On the Death of a Poet

That’s fine dude, I'm not mad at you
The masked man's video footage revealed the poet's last words

Some men can't bear the thought of not being feared
And, faced with an incandescent smile instead of a stare,
He fired three shots in rapid succession
He let her know who was who

In his own way, he dispensed some American home truths
Call it the imperial boomerang, that obscene point of view
Visit America before America visits you

I couldn't bear to watch the clip of the death of the poet
But from the still, I could see in her smile, the sense of bemusement
And knew all too well what would have happened, later, when she got home
That that masked man - puff, with his big weapon
Would end up as a minor character in a poem


After Renée Nicole Good


See previously: Prone

File under: grief, blood, outrage, murder, USA, crime, violence, rogues, culture, observation, perception, creative process, hatchet job, The Rough Beast, poetry, toli

Writing log: January 10, 2026

Drop, Chain and Accordion

Harbingers of malnutrition
The Four Horsemen of hunger season
While the first three duly entered our vocabulary
The fourth, left to shame, was pushed to the recesses of memory

The drop was the most embarrasing of these musketeers
Because, when first encountered, he caught you unawares
The sudden drop of your clothing - you were now half your size
Exposing your nether regions to the fresh air and curious eyes

By the time you got to the chain or the accordion, you'd find yourself spent
Having long made your peace with this state of affairs: eternal Lent
Accustomed as you were to - call it by its name, starvation
After all, you were living through a proper People's Revolution

Marking the spot on your belt where you would pierce the extra notch
Or wearing belts where you previously had none - acceptable loss
Improvised contraptions for your skirts and trousers hopefully holding
Under military rule, we were at a remove from skirt-and-blouse voting

The second horseman, the chain, spoke to tears and sorrow
A cynical description of a neckline that was now hollow
Jewelry of a sort, a macabre, if fashionable, decoration
Thriftiness embodied in your very person, a celebration

The third horseman, the equal opportunity composer, the accordion
Orchestrated skinny rib cages visibly appealing to both old and young
A skeletal music of fatigue, unmet needs and quiet exhaustion
He devised a twelve bar blues, if you will, of quotidian suffering

As to the fourth, rickety, he mainly dealt with little children
Confounding in his physicality as should be readily apparent
Kwashiorkor, quite a mouthful, the dreadful disease
The characteristic bloating, the ironic mark of the beast

Weight loss, hair loss, failure to thrive, and apathy
And then we come to those now-distended extremities
And even with the outrage and the sense of violation
The question still remains, why were these men laughing?

Nature may be a cruel companion, what with droughts and brush fires
Yet it was a man-made disaster, preventable, and caused by these liars
With limited food resources, this had all the makings of a tragedy
Worse, they were warned well in advance at the time yet they carried on stubbornly

Quite bewildering though, and damaging to the psyche
To be branded as requiring all the world's charity
Stalking horses of hunger seasons past, harrowing and dubious legacies
Ancestral memories passed across the ages, fear and survival strategies

The fourth horseman, although it must be said, was rather solicitous,
Didn't lend himself to a coinage that was quite so felicitous
The lived experience was stark and dispiriting, disturbing in its dismay
Awful enough that even that angel Euphemism couldn't summon an uneasy phrase

Drop, chain and accordion, then, were the fateful entries
Albeit History gave unkind placement in the dictionaries
They would be prefixed in the lexicon by his name
To the Flight Lieutenant's great and everlasting shame

Such however is the way of privation, the nature of its exigency
That, even in the darkest hours, in the depths of an emergency
Gallows humor reigns, it calls forth linguistic innovation and whimsy
Proverbial zingers, sharp aphorisms, etched forever in memory

...

Basket cases
Tiny coffins
Circling vultures
Calmly watching

Weeping mothers
Hunger pangs
And the crowds
Scrambling for crumbs

...

Starving children don't cry
Tears waste too many calories
Shame, that so many had to die
Shame, again, their swollen bellies

Hunger, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Pearls by Sade
  Melodramatic as befits the tragic scene she describes, mournful this ode to wounded pride.
• Hungry Blues by Jimmy Johnson & His Orchestra
• Never Mind the Hungry Blues by Larry Carlton
• Got the Hunger by Alice Russell
• Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) by Bob Marley
• Man Hungry by Sugar Minot
• When Hungry Walks by Gregory Isaacs
• Hungry Belly Pickney by Freddie Macgregor
• Hungry Belly Dub by King Tubby
• Very, Very Hungry by Brian Eno & David Byrne
  An instrumental track from the experimental album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Bonus beats: Hungry Belly by Frankie Paul & Pinchers, mainly for the title for this is a story about girl from Flatbush named Aisha. And of course, three live versions of Sade's Pearls, a show stopper ever since she composed it.


