local media that 300 tickets have been sold for the concert -- about half the number he expects to sell. Reportedly, concertgoers will be provided with maps to the secret location at a checkpoint.

Bands expected to play at the NordicFest include Intimidation One, Aggravated Assault, Blue Eyed Devils, Max Resist and the Hooligans, and No Alibi.

Local churches offering seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity
GATHERING STORM

Journalists have made inquiries on the NordicFest from as far away as London, New York and Colorado as a result of the Northern Express story circulating on the Internet. A segment for National Public Radio is expected to take the issue nationwide, possibly focusing the world's attention on Traverse City on the eve of the National Cherry Festival -- an event which draws more than half a million visitors, many of them from ethnic minorities.
"We're creating a rainbow ribbon that we hope everyone will wear in rejection of skinheads and the ****," said Rabbi Stacey Fine of Hate-Free TC. "We hope to have hundreds of ribbons during the time the **** is here, available from downtown merchants."

Fine says the group also hopes to march in the National Cherry Royale Parade with a three-by-eight-foot banner covered with thousands of signatures in a show of support for racial and cultural diversity. Thus far, Cherry Festival officials say they have received no applications from Hate-Free T.C., but will consider the request if approached.

Dottie Kye of Hate-Free TC says the group doesn't plan to try stopping the NordicFest despite their opposition ot the concert. "We're ignoring it," Kye says. "We celebrate anyone's right to organize and free speech. But our thing is unity and celebrating diversity." In addition to several church seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity, Hate-Free TC is organizing a three-day "Unity Festival" which will feature dozens of musicians, artists, poets, actors and peace activists at the Traverse City Opera House, July 3-6.

Concert organizers Tim Hall and Tom Emmott say that more than 40 musical acts will send a pro-diversity message to area teens, with performers including Willie Kye, Alright Already, John Greilick, Samantha Moore, the Motor Town Juke Boys, Bentley Filmore, the Sisters Grimm, and Lack of Afro, among many others. A concert with Fishbone is planned for later in the month.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence"
THE TEEN CONNECTION

The Unity Fest counter-concert is seen as a vital tool in fighting the influence of the ******* movement on teens in the area. After the initial story broke, the buzz in local high schools was that the NordicFest would be offering free beer to minors. Although that notion is clearly erroneous, a small number of teens in the area still cling to the idea and have also been attracted by the rebellious nature of the skinhead rock scene.
Tim Hall believes that his Unity Fest concert will help turn that tide. The three-day concert will be located in the heart of Traverse City in the old City Opera House, with easy access for the hundreds of teens who hang out downtown, often with little to do. "Our message is going to be one that values racial and cultural diversity," Hall said. "And we've had a great response so far. We had to put a lid on the performers when we reached 40 acts, because everyone wants to play at this event."

The Unity Fest will also coincide with the Annual Reggie Box Memorial Blues Blast, which was created five years ago to bring the heritage of black music to Northern Michigan for the overwhelmingly white Cherry Festival. This year's Blues Blast will feature John Mayall, Marcia Ball and the Bihlman Bros. in a free concert downtown on July 6. The concert will also feature a strong message promoting diversity.

The law enforcement view Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine says members of the law enforcement community, including the State Police and sheriffs from Grand Traverse and Wexford counties, are taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the NordicFest will even be held.

"People ask what we would do if the skinheads wanted to march, and it's our position that they have the same rights under the First Amendment as anyone as long as they're obeying the law," Soffredine said. "It's a neutral situation for us. We just want to maintain the peace."

He added that skinheads coming to Traverse City would be treated "no different than if longhairs come into town, or square dancers. We'd certainly observe them and respond if there's trouble."

The chief noted that a similar event occurred in the Buckley area several years ago when several motorcycle gangs gathered for a rally. While the event was monitored by local police agencies, few people in the area knew that it occurred.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence, which has become a serious problem in our community and our schools," he concluded. "The unfortunate thing is that it sometimes takes a ******* or a racial issue for people to get active."

"Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."
ANGER FROM ACTIVISTS

Not everyone is happy with the neutral attitude of law enforcement. Judy Lowenzahn of Traverse City thinks that local police agencies should get tough on the **** concert, which has no legally-required bond or liquor license.
"These hateful groups are using skinhead music to recruit soldiers for their facist movement," Lowenzahn said. "If they are allowed to hold this event, in violation of local, state and federal laws and in violation of common decency, we will be capitve audience to their deranged homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, sexist ideology. Those who protest this message, along with those who are their scapegoats will be targets for hate crimes."

Lowenzahn upbraided Grand Traverse County Sheriff Barr after he made comments in a local paper that "I'd just as soon personally let them have their little event and be on their way." Barr added that if there was a confrontation between the skinheads and protestors, "there's going to be someone in jail."

