Wing Walker

 .
Named after his dad, who walked on Wacos
and Stearmans in the Twenties, and hovered
above county fairs and Moose Lodge picnics
holding on with one hand, waving to the crowd—

B-17 with 26 flights out and back suddenly
on its 27th return taking heavy fire through
the fuselage, evasive action, no functioning
navigational instruments, no way to get back

and night coming on, but no engine damage,
and enough fuel, yet no way to get a bearing,
no sense of where England lies—crew peering
into the haze, everyone quiet, not talking—

so he takes her down, down, down toward
Deutschland below, down into open farmland
to treetop level roaring along and looking for
a chicken coop, knowing farmers everywhere

are the same, that its windows will face south,
and sees one at last, and knows where west is,
and takes her back up, and at last they can find
the way, and know they are headed for home.


(Continuing the theme of honouring World War II air crew is this fine poem by Jared Carter, first published in the excellent Innisfree Poetry Journal)

Debriefing

.

As the fifth rum fueled his memory, he’d taxi
along the runway, up to the high blackness,
away from the Sunday-night armchair, away from the telly,
Norths versus Parra, the scrums a ridiculous joke,
and, nineteen-years-old, strap himself back into the war:
switch on the cold night, switch on the electric suit,
switch on his much more intimate suit of fear,
rehearse the nightmare crawl to the front of the plane—
the rear-gunner’s always the last bastard out, Young Stevo,
if he gets out at all from his lonely post up the back—
and he'd restlessly swivel his turret from side to side,
pitch vision to the limit, searching the sky below,
Vaughan Williams' Fantasia right through his head
(he was that sort), to soar in poetry and terror,
to search the black against black for a different black
which, if he failed to spot, they'd be all bloody dead,
the whole bloody crew, and no more girls and cards.
If you saw the bugger first, fired a warning shot
from the pea-shooter .303s—not the .5 cannons
like the Yanks had—fire a burst and he’d piss off looking
for some other plane (whose rear-gunner had gone to sleep
or was dreaming about his girl-friend’s fanny) and blow
those other poor bastards out of the sky; and you’d shout
'Corkscrew port!' and down we’d go, left and down;
then searchlights lit you up, and the clatter of flak,
and more night-fighters playing their jazz-music;
but only the heroes flew right over the markers—
nobody was keen to be in a crew of heroes;
like most planes we’d just dump our load and turn:
our mission was just to stay alive, Young S.
We bombed more country shithouses than factories;
and, coming home over Koblenz, the navigator
was killed by a piece of flak right through his chest;
all he wanted was to plot our course back to Driffield.
After that it gets quiet, just the engines pulsing
across the darkness of Europe, the empty sea...
Dad was still up there, didn’t see me, was still searching
the blackness for that elusive message from death,
could hardly hear me through his ruptured ear-drums
(corkscrewed until they popped—denied of course
by Repat), but anyway, he wouldn’t hear me,
him being there, and me radioing faintly
from somewhere in 1983. He slowly glided,
descended, bumped, rumbled to a kind of stasis;
could breathe now, walk light across solid tarmac
towards debriefing, its customary tea laced with rum.

(first published in Unlikely 2.0)

John Stevens' ANZAC Day

Today is ANZAC day. My father, John Samuel Stevens served as an Air Gunner in the RAAF in World War II. He went straight into the RAAF from school and flew in many raids over Europe including over Germany, in Wellington and Halifax bombers. His position was tail gunner.

Bomber Command took more casualties than any other British service in WWII. Of those, the biggest proportion was tail gunners. It was the most dangerous job in the war. In his book The Right of the Line, historian John Terraine wrote: ‘The air gunner’s task, especially at the rear, was essentially solitary, calling for both deep moral reserves and great physical fitness. Sitting almost immobile in the cramped panoly of a metal and perspex cupla for six, eight, ten, or even more hours, constantly vigilant yet unable to relieve cramped legs, arms or back, called for extraordinary feats of physical endurance. The air gunner’s prospects were a comfortless life and lonely death, a combination calling for amazing fortitude.’