...

After Hunger for Sale (Talking Drums, October 3, 1983)

And also for that friend who startled me with the vehemence of his reaction when I teased him about his short stature. "Some of us didn't have our growth spurt during those years, we had Rawlings chains instead". A brief, damning silence ensued before joviality made its return. With my vaunted exile meshed with his explicit denial, our friendship, perhaps, was salved by the balm of the musical imagery. But the bitterness lingered.

And if archeologists can detect the evidence of famines and stunted growth like tree rings, etched in human bones, linguists and social historians can similarly escavate matters. Both earthquakes and man-made disasters leave their marks. Dzorwulu becomes 'the place that dropped', the valley of urban remembrance. Drop, chain and accordion as pointed modes of resistance in our hunger season.

Poetry as cultural memory then. Coinages bear the tide marks of social distress. In any case, this one's for you.

See previously Identification Haircut and, retrospectively, AFRC Member

File under: humour, hatchet job, satire, culture, observation, perception, language, Ghana, Africa, coup, rogues, dictator, military, famine, disaster, failure, outrage, memory, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

Mercurial, They Call Him

Portrait of a narcissist, a few essential traits
A slight never forgotten, don't you make that mistake
A double heart filled with unspoken threats
He wears the mask the audience deserves

Portrait of an opportunist, moral flexibility in abundance
Reversals galore but he rolls with the punches
His interests always trump friendships, let's call it expedience
For survival beyond the day's end is his sole allegiance

Portrait of the vain, hollow on the inside
Entitlement in stiff competition with pride
His secret weapon, a genuine sense of self importance
Chock full of certainty about the rightness of his cause
To call him self centered is to merely state the obvious

Portrait of a deceiver, all things to all men
Lying with a straight face, his enduring strength
Pitch perfect delivery, you could swear he believes every untruth
Surely, to impugn the purity of his motives? What are you, uncouth?

Carried Fanon's book around for a full year - wretched
Still occasionally tries to read it (practice makes perfect)
But underneath everything is a fundamental insecurity
Mommy and Daddy issues, the bitter roots of his immaturity

The need for speed, horses his first love
But anything with an engine would do
Nights out with the running partners
Booze, the hard stuff, ladies of easy virtue
After dark, how exciting, and all in the same room

It's fair to say that there are multitudes inside of this man
Characterized, everyone says, by his tremendous charm
Unrestrained, unfiltered, half baked, half-cocked
Empty but empowered, half truths, half thought

Absolved, then, of the burden of any sense of responsibility
Free to be a political actor altogether allergic to empathy
A chameleon - mercurial, they call him, the luckiest man alive
Just your luck that you're stuck with him, the best years of your life

Bad, a playlist

For what it's worth, this playlist was intended to stand alone but seeing as I haven't written up the liner notes in the 17 years since I made it, I suppose I can repurpose it as the soundtrack for this note. A couple of hours on a bad man (spotify version)

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

...

See previously The Conqueror's Catechism


File under: humour, hatchet job, rogues, satire, culture, observation, perception, military, dictator, blood, sin, greed, gremlins, Africa, violence, strategy, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

The Incident Is Under Review

The incident is under review

...

The Israeli military said
There had been a "technical error"
With a strike targeting an Islamic Jihad "terrorist"
That caused the munition to fall
Dozens of metres from the target

...

An initial inquiry
Regarding injured individuals
Suggests fragments from a shell
Fired during operational activity in the area
Hit the church mistakenly

...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said
It was aware of the "claim
Regarding casualties in the area as a result"

...

The IDF "regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians"

...

Israel deeply regrets
That a stray ammunition:
Hit Gaza's Holy Family Church

...

The IDF directs its strikes solely at military targets
And makes every feasible effort
To mitigate harm to civilians and religious structures,
And regrets any unintentional damage caused to them

...

Every innocent life lost is a tragedy.
We share the grief of the families and the faithful

...

The IDF works to mitigate civilian harm "as much as possible"

...

