a die-in to honor Michael Brown
in America,
the land of the frightened white people
(where fear of pigment
and of what their media calls terror,
excuse a carte blanche to kill anyone,
anywhere in the world.)

radical

i'm known as a RADICAL because i believe that structures
that support a status quo which is not only responsible
for maiming and murdering children throughout the world,
but also profits from it, must be challenged at every opportunity.

since virtually all of my heroes, from Jesus Christ and Crazy Horse,
to Mahatma Gandhi, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Lewis Hill,
Mother Jones, Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, John Lennon,
Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy,
Tim DeChristopher, Hanan Ashrawi, Amy Goodman, Daniel Ellsberg,
Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Glen Ford, Sandra Steingraber,
Julian Assange, Sarah Shourd, Chelsey Manning, Edward Snowden,
Medea Benjamin, Chris Hedges, William Blum, David Swanson,
Ajamu Baraka, Jose Saramago, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy,
George Orwell, Jacob George, and Dr. Seuss
have also been branded RADICALS, i can't help but observe,
that if i can only live up to the name, i'll be in the best company
i could possibly imagine.

a third excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

its amazing how many excerpts from my novella-poem,
"Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons", seem to be
appropriate for All's Hallow.  i suppose this is because
it's always Hallowe'en in my heart.

this one takes place in the early morning, following the queen's
late night recipe session with her arcane tome.  the "spying" rat
referred to was introduced earlier in the story, when he was sent
on a spying mission to the Curmudgeon's cottage.

**************
the anxious harpy had risen with the dawn,
to slake her rancour and stay her aching need;
attempting to quell her equivocal qualms
with decisive action and distracting speed.
donning a hooded cloak she headed for the stairs,
past the nodding king in his aerie lair;
his ashen face etched with the trace of a tear,
his crown askew on his alabaster chair.

the hidden chamber seemed just as she'd left it,
awash in its litter of glittering junk;
the wainscoting stained with the travelling blood,
the book sequestered in a trifle-filled trunk.
the mirror was dozing in patches of purple;
swathing his gaze in a cryptic veneer.
the cauldron was insistently simmering,
seething bursting bubbles and free-floating fear.

the roughhousing rats were asleep in a heap
except for the spy who was watching the queen,
his red eyes glowing under half-opened lids
peeping from the rim of a tarnished tureen.
she slipped a slim vial from her vestment
slurping its turbid liquid in a single swig,
and set in at once to swagger and writhe
like an angry puppet in a scandalous jig.

her face was engrossed in a raging mask,
her skin stretched entirely out of proportion;
a staggering sack of wriggling wrinkles,
a sagging feat of torturous contortion.
then she clutched at her throat with dramatic flair
retching in a rasping agonizing gag,
and stumbled to a standstill before the mirror
decked out as the craggy, haggard old hag.

she inclined her head, batting her bleary eyes.
"well, deary, who's the scariest in the land?"

he winced.  "your likeness, your highness, takes the cake.
in all fairness it ought to be contraband."

she let loose a cackle and slapped his frame
flipping his shiny surface the wrong way around
and briskly hobbled to the smoking cauldron
amidst scuttling rats, revolving the ground.
raising her arms in solemn demeanor
she appeared to peer at a spot past the ceiling,
and produced an enchanting thrumming hum,
the drone of pious bees, their rapture congealing.

"i wake the winnowing wights in windblown wastes,
dissolving fallen dead with withering waves.
i summon the sirens of Sicily,
singing stranded sailors to sodden sea-swept graves.
i flush the frothy crystals melting fell fjords
ye frost fairies foster in thine ice-bound caves.
i arouse the selkies and stream-dwelling sprites,
dousing the earth with thy spouting, splashing staves.

i conjure fog from its filmy elements.
i evoke the mantle of billowing blue.
i convene the cover of inky darkness,
and wrest subtle mist from early morning dew.
i tinge my features with banishing brushes
to shelter my pigments in nondescript hue.
i steep in pervasive evasiveness,
and suffuse my semblance with a clandestine brew.

i assemble the ousted ancestors
to hearken to my wishes and answer my plea.
in the name of thee who are wholly unholy,
so it shall happen, and so mote it be."

the mirror spun around and softly muttered
"i said it before in this same dreary den;
she brought back to life that tired, belaboured horse,
and beat it to death all over again."

the snooping rat snickered in his bewhiskered dish,
and the mirror blushed with a coral glaze.
then the crone dipped an apple in the cauldron,
and clasping her basket stepped into the haze.

**************
(thus ends the excerpt)  - Evan Hawthorn, 27th of October, 2014

another excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

this excerpt from my novella-poem,
"Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"
seemed rather appropriate for Hallowe'en...

it takes place shortly after Sludge White had bitten into the poisoned apple,
and Sleazy had been carried off by the titanic arachnid.  nearby, Sappy tended
Mock's wounds (incurred from the same beastie) during the stormy night...