"Does Sheriff Barr suggest that people of color and others who don't fit the aryan model hide inside their homes for the holiday weekend?" Lowenzhan responded. "Rather than offer a plan to protect the community from the violence that grows whenever white supremecists do outreach, Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."

Northern Michigan targeted because of the predominantly white population
KLUELESS

Up to now, the vast majority of Northern Michigan residents have been klueless on the **** and the ******* movement. Many, for instance, had no idea that there even was a Ku Klux **** operating in the region until Neumann revealed that there are about 60 members operating mostly as "a fraternal organization" between ******* and the Mackinac Bridge.
Similarly, the existence and agenda of the National Alliance is all-ne

.via ghana: i iz welcome the haiku poetic extractionz of the maxim: full-on potentiality of - few words maximum effortz! one wishes to almost die from feng shui minimalism! chinese geomancy and european chiromancy (reading balzac et al.) - but the sigh poetic of pepsi max effort iz wot iz the breaking of the camel bonk and backß... last time i heard from a kenyan bartender... all the timber comes from ghana... as does the wheat from ukraine and the salt from poland... coal is always "elsewhere"... or no coal... wind... the wind comes from: far far away... beyond the language of the seven vowels...

it took much of an effort to have to overcome
a reading of Stendhal...
esp. when you find him in your teens..
almost impossible...

it's enough to visit a brothel:
once a year... perhaps skipping a year...
and there's enough body,
and skin, and warmth...
to contrast... what i'm yet to read about...
otherwise have read, i.e.:

2010s through the 2020 summary...
lucy holden now 29...
sexting, dating apps, bisexual flings
flatmates with benefits...
millenial serial dater...

all the details are already known...
mine? that strip-clup in athens on a whim
with two strippers either arm
burrowing my face solving the mole
in their cleavage...
the goodmayes borthel with the romanians
that said a very bulgarian word, once...

and who can ever forget
the south african cocoon ****-accusation
of: not unde the bed-sheets and please
oil up rather than dry-******* me...
or the thai surprise picked up
in a park and that a little bit of heavyweight
beer and some jazz and a garden shed will allow...
the number of times i've had ***...
well... what are fingers for?

the black girl with a coccyx like an iron maiden
attempting to tattoo itself onto my pelvis...
2nd time round?
i heard she had a child and his daddy
would be bringing him home the morning to come...
and this other black woman,
oh i mean: full detail - woman...
two children sleeping on the bed...
get dragged off...
thrown to the bed...
and i'm there to **** an imitation ******
of... a tight fold of legs...

it's not exactly **** but even with that:
i'm not a best fitter...
so tell her: it's not going to happen...
we pretend to sleep or at least i do...
when this afro-fur-ball with a plucking sound
of a smooch is standing at the end of the bird...
he's naked i'm naked everyone's naked
i pick him up like i pick up maine *****
and lay him on my chest...
i can't allow a river of fingers through
his afro tangles... so i pat them down...
and he falls asleep...

***... oh no ***** word about it monsieur!
just this *******...
oh but i'm glad that some girl nearing
her 30s has made up her mind up...
only recently i've heard that my mother was
attempting to woo a married man
who was part of the Solidary movement
and probably waiting for a greencard...
i heard this... from my grandmother...

i'm still pampering on the sly for
a Mary Antoinette...
Ilona was wrong... i wouldn't become
a child strapped to a hellhole of a teenager's bedroom...
i'd become a leech hybrid...
as along as i have enough excuses
to return for "the word"... and never rap it...
i'm fine fine... best be on my optimal behaviour...
to never find myself in a baptists' church choir...

- there's also a quick fix procedure...
the match of the day is watched
with the mascots on screen...
the ben-hur's not making it to
prophetic status... yes the bread...
yes the circus... and all those cul de sac...
soap operas of parking scenes...

and there's always language...
best expressed when drunk...
never sober because is what delves into
the formality of: dear sir / madam,
kind regards...

the day when i stopped combing my fair
and peered at the beard...
uncombed hair: almost reminds
me of donning a pineapple on it...
an ancient buddhist balancing act...
like performing the act of gravity...
without copernican mathematics...
as simple as finding the CENTER on
a bicycle... or like finding
buoyancy in a swimming pool...
perhaps i am more water than flesh...
but i'm also a fraction of fat...

i can float on water if i can find
the balance... i don't need to play
the drunkard treading water surviving
to stay afloat.... i... relax...
then i float.... or bob-on-the-surface
teasing an unexpected shark-bite-attack...
although: swimming in a sea
is not my thing...
i very much appreciate seeing
the bottom i can dive down toward
and touch... the chernobyl stink of chlorine...
is almost a parisian perfumery...

heat breeds diseases it breeds...
insects...
i abhor the heat...
the zenith of winter is yet,
is yet to arrive... and for the help of god:
i can't arrive at... writing sober...
should "poo'etry" ever be written sober
to begin with?
i mind: that i don't mind...