Israel remains committed to protecting civilians and holy sites

...

Children Among at Least 10 Killed in Israeli Strike in Central Gaza, Officials Say

The victims were gathered near a water distribution point, health workers said

July 13, 2025

...

Israel says it regrets deadly strike on Catholic Church in Gaza

July 17, 2025

...

Israeli Strike on a Gaza Church Kills Three

...

Israeli forces killed at least 27 people in attacks in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including the three killed in the church strike, according to medics and church officials.

...

The cause of the incident is under review

...

Israel is investigating the incident

...

The incident is under review, the military added

The incident is under review, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Under review by Master Planned Music
• War by Bob Marley & the Wailers
• Can't buy soul by Hebrew Rogers
• Eastern incident by Sonny Clark
• Under review by Fabrice Ravel-Chapuis
• Geneva Convention by John Sloman
  

  You can kill them all / But just kill them nicely

• War by Edwin Starr
• Ain't it the truth by Catalyst
• Isn't it a pity by Nina Simone
• Geneva convention by BYU Synthesis
• Under review by Luuccid Dreamur
• Geneva convention by Peter Wiberg
• Geneva convention by Dow Brain

After a few news reports this past week

See also: On a Man who was Protected by Another Man by Hilaire Belloc

Perhaps we can file these expressions of regret under the banner of The Rough Beast which asks: who is writing the script?

File under: outrage, blood, language, war, obfuscation, misdirection, Israel, military, Palestine, hatchet job, rogues, atrocity, culture, observation, perception, The Rough Beast, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 17, 2025

Sphinx Modalities

Docility is much prized by parents and tyrants alike
A double edged sword, however, for the former
For independence and agility of thought are also to be imparted
Lest raising lemmings ends up being one's enduring legacy

Thus the dilemma of the sphinx modalities
The puzzle of how we readily yield to authority
The virtues of critical thinking, prized, yet only obtained with difficulty
Weighed against the duty of protecting one's neck, raw survival's necessity

Organizations too, confront the question, albeit from a different viewpoint
Marx, it was, that wrote of the narcotic effect of all religions
Seeking to explain the evident acquiescence to oft imprudent authority
The silence in the face of privation and, worse, this baleful docility

Outlining the process that leads to overvaluing the herd mentality
The masses' suffering, the false consciousness of conformity
The shackles that bind our traditional respect and shame cultures
The surplus value that opportunists can extract and capture

Juvenal would lambast the enduring appeal of bread and circuses
The dulling of the senses, leaving one prone to domestication tendencies
The suppression of the iconoclast, our embrace of convenient fictions
Perception is everything, such are the dangers of the cattle inclination

The sphinx is an awesome beast, typically lying in repose
But terrifying when it moves, with suddenness and exacting purpose
Mythical in its grandeur, it plainly traffics in concealment
Opacity and judicious revelation, keeping close its terms of discernment

And yet, force majeure, in times of emergency
We see what lies simmering beneath the surface
When societies erupt and break the mask
And tyrants are destroyed and taken to task

In the heat of moment, when they face the inevitable comeuppance
The warnings unheeded, the memory of their unbearable arrogance
From those earlier days when all we could do was to bear witness
Came the silent message: don't mistake my kindness for weakness

He who tests the depth of a stream with both feet must be prepared to swim.

— Ewe proverb, Ghana

Sphinx Modalities, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• The Next Movement by The Roots
• You've Got to Move by Omar
• Beneath the Surface by GZA
• Eruption by Van Halen
• Now's the Time by Charlie Parker
• Beneath the Surface by Incognito
• Don't See Us by The Roots

see previously Nothing to See Here and All Available Indignities

File under: culture, observation, perception, strategy, tyrants, rogues, dissent, anger, revolution, groups, organization, crowds, social, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: September 11, 2022

We Don't Talk Politics

I saw him once in person, Eyadema père
Must have been a few months before his death
At ease in his dark suit and sunglasses, standing there
The big man, unsmiling as ever, impassive and stern

Almost forty years deep into his rule by then
His éminence grise was attending the gentle giant's inauguration
He stood out, sour minded, even as others were celebrating
The hard earned lessons fully learned by his subjects

None of my Togolese friends have ever discussed politics

No surprises, however, about his exercise of power
At that point, he was the longest serving African ruler
Everything had to pass through him, it was all about the money
Contracts, wives and daughters, all tributes to his authority