In addition,the Luftwaffe night fighters usually attacked British bombers from behind and below, which made the tail gunner both very responsible for the safety of the aircraft, and very vulnerable.  In the event of the plane being hit the tail gunner had a long, tight crawl, encumbered by his electric suit and other gear, to reach the front of the aircraft to bale out. Understandably, many didn't make it.

Dad's plane was often attacked, but he reckoned that if the tail gunner was awake and fired a few rounds, the night fighter would buzz off to attack some less alert target. Their plane was often hit by flak, and once was so badly damaged that the navigator was killed and the Halifax forced to land at the USAF base at Riems. While there Dad got to go through a B17 bomber, and was deeply envious of the American air gunners' 0.5 inch air cannons (he described the RAF/RAAF .303s as 'pop-guns').

Despite repeatedly putting his life on the line, and coming out of the war with a serious ear complaint and deafness due to sudden changes in altitude when doing evasive corkscrew dives, Dad refused to march on ANZAC Day or ever to wear his 5 medals (which I still have, in absolute mint condition). He was utterly opposed to war, which he described as "simply murder, you know" and did not believe it should be celebrated or glorified in any way. Whether you agree with that attitude or not, it was deeply held and authentic, and in my opinion he had earned the right to express it.

Yet here I am honouring the memory of W/O First Class John Samuel Stevens on this ANZAC Day.

Racist violence and genocide in Australia — sources of information

http://slackbastard.blogspot.com/2006/01/racist-attacks-on-australia-day.html -- "Aboriginal children in Rockhampton, Queensland have been shot in an alleged racially-motivated assault on Australia Day according to The Australian and The Advertiser. The first attack was reported the day after Australia Day, while a second assault was only revealed to have occurred days later when the child concerned reported to hospital after having heard of the first attack."

http://www.kooriweb.org/gst/genocide/tatz.html -- Genocide in Australia -- Professor Colin Tatz  -- AIATSIS Research Discussion Papers No 8

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/1997/72.html -- McGlade, Hannah --- "Reviewing Racism: HREOC and the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) " [1997] IndigLawB 72; (1997) 4(4) Indigenous Law Bulletin 12

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/geno-s07.shtml  -- Report details crimes against Aborigines

http://www.treatyrepublic.net/content/un-accuses-australia-entrenched-racism-towards-aborigines  -- UN accuses Australia of 'entrenched racism' towards Aborigines

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/aborigines    -- Today they still face racist attitudes, and there are periodic incidents of violence towards them, particularly affecting those in police custody. Their generally poor living conditions mean that Aborigines have a far higher infant mortality rate and suicide rate and a lower life expectancy than the rest of the population, and they make up a disproportionate section of the prison population.

 http://aboriginalrights.suite101.com/article.cfm/aboriginal_deaths_in_custody --  "Aboriginal Deaths in Custody In Australia are higher than those of South Africa at the peak of Apartheid."

Soundzine Green Contagion

Yr Hble & Obdt has a poem and reading in the new issue of Soundzine: The Green Contagion. I am also the reader for the poems of Howard Miller and Martin Elster.

One of my poems, The Hidden Muse, was selected by the Editors as one of the best ten poems ever published in Soundzine.

Alan Gould, featured poet in The Seventh Chimaera

Amor Fati Overnight In Hospital

The wardsman shaving my pubic hair
is shyer than I am here.
We contrive to talk
from further selves for manhood's sake.

Amid sea-green professionals
I watch myself on screen.
The catheter probes my blood-vessels
like a mouse in a maze-experiment,

finds as they expect, no more.
The talon of arteries that holds my heart
erect to life has one weak claw.
I feel humiliation, not fear.

The plastic bottle they insist
I use to pee, I'll not use.
Courteous, desperate, I last
till two am, evade the night-nurse.

The triumph's paltry. Returning, I see,
huge on my inside thigh
my Viking blood has splayed and run
to a purple map of Europe beneath the skin.

My forbears went to the New World from that,
and sure, it's proper, says my heart
to face the thing and snuff it quick,
Grettir on Drangey, not liking the dark

but taking what comes and its loneliness,
strange elation at how exact is this.
But here are good professional staff
reading screens to make my future safe

who require no more than a stranglehold
upon the wild affections of my world.
For this is blockage, infirmity. This
is not me, but the mortal incubus,

the hobbler who
must walk beside me with his cue
of Now when it comes, it will hold no surprise,
a self watching my self with angel eyes.