i can find 8pm and 9pm quite:
which implores you to not quit - curb colt...
i was making a sponge apple stuffing
roulade...
after having made some biscuit
with brown sugar and diadems of hazelnuts...
and prior to some sausage rolls...
three fillings...
cranberries with some peppers and
chillies...
fennel seeds with apple...
and the third... the third...
i don't quiet remember...

my head was exploding with a brain being
towed and all was:
i am yet to grieve a passing,
a tax of death...
i am yet to be left half imbecile and half
of any other texas hold-up poker game...
i'm wishing for...
that quarter of a million of a bet
i placed on:
one team wins...
but both have to score...
ergo... catching a mosquito by the testciles
donning boxing gloves chance...
2 - 1 etc. victories...

i don't want to blame women...
the last one i was serious about...
she's on her 3rd marriage or whatever...
and i'm still in woad: in deep blue
coinciding with...
god's roulette...

as a testiment of man...
there's the ambition to find: the void...
to find nothing...
and from that... find the thinking thing...
res vanus: the emptiness
that can be fathomed with more or less
thinking, than a yawn's presence...
because...
descartes doesn't really exact ontological,
whatever...
i can't be and be:
when i churn out a day-dream and
a day-dream is all that is...

thankfuly i have nothing to "work"
with... most women only have boredom to begin
with....
at exactly 20 minutes to 1am...
i'm not so sure...
a mother can say: you stink...
then you go and buy something from
a convenience store...
and the cashier stresses how fresh you smell...
that's quiet something...
a woman likes the way to smell to her...
in between doing these *******
tribunals of sweating over
apple roulades...

and Stendhal... it's only my mother...
i just have to gnash my teeth
and apply the burden of sober...
this canvas... no other...
i drink for the 1 hour pleasure
of disorientation...
a shot in the head in some Ukranian
prison...
stiched to the next to be executed...
chikatilo...
i'm not exactly fond of the company...
but i'm pretty sure...
kurt cobain... and his shotgun antics...

and how the prolonged death appeal
of Christine Chubbuck lasted much longer...
Kafka said it right:
a stab at the heart...
**** colt and boyo... don't aim for the head!
that's how Ukranian convicts die...
shot in the back of the head...
in a cell... never in the open...
it's not like the brain delves into
the automated unconscious of the pump
that's the heart... how do you think
the urban myth of the cockroach that lived
for 2 weeks more was born?
the head didn't have a mouth to ingest
food with...

shot in the back of the head is an execution
that, done in an Ukranian prison cell...
is pretty much all of Dante not visiting
either heaven or a hell...
but two weeks with... in the presence
of death... the body starving...
that magic finger-pointing exercise
of seeing death in movies?

well thank god they did a movie about
Christine Chubbuck's (rage against the machine):
bullet in the 'ed!
i was lied to, no matter...
i'm here to hush and sweep the leftovers...
because why would you march
a man into a prison cell...
shoot him in the head and close the door
and wait... because no: in the open...
with a chance for rabid dogs to feast on...
in the darkened night just shy of Kiev
would ever matter...

Christine Chubbuck was left dying on
life-support machines after her half-high Kiev
attempt to pop the balloon...
psych- myth of the brain as source
of the sigma soul...
my left toe has more soul than this
rubric forever explained as forever to be explored
goose-fat sponge...
come to think of it...
after a haemorrhage that no one believes
beside me, some neurologist and a dementia
riddled grandfather who easily forgot...

what's this brain this brain this nought?!
**** it... kamikaze cockroach!
as ever oh but always so much when
someone has to mention...
has to mention: with no exacting details
of fancy...

also called the drought period when pakistani
gangs are up in Leeds and i'm strapped
to the outlier Loon'don culture:
as ever playing the obedient schizoid...
because that's, just fair game...
centuries behind what the youth
of Denmark have to offer...
the mutterzunge and the l'inglese of:
any future of tourism with Jack's flag...

heavy influences stemming from
st. andrew and all the worth of wordworth
with a tinge of punk...
but never a baron of lexicon coming from
just shy of 4 hours away from
the lisp of masovian warsaw...

what could possibly be wrong?
how about... stemming it down to the root
of... sober people and the lacklustre of
when writing: under no influence at all...
apparently "now" the high moral ground!
the sobers usher in the words
that we are abide by when the football hooligans
their casual Tuesday mundane,
their casual Tuesday mundane custard
splodge of oats in regurgitation...

i can almost but not quiet...
imagine myself being the cameo in this dear diary
of these "free" women of the western world...
give me a feral black woman pulling
two kids from her bed in order
to imitate a ****** by folding her legs to
pretend...

it's still a bullet in the back of the head
for some, minor or major
andrei "cain" chikatilo -
no... with a full crop of cranium of hair...
and a grandmother that says...
well... how busy your chin hairs are...
that you are able to lodge a pencil in there
and it doesn't fall out...
hair here and all other hair elsewhere...
chest and... where the antioch identifier
of achilles ought to be of a six in sixes
packaged...