My Togolese friends don't talk politics, they won't be drawn

Still, unlike some of the others, he wasn't too flashy
The trappings of the personality cult weren't too ornery
Funeral minded however, there was no chance of a smile
A quick death for his enemies instead of a show trial

They laugh and cry like everyone but my Togolese friends don't talk politics

Favored client of Françafrique, pal of Jacques Foccart
All respect due to the Knight of the Legion of Honour
The indomitable son who received the Order of the Yugoslav Star
During our lost decades, he would even play the role of mediator

Sports, relationships, religion even, but my Togolese friends never mention politics

But the many prizes couldn't launder his reputation
The curdled bloodstains at the heart of a tyrant's reign
Lingering, the squalid and tawdry murders underneath it all
Worse still, the dynasty continues apace, his son succeeded him

Almost thirty years now
The silence of my Togolese friends weighs
Never once have they slipped
And so we discuss the weather

We Don't Talk Politics, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• I keep forgettin by Michael McDonald
• Weather by Amel Larrieux
• I don't want to talk about it by Rod Stewart
• Don't mention my heartache by Nathalie Cole
• No politics by Amp Fiddler
• Talk about the weather by Yves Paquet
• N'bo Eyadema Mobutu by Napo de mi amor
• Murderer by Barrington Levy
• Talking about the weather by Tess Parks
• Don't talk about it by Culture Club
• Let's talk about the weather by Michael Hill's Blues Mob
• I don't want to talk about it by Rita Coolidge

See previously The Conqueror's Catechism


There was a touch of poetic license if not despair when I wrote the above in 2023, I hoped then, and hope now, that a new generation would prove me wrong; 58 years should be enough, right?

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried


File under: fear, rogues, dictator, gremlins, Eyadema, Togo, Africa, humour, culture, blood, observation, perception, huhudious, hatchet job, violence, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: October 23, 2023

This Fourth

This Fourth of July
Tariffs and a trade war
Inflation rising

Calls for regime change
The folly of wars of choice
The sound of bombs dropping

Rogues and damn scoundrels
Doing their worst, unrestrained
God bless America

But they got their tax cuts
And Supreme Court justices
The spoils of the feast

Big, beautiful bombs, then,
And bills signed in blood
And fraught with impunity

The half-life of dreams
Decay by design
A body drained of integrity

This Fourth, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note courtesy of Sault (spotify version)

• Glory
• Sorry ain't enough
• Why why why why why
• Warrior
• Living in America
• Fear no one
• Threats
• Valley of the ocean
• Free
• Wildfires
• God in disguise
• Masterpiece

Bonus beats: There will be no crying by Cleo Sol

...

The Strait of Hormuz
Motherhood and apple pie
Time for a ceasefire

...

No nation sinks to greater depths than when its government is obliged to listen silently to moral sermons preached by obvious scoundrels

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

See previously: A Very Beautiful Thing!, Facilitate, You Voted For This (And Other Songs), and An Abundance of Caution

File under: hatchet job, humour, satire, rogues, politics, USA, culture, observation, perception, values, displacement, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, poetry, toli

Writing log: June 23, 2025

An Abundance of Caution

What is there to say?
Security theater
Newspaper headlines:

- Mahmoud Khalil returns home after release on bail from federal detention after 104 days

- Pakistan to nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

— The U.S. enters Israel's war against Iran

- "One Earth, One Health": International Yoga Day provides respite in a tumultuous world

- The U.S dropped bombs on three nuclear sites, President Trump said on social media

Congratulations to our great American Warriors.
There is not another military in the World that could have done this.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!
Thank you for your attention to this matter

...

In the US, New York's police department says it is deploying additional resources to religious, cultural, and diplomatic sites across the city "out of an abundance of caution"

What is there to say, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Ishafan by Duke Ellington
• Redemption song by Bob Marley
• Reflection by Prince
• Peace piece by Bill Evans
• Jarabi by Toumani Diabaté

After this query

File under: language, huhudious, war, USA, hatchet job, rogues, Israel, Iran, power, politics, culture, observation, perception, humour, satire, Observers are worried, The Rough Beast, poetry, toli

Writing log: June 21, 2025

Facilitate

It wasn't easy, but this was the government lawyer's brief:
The word facilitate. A novel argument about its meaning
Where it applied and, indeed, how and to whom
And whether it was of solely domestic applicability

And if it seemed obvious to the Court that there was a plain meaning
His own job was to fully explain the proper, legal interpretation
For he evinced great concern for the separation of powers and its extent
And a justifiable worry for an unseemly constitutional precedent

That the judiciary in the shape of the present court
Was arrogating for itself the realm of executive power was self-evident
Overreaching and inserting itself where it should not
Infringing wholesale on the prerogative of the president

...