****************

Sludge White was sailing a subliminal sea,
gliding on a surface that glinted like glass.
her memories were ranged like sleeping mountains,
their colors cascading in a slumbering pass.
she was vaguely aware of all that transpired,
seen through a cloistering filter of crepe;
and tried to decipher what could have prompted
misfortune to open it's snarling gape.

her fur-clad familiars found her fallen.
a dubious heartbeat convinced them she was dead.
though ashen pallor bedimmed her glimmer,
a pink glow illumined the roses on her head.

as the deer nudged her with their probing noses,
an eerie wailing was let loose by a loon.
then a chorus of keening fused with the storm
in a howling lament that beckoned the moon.
it rose in the midst of turbulent flashes;
in shafts of fluorescence and gleam-tinted cloud.
and the fell fog was pummelled by pelting rains,
forging wispy tatters out of steaming shroud.

the skittish fire that Sappy had set,
crackling in the shelter of prehistoric stones;
was encouraged by the flickering moonlight,
fostering warmth in their chilled and dampened bones.
as he rocked Mock in a cradle of compassion,
the skies spilled out their spurting, silver sheets;
and he lulled the delirious ramblings
of anxious adolescence roaming lonely streets.

Mock closed his eyes when the winds subsided,
and the deluge dwindled to intermittent drip.
as the moon traipsed off in search of perspective,
Sappy hunkered down for a cursory kip.

Sleazy came to in a foul smelling cavern,
steeped in the silence that saturates night;
wrestling with his wrapping and scuffing the scrapes
he'd acquired from the spider's frantic flight.
he'd barely discerned the subtlest shuffle
when a presence emerged an inch from his face.
for a heart-stopping moment he felt it musing.
then it ripped apart his slithery case.

already running as his feet touched down,
they kept on kicking when he found he'd been lifted.
but sharp, spindly limbs simply spun him around,
and placed him in a spot where starlight sifted.
he embraced the bathed air like a stifled child
imbibing the breezes that bring in spring;
and hardly held on to the side of the cliff,
skipping and slipping and nearly taking wing.

in a nearby nook a pair of plump pigeons
snickered together as they watched him flit by.
and having made certain he hadn't been followed
one of them mounted the star-dappled sky.

**************

(thus ends the excerpt).....Evan Hawthorn, 21st of October, 2014

a shooting star

i mourn the loss of Jacob George,
and thank him for his insight
that the post-traumatic horror
he brought back from war
was not a disorder
but the natural human response to inhumanity.

Evan's Handbook for Hypocrisy

Citizens = see Criminals

Congressional Speech ("Democrat") = a pack of lies that contradicts itself

Congressional Speech ("Republican") = a pack of lies that beggars belief

Criminals = people of color, peace protesters, environmental activists, persons who think

Defense (as in Spending, Department of, etc.) = see War Against

Democracy = the theory that a Government operates in the interests of its Citizens

Elections = publicity stunts arranged by the Misledia to distract Citizens
                  and convince them that they have Democracy

Government = protection racket for the 1%

Informing the Public = a heinous act which warrants life imprisonment

Media (or, more properly: Misledia) = protection racket for the Government

Moral Indignation = the shock members of one Government feel when members
of another Government commit the very same crimes

Peace Process = plans for occupation by the proxies of the 1%

Police = private army for the 1%

Presidential Speech = a pack of lies riddled with redundant catchphrases

Protesters = see Criminals

Unprovoked War = a series of heroic acts which warrants book deals (and profit for the 1%)

War Against (Drugs, Terror, Poverty, etc.) = war to make more (drugs, terror, poverty, etc.)
                     operating under the theory that less is more; never losing sight of profit for the 1%

Welfare ("Corporate") = billions of taxpayer dollars annually handed to the Military Industrial
                                    Complex (see Defense)

Welfare ("Public") =  taxpayer dollars (profit for the 1%) wasted on taxpayers

delusion

i've heard people saying we're not responsible for what's happening in Iraq,

that you can't force people to embrace democracy when they don't want it.

imagine that.  bomb them into oblivion, raid their homes in the middle of

the night, bury Fallujah in depleted uranium, and they don't magically decide

to embrace our form of government.  what ingrates!

if anyone needs to be doing some evolving, surely it is us.

it wouldn't hurt us to embrace democracy, while we're at it.

rich selfish white men vetting politicians who look after corporate interests

(at the expense of all other interests), while their speech writers flatter the

public, while they routinely bully and subvert other nations, while the media

arranges diversions and assures us everything is being done for our protection,

and that we are free (to purchase whatever we want),

is NOT democracy.  it's delusion.


"It is not just that American soldiers come and kill. That is horrible enough. You have to ask what will happen to the children growing up around this violence. Iraq has been destroyed. The Iraqi soul has been disfigured.”
- Hassan Blasim