since who is buddha... or a christ when...
an thích quang duc "oops" happens...
the people will never leave their unison...
their get-together "happening"...
but what's to be celebrated should...
the crucifix be turned into that "other"
torture ordeal of being: piked...
crucifixion the tsunami wave of history...
when one can expect the fate
of being piked by the more imaginative
sorts?
if only the antichrist was gay
and was sentenced to levitate on a pike...
passion and ecstasy via
the Walhalla doing ****... again:
sorry if the pike missed the **** baptism
of ecstasy... and instead aimed
at ripping apart the flesh and bone at:
whatever pivot was made available
to work from reverse ingestion:
beginning with the pelvis...

i'm just tired and cooking and shooing
shadows for the past month and i know that it's
just an exaggerate lounge period...
and all i want is an added arm...
and the serenity leg to take the step to return to...
footsteps... with a bulging echo to command...

it needs to be stressed that these women were black...
i call them ivory beauties of chocolate come
quicksilver moon glistening...
i can't remember... no... "you're" right...
i never managed to **** anything
of an ethno-centric "perspective"...
i'd be arrested for that...
as if starting a hitlerjungen movement or
some other random "****"...

i'd package myself with a mexican strapped into
alcatraz...
the Louis of the Aztecs and some
long lost St. Juan of the Mayans...
leash me... Russian or Prussian or...
what's that third otherwise power of influence
that this body was allowed to morph into?

perhaps i once was allowed to control these words...
but that's how drinking goes...
it's a homocodie when you **** someone
when under the influence of alcohol when driving
a car...
this is a sort of homocide...
i trully gave my hands away to the devil...
and the brain: oh forget that old fabble of a pickle...
what's in brine was always supposed
to be in brine and pickled...

- and what were the chances of me becoming
a sentimental drunk... listening to some
crowded house - weather with you?
the la's - the la's... no... not merely the 1990s
epitome of h'american tourism lodged in london
of myth... as any ******... that myth translated
itself into paris... there she goes...
i mean the whole album...

whale! whale! a beached whale!
Grindadráp...
and some want to go on the Hajj...
and die in a human stampede at the Mecca...
but... well... some want to...
of all of Europe...
Venice, Paris, Rome, Athens,
Amsterdam, perhaps Edinburgh
(wink-wink nudge-nudge)...
Barcelona...
or... Grindadráp of the Faroe Islands...

capture a polyphony in language that is hardly
ever going to be much more
than a chance to... to do that...
shove three fingers into your gob...
expect an elevated volume of sounds...
call the hounds! a mile away!
i was never allowed to learn that
whistling "trick"...
perhaps that's why i never managed
to play the trombone or the clarinet...
the ****-poor leftover guitar...
which is as much as having to read
braille!

reality: i live in england but i'm a ******...
i haven't ****** an english girl...
or a ****** girl...
i was close! a ****** girl licked my face
like a cow, once...
chin, lips, nose and forehead...
i was actually waiting for e.t. when that
happened...
the pakistanis have all the english girls...
sorry... it's sad...
but... the australia...
the fwench... the russian...
it's a decent rubric...
crude... nuanced...
so is buying fwesh meat at the butchers...
the perfect crime is less severe...
fiddling with a tombstone...
then towing it for 2 miles...
to bury the remains of your cat...
after your neighbour "accidently" killed him
when you were away...
and of course they deny it...

after all... i live in a society...
innocent until proven guilty...
said jimmy saville...
it's not the old... european "misunderstanding"..
of guilty until proven innocent...
if not a real story of Tomasz Komenda...
there's the Shawshank Redemption...
or there's... the Count de Monte Cristo...

if all are innocent until proven guilty...
what's that? the genesis story never happens...
it's hardly a moral deterent...
isn't it? people will do as any aleister crowley
would command them to do:
do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law;
this is a naive presupposition of
fudge-packed jurisprudence...
what should have been egg-whites..
it merely some sugar dissolved in water...

statistical counts aside...
i would be more inclined to... fear...
being held guilty... to then be allowed "innocence"...
that to being held innocent...
to then be forced as a doubly-culprit!
how does the double jeopardy paradox arise...
from the high pillar of: innocent until
proven guilty?!
law is at one's own leisure...
should all be bound to an innocence...
revisions of the biblical metaphor...

if we can all be innocent...
wouldn't we at least all fathom an innocent
attempt to break some law?
for a matter of: testing the waters?
even if innocent until proven guilty is true...
there's no narrative of redemption...
why is it that the shawshank redemption
is such a popular movie?
since it adopts the continental motiff of:
guilty... until proven innocent...
it offers... redemption...
it's a popular movie because it's unfair
for the basis of a single individual...
not some amassing of victims of a jimmy saville
recount... that have... none... zilch...
no redemption!
their redemption: ist tod!