These were strange days of ever more outrageous claims
Stretching past the outer bounds of plausibility and shame
When norms were being shattered daily, and rules broken with impunity
Regulations glossed and discarded willy-nilly, testing the very limits of propriety

The government lawyer advanced his preferred reading
That his clients were in full compliance with the court's ruling
For their actions, after all, made it exceedingly clear
They would "remove any domestic obstacles
That would otherwise impede the alien's ability to return here"

But it turned out that further discretion was for the weak
And so the government attorney stuck to his emphatic brief
He concluded, the most powerful government in the world couldn't do a thing
As a matter of law, and in practice, the word facilitate didn't mean anything

Facilitate, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Can't do nuttin' for ya man by Public Enemy
• Easier said than done by Angie Stone
• Time's a wastin by Erykah Badu
• Ain't that easy by D'Angelo
• Gettin in the way by Jill Scott
• Obey by Dwele
• Not up to me by Frida Farrell
• Obstruction by Gabo Rio
• It don't mean a thing by Omar

Bonus beats: Objection overruled by Gregory Isaacs and My prerogative by Bobby Brown


After: Trump administration says it is not required to help wrongly deported man return to US

...

I seem to be departing from my normal practice of delayed publishing. I suppose the above will not be as topical if it were to be published as initially scheduled in 2036. Let me know if I should continue preempting the vault. I am somewhat tickled that the previous piece, entitled Expulsion Orders, written three years ago, mined somewhat similar terrain

File under: language, law, humour, satire, rogues, politics, USA, huhudious, culture, observation, perception, hatchet job, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: April 16, 2025

A Very Beautiful Thing!

Some day people will realize
That Tariffs for the United States of America
Are a very beautiful thing!

What's going to happen to the markets,
I can't tell you, but our country is much stronger.
Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something

Hang tough, it won't be easy,
But the end result will be historic

They are coming to the table.
They want to talk
But there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis.

Our past "leaders" are to blame
For allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!


A sonnet after Donald Trump

Puff, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Self regard is everything. (spotify version)

• He's Misstra Know-It-All by Stevie Wonder
• Talking Loud and Saying Nothing by James Brown
• Legend in his own Mind by Gil Scott-Heron

File under: hatchet job, language, humour, satire, rogues, absurd, economics, politics, USA, huhudious, culture, observation, perception, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: April 6, 2025

The Occasional Regret

Sometimes technology gets in the way,
There are ghosts in the machine, it seems
Or perhaps gremlins are the proper genus of the species
For when, in your haste to wish your interlocutor
Simple encouragements and the best of luck,
Your typed message got garbled by the darned computer
Transformed into choice obscenity before you could react
And now you wish that the whole interaction was something you could retract
Flush with mounting embarrassment
  And awkwardness that you're unable to deflect
All that is left is to bemoan it:
  The occasional regret of auto-correct

...

Sometimes when you're confronted with a choice,
You decide to take the easy way out
Unwilling, as you are, to listen to other voices
Or even entertain a scintilla of a doubt
You find yourself beefing up and promoting a patent scoundrel
Marshaling fraudulent arguments on the basis that he's a lesser evil
And now, without shame, he's hellbent on crudely screwing the pooch
The bodies are piled up high,
Unmitigated disasters while he cheerfully loots
  The uncouth rascal,
The hatchet jobs write themselves for even middling pundits
But now you have to stay silent as you were well and truly complicit
Call it buyer's remorse:
  The occasional regret of claiming to know what's best

...