—Alan Gould, from The Past Completes Me 

Alan Gould is the Featured Poet in The Seventh Chimaera, due online in March 2010.

New Shit Creek Surge in War on Poetry

Supreme Metaphycsickal Commnander of Shit Creek WoP forces, Field Marshall Sir Nigel Holt (A.A., G.S.C.E., A.S.B.O. and Bar), supported by SCR President Rose Kelleher and Prime Minister Angela France, today announced a new Surge in the War on Poetry.

"Our best Poetic shock troops of Issue 11 have been airlifted by Pegasus transports into the tribal areas of The Realms of Gold, which bards in fealty to Apollo hold," he said as the stirring strains of "Ride of the Valkyries" sounded over the Shit Creek loudspeakers.

"The crack Anti-Poeticism squad has fanned out across the Objective Correlative, and teams led by such experienced officers as Doc "Whup-Ass" Lehr, David "Lucid" Landrum, and Charles "Don't-Mess-with-Me" Musser are in action as we speak, giving the insurgents a stiff dose of Trope and Form."

He added that to date no innocent civilians had been harmed during the Surge. "Our rhyme-driven Smart-Sonnets only take out Evil-Doers and Poetasters," he claimed. "The villanelles finish off any pockets of resistance."

President Kelleher stated that "The Boys and Girls of Shit Creek will stay in the Realms of Gold until the Job is Done."

Watch the Issue 11 Surge in the SCR War on Poetry being broadcast live on your computer screen by clicking HERE.

The Flea Gloweth Deepest Rubedo

A Flea moreover which transmuteth that which is base imperfect Mettle into Gold,  & whych projecteth many a Stone Philosophickal or Nugget Poetickal thereby; as witnesseth Philip Quinlan, Leo Yankevich, Joseph Salemi, Fr. Robert J. Pecotte, Geoff Page, Amit Majmudar, Rose Kelleher, Nigel Holt, Bill Greenwell, Alan Gould, Louis Gallo, Angela France, Nausheen Eusuf, Stephen Edgar, Ann Drysdale, Kevin Cutrer, Peter Coghill, C.E. Chaffin & Jared Carter.

http://www.the-flea.com/

Atrocities

‘If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.’

—Nelson Mandela

The Hive Mind

 From ‘Why the web has gone sour’ —SMH

" ...One of the main targets of Lanier's critique is the concept of the "wisdom of the crowds" or the "hive mind". This is the idea beloved of so many social media enthusiasts that the collective wisdom of a large number of people, generally harnessed online, will exceed that of the individual. Wikipedia is the classic example often cited in support of this theory... "

—And poetry forums? 

‘Lanier believes that by fetishising and over-stating the power of this collective so-called intelligence we undervalue individual humans.

‘"The 'wisdom of the crowds' effect should be thought of as a tool. The value of a tool is its usefulness in accomplishing a task. The point should never be the glorification of the tool."

‘He considers that "an adventurous individual imagination" is far more valuable than anything produced by a crowd.... ’

Depressed?

"People who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said on Wednesday...

"..."What is clear is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies...."

—Reuters

Poem in CounterPunch

I have a poem in CounterPunch, ‘Les Tricoteuses’. It refers to some of the slanders smeared on Derek Walcott by the Politically Correct Pack, including those on the internet and elsewhere who took the opportunity to say the most vile things about Walcott without any evidence at all.

A Recovered Time

“...Humans have this strangeness. Equipped with memory and imagination, we try also to inhabit the past moment. If we are attentive, tactful, we can experience, to some degree, the likeness of bygone lives. My own work has long applied this idea. Naturally, this likeness will be a form of virtual rather than actual living, and if we lack attentiveness and tact, then our retrospectives can easily turn the past into a false or trivialised pretext by which to glorify or punish the present.