because if i were to be found guilty...
with no chance of defence...
i would exercise a double-think in relation to this...
rather than exercise this leisure into
grieving the orwellian zeitgeist monstrosity of
but the one novel...

i'm not convinced of the english model...
this... innocent until proven guilty...
this pontius pilate argument...
i'm not for it! this sinking to the core of my heart
and hopefuly, prevents me from a heartbeat...
perhaps so fewer examples of
the #metoo would come to the fore...
if... one were not so easily allowed
a ststus of innocence...
perhaps... guilty until proven innocent...
doesn't allow...
so readily accessed accusations...
perhaps this modern, english model of
jurisprudence...
is missing a medieval lisp?

as law abiding as would suggest...
i would be much more deterred from inacting
a grievance should i be found guilty...
without a benefit of a doubt of a jury...
than if i were to be given the a priori: innocent
status...

i don't like this: england and greenwich in tow
is the bellybutton of the world
demand of... all else is less than we...
no... did i come from Algiers?!
what has Algiers to do with it and Leeds
shouldn't?!

at least that's how a man sobers up...
while still drinking...
he might focus on sober demands...
of topics that only drunks should speak of...
and since neither of the two meet...

because i have stood as a witness
in a court...
and i was given a photograph to...
"compare" having identified him in a mugshot...
the photograph i was shown still
had a date imprinted on it...
and this was the ******* argument...
the photograph was years old...
i identified the culprit in the police mugshot...
but the case was "won"... for no apparent reason...
the witness said: i...
this photograph is years old...
i can grow a beard and hippy attire in a year's time...
of course i was the witness that said:
note down the registration plate
of the car this camel-jockey jumped out of
and grabbed m'ah fwends mobile...

i've seen how: innocent until proven guilty works...
i'm not conviced...
i can't be... there's something instinctual preventing
me from adhering to this english...
jurisprudent sensbility...
it's hardly a ******* charles dickens novel...
if it were... and i greatly underestimated
charles dickens... no... really...
i shouldn't have read any of dostoyevsky...
i should have read charlie ****'oh'ends...
believe me when i say that is hould have...
since... heidegger's ponderings VII - XI
will retain their shelf-status as... the book most
probably unread...

such is the sobering process...
am i, in no way, allowed to sacrifice my 'ed
on the premise that: innocent until
proven guilty is the right categorial imperstive
to buckle on... since...
the anglophonic world buckles on it...
like a spectacular breakdance feat of
a penguin on steroids...
doing the diving header tsunami
of chore: the crowd goes wild!
it's no operatic applause and being
"superficially" reminded as to how...
find your proper seat...
before the castrato peacock does his
singing bit...
apparently finding one's seat
when it's never going to be a maggot-pit
at a slipknot concert is all that's
about to happen...

come by the butcher's and let's attempt
in finding you some oysters
among the volume of red boisterous...
to replica your genital parts
and sordid caviar letfovers...

perhaps i could be angry...
but la ilah illa blah'lah...
i am... halway bound between
being simulation circumcised
and being castrated...
i never which is which...
notably, given...
circumcised men are not allowed
the impetus of taking up
web-cam Susan on promise of...
also pleasing themselves
without wanting to earn some money...

it's a real problem though:
innocent until proven guilty versus
guilty until proven innocent...
relish...
the english indiosyncratic
wishing they were scandinavian iceland...
no... honey too sweet tooth bear...
this is not how the GMP affair that exends
with its genesis in the jimmy saville affair
looks like...
this quest for: apparently "superior"
is not going to work on me...
kin of a kind-of luvvie dubby...
bon voyage!

the entire continent is listening...
individualistic rights...
innocent until proven guilty...
the more i reiterate these words...
the more i sober up...
because i can't see how...
i am: a thief...
until i am proved to be... a thief...
by having performed the act
of thieving...
or not even an "after"...

sorry... please expose your divine
rational intelligence and tell me
via a reiteration that 2 + 2 = 4...

i am not a thief,
but i am a thief...
only if the act of stealing is proved...
and if "the" act of stealing is not proved...
i'm way more than a thief...
i'm a thief with a baby driver!
this anglican logic *****...
if innocent until proven guilty...
is to sustain the individual flourishing...
i'd rather make theatre of the original,
biblical deterrent...
a queen of this sort of popish claims
and her duaghters of yorkshire because...
the pawns of justitia...

conventionality of continetal thinking...
there's not even a "what if" or
"it would be better" should... allow,
extended into:
guilty until proven innocent...
rather than... innocent until proven guilty...

i sometimes find myself chattering...
in the cold...
but i'm not chewing anything...
i'm pretending to pivot the piano on a ghost...
being played as some per se magician's
excavation of: whatever time...
thus it was spent...

