Harbour Leaves

Here I sit quietly, sipping coffee by the sunless sea.
Billowing rain clouds shaped like pillows
pout as they silently float past.
Giant arms of rock hug the harbour,
as my pen catches them trying to
embrace like long-lost lovers.
High above the town, a castle
keeps watch over the inlet waters,
as it waits for a ship to pass below.
The island's weather has
been recorded on its stones
and its tears have been
blown cold and dry
by the north Atlantic wind.
Fishing boats are docked on the opposite shore;
four or more rest out of season.
Wooden-covered island houses coloured like rainbows
are scattered amongst the rock,
while their roofs are littered with golden leaves
as they fall from autumn trees.

Ginsberg & Friends

For Those Stary-Eyed Dynamos Burning Up in the Machinery of Night

Take three deep
mind breaths

and forget everything you know -
dock the censorship
and open your eyes.

The poems read like
uncooked rants from
the bleeding heart of chaos;

Who's words appear as naked as he was on stage;
reliving his nightmares on stage.

He mocked America;
taunted America;
begged a cross-dressing America to take off her clothes;

Wrote to Gary Snyder through
a holy cloud of laughing gas;
visited Kerouac in Queens, while Hunke talked to Kinsey;

Cried for Cassidy to beat him while
he screamed crazed confessions to
the secret hero of his poems.

He read Blake; heard Blake; saw Blake in 1948.

1952 - starred as David in JC Holmes' Go -
Holmes kept going until 1988.

Howl on trial 56;
elders screaming
while he was riding around in green automobiles
shouting Europe!Europe!

He saw afternoon in Seattle,
and road the Witchita vortex
all the way to Tangier where
Burroughs went to the junk-house for a naked lunch.

O'Hara gone in 1966;
1968 - Cassidy counts railway ties until he dies.

Wrote eulogies for Kerouac, 1969;
Converted to California-Buddhism
like B. Kaufman (b.1925 -d.1986), who spent the 1950s speaking poetry
into San Fransisco cars -
sat on Carson's couch in 1970.

No Pulitzer;
No Poet Laureate;
No Lew Welch after 23 May 1971.

National Book Award in 72.

Ask him about
the Jester, Carl Solomon, Rockland,
O'Hara's ghost wandering Fire Island, Moloch, Buddhism, Natalie Jackson, Cassidy,
suicidal dreams, penetration,
Dr. Williams, Louis Ginsberg,
J. Edger Hoover, the West,
Kerouac, Kammerer,
secret police, state terror,
anger, self-loathing,
the callous stench in the capitol air,
what research shows,
partying with Kesey and the Angels,
hitchhiking with Snyder,
the virtues of Corso,
the sins of Times Square,
the cold-water flats of the East Village, the apartments on the Negro streets,
the couches and blowing smoke rings from tea,
the sage-like advice of Rexroth,
the cottage in Berkeley,
3119 Fillmore Street,
Ferlinghetti shining the City Lights on Howl,
Uncle Max, Orlovsky,

& Naomi.

Video Sites Sharing More Than Entertainment?

These days, you can see just about anything on the internet. If it has a name, you will most likely find it. From Surf the Channel, which boasts an impressive catalogue of streaming movies and popular television shows from around the world, to Knickerpicker.com, where women (and most likely a few gentlemen) can watch real models strut down the runway in order to get a visual before ordering lingerie - the internet has everything!

In recent years, the internet has grown out of its information super-highway wardrobe, and is, in ever-increasing fashion, becoming a place where individual users come to share. From online encyclopaedias, such as Wikipedia, to video sites such as Youtube, the internet is rapidly becoming a personal place in the world.

However, there is something scary about sharing – you never really know what you are looking at. In the same way that spam emails can be used to con the everyday person out of money, or other sensitive information, video sharing sites can be used to advertise illegal behaviour. Alarmist, perhaps, however, I was recently watching Youtube, and came across a person’s video file, wherein they shoot movies of fires. The video I happened to be watching depicted an electric-power transformer exploding. The shaking camera filmed the night creeping in on the flaring ball of fire, as voices of concerned citizens looked on.

Let me be clear, videos such as this, are, doubtless, produced with the intention of advertising news (if we broaden, and perhaps sensationalize what we consider to be news). However, arsonists are, not always, but in extreme cases, pyromaniacs; and in a world where bizarre crimes happen yearly, we cannot rule out the role that video sharing sites play in advertising their crimes by passing them off as entertainment.

Think I’m out to lunch? Not really. In the late 1990s, the popular crime show America’s Most Wanted ran a story involving a serial arsonist, who – wait for it – videotaped his crimes as they were happening. In similar videographical style as the Youtube post, this man set fire to expensive homes, and watched them burn. On the tapes that were released, his voice can be clearly made out, narrating the fire’s destruction.

BY NO MEANS, am I branding this Youtubeer with the same charge; I’m simply saying that with the anonymity of video sharing sites, you never really know if you are looking at something intended to be more than entertainment.

An Atheist’s Best Friend, or Light in the Dark of Night

At the end of The Dark Knight, the latest addition to the Batman canon, viewers were left with the image of the Joker – played brilliantly by the late Health Ledger – hanging upside down, staring a fatal tumble from the steel canopy of Gotham City in the face, while Batman – played by Christian Bale – looks on, and then leaves him hanging in the balance. It would have been too easy, perhaps, for Batman to unclench his fist and send the Joker his final punch-line, but Batman would never do such a thing.

The reality is something that Batman understood thoroughly when he left the Joker hanging in the balance – not the balance of law and order – however, the balance of good and evil. The movie is but one portrayal of the ongoing conflict between what is understood to be ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The dilemma is that one cannot exist without the other. This is something that the Joker mentions while being interrogated by Gotham City police detectives, when he compares himself to a dog chasing cars, saying he ‘wouldn’t know what to do if he actually caught one.’

The Joker wouldn’t know what to do because he would be involuntary thrust into an argument for his own validity. To be the ‘evil’ counterbalance to Batmans’ ‘good.’

This reminds me of another argument, or conflict, between two other columns of society – the believer, and the atheist. While both argue from completely different angles, it is important to realize that Atheism is the second oldest idea in the history of Theology – the first being, belief, or faith itself.

Where the believer has the Holy Scriptures to backbone his favour for Christ, Allah, Thor, Buddha, et-cetera, the Atheist grounds his ‘faith’ in the wisdom of science and reason. Both are perfectly appropriate sources of validation. However, these two groups never admit the necessary existence one group represents to the lives of the other.

In this sense, Atheism needs the Believer, and vice-versa, as much as the Joker needs Batman. Because the Atheist argues for revolution, and the Believer for revelation, the Atheist would consider hoards of Believer’s abandoning their faith to be a revelation, and the Believer would consider the same feet, a revolution.