Sometimes you decide to invade a smaller country
Might makes right and it will serve all your cronies
Fictitious claims, weapons of mass destruction
Vague but imminent threats and human rights violations
Ignoring, in your rush, all evidence to the contrary
Riding roughshod over any attempts at diplomacy
Wars of choice never lead to mission accomplished
After this catastrophic war on the wrong target, you are fully tarnished
Beyond the blood and lost valor,
  Your nation now entirely lacks credibility
Hell, even Putin can rightly accuse you of being part of an axis of hypocrisy
While badging his aggrandizing crimes with the same patina of manifest destiny
Oops, a cautionary tale:
  The occasional regret of the self-righteous mindset

Sometimes, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Sometimes by Bilal
• Sometimes by Erykah Badu
• Sometimes by Brand New Heavies
• Sometimes I Cry by Les McCann
• Sometimes (Mix #9) by Erykah Badu
• Sometimes I Cry by Eric Benet
• Sometimes by Mint Condition

See also Regret, a playlist

See previously: The Writing's on the Wall and Regret is all

File under: humour, life, technology, culture, observation, hatchet job, rogues, failure, politics, war, Iraq, USA, Bush, England, media, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, humour, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 4, 2022

Identification Haircut

There's a dictionary of revolutionary justice to be written
And the Ghanaian contribution should be self evident
Whereas in those heady days, we became familiar with choice terms
"Economic saboteur", "hoarder" and so forth
Far from original, most of these last were imports

Radio bulletins with orders to report to Gondar Barracks
"With immediate effect"
Dismissals from one's decades-long job
Overheard as you worked on the weekend

And then there were those eruptions
Showing just what was thought of our respect culture
Chants of viciousness:
"Let the blood flow", "We no go let them pass"
To strip a market woman naked and make her walk the streets

Shame

Still, our depraved champion was "identification haircut"
The practice might have cruel antecedents but they gave it our local spin
With blunt knives or bayonets, soldiers would shave their victims
The shaved head, scarred and bloodied
The mark of the conqueror

Shame, but linguistic gold
The Ghanaian interpretation of the Scarlet Letter

Shame, a Playlist

I can only recycle a previous soundtrack for this note. It imprints something in the mind. (spotify version)

See previously

• The Wages of Thermidor
• June 4th
• AFRC Member

File under: shame, outrage, violence, coup, mobs, cruelty, language, culture, observation, perception, Ghana, Africa, military, blood, rogues, The Rough Beast, memory, Buyer's Remorse, poetry, toli

Writing log. May 1, 2022

Goddamn Lies

They cut deeper, they do
 They hurt more than the unvarnished ones
Sure, you can make your peace with the white lies,
  The garden variety deceptions
And deal with the untruths
 And the artful omissions
The distinctions without a difference,
  The what-have-yous
But it's hard to cope with the goddamn lies

You are well familiar with the symphony of deceit
Intimate even, with the ways of evasion

The instinctive lies
 The barefaced ones
The reflexive ones
 The rank denials
The wholly unnecessary ones
 The exaggerations
The diversionary ones
 The outright fabrications

But it's hard to abide with the goddamn lies

And what, you may ask, elevates a lie into that august territory
Moving forward, worthy of that emphatic qualifier?

The texture of a goddamn lie is of the nature of a wound
A goddamn lie aims for, and achieves, infamy
Its essential quality goes far beyond shame
A goddamn lie rises above the highest peaks of untruths
It is of a piece with the surreal, devastating and brazen,
A goddamn lie summons irony, borne as it is out of its bed of hypocrisy
Most of all, a goddamn lie celebrates the lie qua lie
A goddamn lie dances on the grave of its achievement

II.

Politicians, as a matter of course, are avid connoisseurs of the lie
Indeed we expect a close acquaintance of it of most of their breed
Some breathe it with a naturalness that is often unnerving
Grifters too are students and daily practitioners of its corruption
And deploy it in a manner that is all too self-serving
But it is the rarest beast that achieves the goddamn lie

All cultures have their own folklore,
  Often at the expense of others
Founding myths, origin stories,
  Their striking legends soaked in blood

Erecting statues of the colossus,
  Destinies manifest and men's burdens
On terrain where equality, dreams and fond promises
  Meet ceilinged glass
The rhetoric of the powerful
  And the strategy of the shrewd
The hand of god,
  Witness the triumph of the trickster
Freedoms and liberties,
  The laws of grifters

From faulty biology, allusions to race, and sundry nationalisms
History books point to those who heed the conqueror's catechism
But when everything they claim to uphold is written in sand
It's hard to keep things straight when all is goddam lies

Deceit, a playlist

A soundtrack for this evasion. (spotify version)

See previously: Symphony of Deceit

This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: humour, culture, deception, evasion, lies, observation, perception, strategy, satire, negotiation, life, rogues, covidious, hatchet job, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, toli, poetry