i call it chattering chopin...
bite marks available... like the multitude
of signature most willing to be...
allocated a collection foreseeable...

the would the artichokes of arabia...
or the fennel roasted roots of Italy...
there's something to be had of a woman
sporting the "cherokee" leopard-skin prints
on something that's...
90% cotton and 10% lycra?!

and the reason why i visited a brothel
in the past ten years was because?
if i want to play poker...
i'll play poker...
easy ***? it's not so easy in the act
and you want to find a kiss and...
she tells you: it's against the laws
of this sort of nunnery...
but you still manage to slurp a lip or two
of a shy pluck of the tulips of the sea...
or however this thing that
language is works...
if it's not going to be a hammer and nail...
forever... this "excuse" to allow nothing
more than YA novels...
metaphors and... pedantry of elswhere
from punctuation?

herioglyphic assumptions of :) emoji?
wink barrel baron! oi!
non-responsive...
black also implies: ivory beauty...
i started to admire their teeth...
since mine were always going to be
custard yellow death grin...
like bone to the rot...

no... i'm pretty sure tonight ends
here; now;
the prodigy - destroy...
given how... keith flint...
and that horse... and it was never a tale
of the stormy badger...
and how the fox is my aid and will
never make it to...
transcend the red coat hunting parties...
because... just because.

The intermittent, distant rumbling in the skies was suggestive of chronic flatulence. The sun struggled in futility to shine – like a crying child who had been forced to smile. Lightning flashed in quick successions, momentarily throwing brilliant streaks of white light across the room. The angry growl of thunder that followed was enough to send a troop of Howler monkeys scampering for safety.

The lights flickered as though unable to make up their minds to stay or not to. But apparently, the wind had zero tolerance for such petty indecisiveness. And like an enraged, stimulated, demented animal, it gusted through the windows and doors, hauling loose papers, light bulbs in every direction, shattering the bulbs to smithereens, as if to punish them for being so fickle. The lights died.

Thick black blankets eerily stretched across the skies with gusto, menacingly extinguishing whatever was left of the sun’s brilliance. More rumbles and flashes followed in royal herald of the impending storm. And in no time, slick sheets of rain torrentially came pouring down, cascading the roofs to form puddles almost as soon as they hit the ground.

​I looked in horror, fervently praying that whoever God had appointed to build the ark in our time had not diverted the funds. I was trapped in the office, and I knew exactly what this meant…flood, scarcity of buses, hiked transport fares, heavy taffic and very likely, at least one month of blackout.
It would be another three hours of steady downpour before the rain eventually stopped, as gracefully as it had been ushered in.
I picked up my bag, rolled up my trousers in earnest anticipation of the inevitable flood, and made my way home.

​To my utter bewilderment, there were no floods! The lights from the street lamps cast a soft golden glow on the slick roads, seemingly creating mirages of pools of water from afar off. But they were mere illusions. The gurgling sound coming from the underground drainage was proof of where all the water had gone. It was a strange sight. Like some alien cyborg from space had been fiddling with a time machine that had accidentally propelled us twenty years into the future.

My new world was a three-fold utopian dream. So surreal!
I could see beautiful, high-rise, state of the art edifices with mind-blowing architectural designs that blatantly seemed to defy the laws of gravity. I could see world-class hospitals that admitted ailing dignitaries from around the world and top-notch schools that offered scholarships to deserving indigenous and international students.
Sure enough, this was Nigeria! The Nigeria we all dreamed of.

And there was light…electricity! - In myriad of colours that seemed to have been dispersed from several colossal disco ***** via *“wireless fidelity” technology. I strained to hear the noise from generators, but I was disappointed. I couldn’t even hear the all too familiar cacophony of horns blaring, conductors shouting, loud discordant music, rattling vehicle engines etc. It was like everyone and everything had taken a crash course on orderliness.

I saw a vibrant transportation system that included high speed railway lines, paved road networks that looked like a child’s doodles, first-class air strips and efficient sea transportation.
I saw a working government - one that had provided the critical infrastructure for her people.

I saw a nation with a large industrialized economy, where the dividends of democracy had been delivered to the people by their government. One consciously founded on equity and honesty of purpose, and courageously sustained by unfaltering faithfulness and unwavering patriotism.      
A nation whose economic boost did not come solely from crude oil exploration and production, but also from crude oil refining, agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, food, services, tourism, automobiles, transportation, education etc.
A nation that thronged with international investors from all walks of life, who were not in the least afraid to invest in her.

And then, I saw her people. A people proud of their citizenship.
A people proud to be called NIGERIANS.
A people who were not given to religious, political, or tribal bigotry.
A people who individually and collectively, gallantly bore the torch of the vision of their heroes past.
A people who earnestly and persistently worked to see only goods “Made in Nigeria” sold in their markets.

