Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Before I begin this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001 . I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan , Iraq , in the U.S. , and throughout the world. And if I could just add one more thing. A full day of silence. for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence. for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 12-year U.S. embargo against the country. .And now, the drums of war beat again. Before I begin this poem, two months of silence. for the Blacks under Apartheid in South A

 Old Bank  of England Pub, photo by Naviquan Met  my old  friend Gerry Mcgowan yesterday evening. Went to the Old Bank of England pub . I like it, and took Steph there when she came to London. The pub during the week is busy. The staff were very pleasant and sold me a nice pint of ESB and I sat waiting for Gerry. Be there in  two minutes. said  the message, and he arrived ten minutes later. Gerry  looked good. He was slim and wearing stylish glasses. But he spoke softly and the noise in the pub was loud. We spoke of Belfast and mothers and Lecce , where Gerry lives. When he first arrived there there were  no tourists, but it is now a tourist destination, its rocky shores populated periodically by these northern seagulls. Gerry has an olive grove, chickens and his wife is a town doctor. Lots of people know me, he says, but I don't always know them. Speaking of Italy, It's not about Berlusconi, said Gerry, it's more complicated than that. You have to study th

I started late, which was foolish and it meant I had to get to Guildford from Farnham in under five hours, before the sun set. 'Remember, get on the back of the train, or you will end up to Basingstoke', says the man selling tickets. I sat waiting on platform three next to a disheveled young man eating a sandwich. I'm listening to Classic FM . How Bach , a jobbing musician, wrote a variation based on one of Vivaldi's 200 concertos. But the hiss increased on the train and so I switched it off and looked at the landscape. After a few stops two boys got on, 15 or 16, with vests on and I listened to their conversation. What language was it? East European perhaps. It never quite came into focus but it was clearly English. I have never heard such strange English in my life. The accent made it almost incomprehensible. It wasn't west country or east country. They came and sat behind me and when the ticket inspector came, I heard the whole argument. They

The Heseltines To most people in the establishment nepotism is a laughing matter. 'Oh come on.', you can hear them say. 'Everyone does it. The only reason they complain is that they are jealous. In any case if you can't cut the mustard you are soon found out. It's just the first step.' Of course nepotism is a very long snail trial indeed. By the time a young toffee nosed whippersnapper - thinly disguised behind street credentials - is offered a leg up - he has already travelled a thousand miles. He has been fed the best food as a child. He has been exposed to a richer cultural and intellectual environment - Handel is his, as well as the Beatles, Mahler, remixes and Drum and Bass. But Althusser explained it better than anybody with inelegant originality. Ironically Anglo-American universities still discuss Althusser. They neuter French theory, label it as a failed intellectual experiment, and then inject it like a vaccine into their future public