“But when we allow to history the fine texture of its evidence, the leeway of its own attitudes, our sensation of living in a recovered time feels like, and is, an enlargement of our being. We live, and we live as if… Our consciousness is both in time and across time. The planetary past can become as personal to us as yesterday.”

—Alan Gould, ‘The Yes-Wow Molecule’.

The White Rose

The White Rose — heraldic emblem of Yorkshire, where I was born.

Die Weiße Rose — resistance against genocide, racism and fascist orthodoxy.

Nam si vos omnibus imperitare vultis, sequitur ut omnes servitutem accipiant? — “For if you would rule the world, does it follow that the world must welcome servitude?” (Tacitus' version of Caratacus in Annals, 12.37.)

Resist genocide

When does it become genocide?

"As an Israeli, I protest against the Israeli blockade. If I were an Egyptian, I would protest against the Egyptian blockade. As a citizen of this planet, I protest against both." —Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom

DIVALIA ANGERONAE XII Kal Ian 21 DEC

21 DEC: XII Kal Ian NP: SATURNALIA Feriae; DIVALIA ANGERONAE: public sacrifice offered in Acculeian Curia

—Religio Romana Roman Calendar


Angerona is a Roman Goddess with an iconography so odd that not even the ancients knew quite what She was about. She was represented holding Her finger to Her bound mouth in a gesture (apparently) requesting quiet. Some ancients believed that She was thus a Goddess of Silence, or that She represented the secret magical name of Rome which was not to be spoken aloud. Or that She was the Goddess of fear and anguish, and could prevent or drive away these feelings. One legend credits Angerona with driving away a disease called angina, which had plagued both men and animals until sacrifices were made to Her.

Her name may be akin to the Latin angustia and angor, two related words that express ideas of narrowness and difficulty. Angustia signifies a constricted place or time, or an entanglement (our word "anguish" comes from it) and was used to refer to the sun's situation at the winter solstice, when the light and warmth of the sun are at their weakest. Angor means choking, suffocation, or anguish (the above-mentioned disease "angina", which in modern times is the name of a heart disease featuring tightness in the chest, is derived from this, as well as "anger"). As Angerona had Her festival (called the Angeronalia or Divalia) on the 21st of December, some modern scholars believe She is the goddess of the winter solstice, who helps the sun get through this dark, difficult period. In this interpretation Her silence indicates concentration or meditation, and Her inner voice that conjures a powerful spell to help the sun regain its strength. Other authors, however, point out that before the calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar, the solstice did not occur on the 21st.

Alternatively, Her name may derive from an Etruscan root, ancaru, defined as "Goddess of Death".

Her statue was found in the Sacellum Volupiae, or the Shrine of Voluptas, the Goddess of Pleasure*, located near the Forum by the Porta Romana, one of the most ancient gates of Rome, which was probably located on the west side of the Palatine Hill. At the Angeronalia, the priests made sacrifices to Her either at the Sacellum Volupiae, or in the building called the Curia Acculeia. The Curia Acculeia was either another name for the Sacellum Volupiae, or else an adjacent meeting-house, as evidentally it was nearby.

Also called: Diva Angerona. Angeronia, the Goddess of the Will and Lucky Moments, is said to be a lesser variant of Her.

—Obscure Goddess Directory


_______

* Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

—Keats, ‘Ode on Melancholy’

Image by Pat Jones, ImagineII

The Non-Conformist

Breaking the rules in front of a group is the relationship of the thespian to his audience.

Happy Days

when you're a poet you've chosen to be alone

—Pablo Omar

Beyond the Pale

A poet who's acceptable is dead.

—Anthony Weir, Beyond the Pale

The Season of THE FLEA

You've got to pick up every stitch,
The rabbit’s running in the ditch,
Beatniks are out to make it rich,
Oh no! Must be the Season of the Witch...

http://www.the-flea.com

Thomas Zimmerman, Marly Youmans, Gail White, Timothy Murphy, Rick Mullin, David W. Landrum, Rose Kelleher, Clive James, Jan Iwaszkiewicz, Midge Goldberg, Richard Epstein, Ann Drysdale, Kevin Cutrer, Norman Ball, Gene Auprey, Mark Allinson, Mary Alexandra Agner.