Where there was once despair, I saw hope. Where there was once fear, i saw security. Where there was once disgruntlement, I saw satisfaction. Where there was once poverty, I saw wealth opportunities and where there was unemployment, I saw jobs. Death had given way to life and life to hope.

I started, as I felt something cold and wet trickle down my forehead. It was droplets of rain from a leak in the roof just above my head. I was still in my office, I never left. The rain had lulled me to sleep. Even more sadly, I realized it had all been a dream.
Slowly and regretfully, I packed my things and left for home. It was pitch black outside as I carefully waded through the polluted waters, jauntily holding my bag, more because I was afraid to lose it in the flood than in a hopeless bid to dignify the situation.

Two hours later, I crawled into bed. I did not have to turn the lights off…the electric poles had gone for a swim. A very long one.


© ONUGHA EBELE VICTORIA

they
travel
overseas
seeking surgery
the cost is cheaper
in those destinations
yet medical tourist
can acquire those many unforeseen
infections after operations
the theaters of surgery lacking hygiene
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
our health services need to act quickly
surgery should be made affordable
then folks from here wouldn't require
cost saving operations
in countries overseas
those staph infections
would cease pronto
our jets not
landing
there

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!

Freedom At Kannyakumari
“The destiny of India is molded in her class-rooms”
Kothari had no confusion; no vision on the fusion-
of the East and the West, as Swami Vivekananda’s vision,
“The comingling of the East and the West will dawn a new Era”.
As tissue culture, transplantation or cloning
we Indians imbibe the Western Culture;
or  as G.M cotton  or brinjals,or tomato
Indians are produced, transmuted
destroying the very indigenous genus for material growth.
Ayurveda is preserved not in Sanskrit but in English letters, now !
Followers of Lord Maccaulay as obedient servants,
by experiments,bring up Indians only in blood and colour-
in every other respects-Europeans
(using imperialist - capitalist media);
poor sycophants ,for a visa,
the Indians: now , turn to the West for light,
leaving the bright light under the Urn;
cry for a way of progress, safety and food;
and beg:once self reliant nations as cells  of a body
No retrospection or introspection,
only putrefaction, hence , no resurrection.
On August 15th  ,at Kannyakumari beach , beside me,
a bare body of a woman(my sister?) lay asleep;
I witnessed at the starry cold mid-night:
the surging sea spitting frothing snow
upon the black rocky *******
protruded, greasy, mossy. bare but fair ,
ever young at the feet of Bharat-matha.
Wet in the salty breeze , from the foul smell of  death,
I walked and walked searching shelter,
but no room for a single son with meagre wealth.
The tourism net -workers with the thirst of mosquitoes
hummed around me  with highly rented room offer-
source of  tourism exploitation- I bargained,
till, morning red balloon rose up in the Eastern horizon
cleaving the vapours of the sea,
when , thousand tongues chanted Gayathri;
then , the locals thronged around the woman on the shore;
somebody among them, staring blear eyed
as the police jeep and the ambulance arrived , bewailed
“O! Gayathri, my darling, O! Gayathri…”  Unsoothed.
The chanting and the yelling dissolved in the breeze
that passed by the Vivekananda rock, afar, south

Bride of the desert
the indomitable town
Solomon’s Kingdom

            
Lost in history, I wander through a city that was fortified by King Solomon, raided by Mark Antony and ruled by Queen Zenobia who made it the capital of an empire, only to be captured herself and paraded through Rome in gold chains.

Civilisation upon civilisation are entombed within Tadmur; in a huge plain of carved stone blocks, massive columns arched in rows or standing alone, a Romanesque theatre, senate and baths, dominated by a great temple whose origin dates back four thousand years.

Due to a clever mistranslation from Arabic by the euro-centric traveller who ‘discovered’ Palmyra, the city also has a modern name.

Here for millennia, a tribe of Bedu have camped within the folds of these desert steppes and blackened Tadmur’s ruins with their camp fires, to trade camels or herd goats and sheep. Walking the divide between city, desert and the more fertile steppes, I search for their surviving descendants and find a black woven goat’s hair tent with its edges raised to capture a cooling breeze.

Hamed and his sons, huge and wary of foreigners, welcome me to sit within on  carpets and then graciously serve dates with innumerable small glasses of tea. I indicate ‘enough’ in the traditional manner by rolling my right hand and the empty glass. Hamed continues to voice his concerns about the lack of feed for their sheep and the prices achieved at market. I readily succumb to several small cups of greenish Arabic coffee, before being allowed to take my leave.

For millennia the wealth of this city was based on tariffs levied on goods flowing out of the desert aboard swaying camel caravans. Today, these once proudly fierce tribal Bedu no longer breed, train or ride camels.

The Bedu greatly prize their reputation and the respect of their peers. Their traditions are the foundation of these small tribal communities and may predate Islam;  a life now undermined by borders, nationalism, government settlement plans, conscription, war, television and tourism.
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Black torn empty shells
swept by Mount Lebanon’s shade
Cannabis Valley

As I recall a haiku of ‘images’ of  my very first journey to Damascus, from war-torn Beirut through the lushness of the Bekaa;

in the here and now
a dark suit and Mercedes
cross the Euphrates

Defence Minister, Rifaat al-Assad is in town with his fifty thousand strong Defence Companies, complete with tanks, planes and helicopters.  A coup d’état is in progress to assure Rifaat’s succession to the Presidency of his older brother Hafiz al-Assad, now recovering from a heart attack.

Last year, Rifaat massacred some forty thousand Syrian citizens when he ordered the shelling of the city of Hama. Nobody in Damascus will be underestimating him.

All political and military power is in the hands of the al-Assads and key generals, who command the military and police. The majority of whom are of the Alawite minority Muslim faith from the rural districts near Latakia in the North. Before their revolution, governments came and went in weeks.

My friend Elias is allied to Rifaat’s cause, by simply doing business with the son. Now he and his family share the risks and dangers of this coup failing and stand to lose a fortune. Monies paid locally in Syrian pounds for goods delivered to government agencies.

Elias’s connection with Rifaat and Latakia, as well as his confident presence, humour and love of life, still allows us easy access to the Generals’ Club. Sadly, there is to be no table and floorshow, but a closed meeting with two senior Generals, where we learn that Hafiz has recovered enough to take charge and is now locked in discussions with his younger brother.

The decision is therefore made for us. We say our goodbyes and drive to Latakia.

On Sunday Elias meets his brothers, then with his family, we visit his parents small holding and enjoy a meal together. A wonderful fresh mezza that includes my favourite, courgettes stuffed with ground lamb and rice, in a yogurt sauce. Syrian food is amazingly healthy and my cuisine of choice.

It is a cloudless Monday morning, as I, Elias, his wife and children drive into the docks to board an old 46 foot motor cruiser. Huge cases are stowed as I make my inspection, then start the twin diesels and switch on the over-the-horizon radar. Our early departure is critical. We cast off and the Mate steers for the harbour entrance below the cliffs that guard it. As the Mediterranean lifts our bow in greeting, the disembodied voice of the Harbour Master tells us to return as we do not have permission to sail.

Ignoring the order, I increase our speed through the short choppy surf. We are sailing under the Greek Cypriot flag and in an hour I hope to be out of territorial waters.  At 14 knots we are a slow target.

Fifteen nautical miles from the coast of Syria, I leave the mate to follow a bearing for Larnaca. Elias has opened a bottle of Black Label. I quaff a glassful.

Later noticing a noisy vibration and diagnosing a bent prop shaft, I shut down the starboard engine. Our speed is now a steady 8 knots, so I decide on a new heading to discern more quickly the shadow of the Cypriot coastline on the radar screen.

Midway, the mate and Elias begin babbling about a small vessel ahead and four separate armoured boxes encircling it. Ugly Israeli high speed gun boats or worse, Lebanese pirates. Should they board us and find stowed riches, we will be killed.

Leaving the Mate to maintain our course, I go on deck to play the ‘European Owner’.  The vessel they have trapped is long and lean with three tall outboard motors but no crew are in sight.  Leaving them astern, our choice of vessel now fully exonerated, I and Elias throw another whisky ‘down the hatch’.

With us holding the correct bearing, I ask Elias to wake me as soon as we near Cyprus. Feeling utterly exhausted I collapse into a bunk.  

I wake unbidden, to find the Mate steering for the harbour entrance. Shouldering him aside, I spin the wheel to bring the vessel about. Shaking, I ask them why there are minarets on the ‘church’ and did they not notice our being observed from the top of the harbour's hillock, below which a fast patrol boat is anchored?  The Mate sprints to the Greek Cypriot flag and is hugging it to his chest; Elias wisely prays.

I command the wheel as we motor directly away from the port of Famagusta and Turkish held Northern Cyprus. We later change bearing and pass tourist beaches, it is night fall before we moor-up in Larnaca.
                                         +     +     +      +      +


Later that same year I am called to a last urgent meeting in Cyprus with Elias. He calmly tells me that he will be arrested when he rejoins his family, who have returned to Syria. Elias asks me to take full control of his Cypriot Businesses, then returns home and ‘disappears’ with his brothers.
                                         +     +     +      +      +


Since sacking the two Arab General Managers when they tried to get control of the bank accounts, it has taken more than six months to locate the prison holding all the brothers. We obtain the release of all except Elias, who has been tortured.  We then ‘purchase’ him the exclusive use of the Prison Governor's quarters and twenty four hour access for Elias’s family, nurses and doctors.
                                         +     +     +      +      +


Over the last two years, I have honoured my promises and expanded trade as far as Pakistan. Elias is still imprisoned.
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