Writing log. April 22, 2022

Flash Purposes and Pocket Litter

The documents "are not utilized in themselves"
   Is the official word per the agency,
They are used for flash purposes and pocket litter
Entire identities created out of whole cloth,
   Cover for operatives, the memo emphasizes,
The agents never actually charge credit card purchases

Alias document is the term of art,
   Worthy of the expense and effort
To create fake birth certificates,
   Driver's licenses and so forth
Strict controls are in place,
   They merely corroborate identifying documents
The burden of intelligence services
   Who carry out the dirty work of government

Sufficient audit trail.
   Rest assured, we follow rules and regulations
Believable stories we manage to create,
   The essence of misdirection
In bureaucratic prose
   That elevates deeds from their squalid ground
We lay out a potted history
   Of this organ of the executive branch

In tradecraft and intelligence,
   Forgery is a core competency
Pay no attention to occasional slips,
   We manufacture our own reality
The art of understatement,
   Prima facie law violations
Comes with the territory,
   Essential to underlie the fiction

We may traffic in the dark arts,
   But we are the good shepherds
Take us at our word,
   Our budgets are not unlimited
While technically accurate,
  We prefer not to mention blood and sin,
And always leave unspoken
  The source and extent of our funding

Obfuscation is our daily bread,
   We invented plausible deniability
Dabbling in drugs for creative financing
   And even run banana republics
Come to think of it, it is a singular virtue
   of this delayed disclosure
That it could, in itself,
  Serve as flash purposes and pocket litter

Spy, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Spying Glass by Horace Andy
• I am a spy by Billy Porter
• Spy in the house of love by Was (Not Was)
• Spy's Spice (Mon Espionne) by United Future Organization
• Spying Glass by Massive Attack
• Nobody Does it Better by Carly Simon
  The Spy Who Loved Me is my most watched film for whatever reason
• Diamonds are Forever by Shirley Bassey
  The finances of those said to be CIA adjacent would make for a great dissertation topic. I've always wondered about the dark underbelly of the agency. The fortunes of the Dulles family and others are intriguing let alone the Bush crew.
• I Spy (Spying Glass) by Massive Attack and Mad Professor

After reading through the bureaucratic trail spawned by the CIA'S family jewels (pdf), those papers that were deemed so dangerous they were buried in for years. Classified skeletons and sanitized misdeeds, a few short phrases concealing a mountain of crime.

File under: misdirection, CIA, strategy, spy, crime, history, USA, politics, culture, observation, language, rogues, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log. April 15, 2022

Gee Doctor Fauci (Once Again)

Gee kindly Dr Fauci they tell me you retired
But this pandemic is still a raging fire:
Everyone at work is out sick
Oh, some say "personal responsibility",
It's on them, they could have worn masks
But better ventilation would have been cheaper clearly
Is that really too much to ask?

Dear kindly Doctor Fauci
Have a talk with the folks at the CDC
They won't listen to a comment coming from me
They seem to have forgotten their mission statement
Surely it's better for public health to try to prevent
Than to give in and manage the aftermath
Of mass disabling events

Gee kindly Dr Fauci
The issue is rather emotive
There's a nagging sense that it's all about the profit motive
Have you seen the price, these days, of a course of Paxlovid?
And the insurance won't cover it if you keep getting sick
Sticker shock for my colleague,
In the thick of it

Dear kindly Doctor Fauci
They say that every day is for the thief
And viruses too, I guess
All that's left for us is tears
The great object lesson of the past few years:
That it's far easier for many to stick to pleasant beliefs
Than accept that no one is coming to give us relief

Gee kindly Doctor Fauci
Do you remember?
The good old days
A sentimental sort -
I was thinking back with nostalgia
Remembering the second wave
Back then vaccines were coming
We really thought that we might be winning
Ah well, reality will always prevail over wishful thinking

Gee kindly Dr Fauci please put the issue to bed
They've been saying for years now that the pandemic is over
Repeating it and shouting it increasingly louder
This may be the case, but hear me out instead
Was it Keynes, that prescient one, who once said
In the long run we are all dead

Gee kindly Dr Fauci
What's really in a name?
Is naming destiny?
Or is it simply easier to blame?
In math class, they taught us about irrational numbers
Yet they won't name any new variant Pi
Hmm, makes you wonder
Those three musketeers of fate again:
Irony, infamy and goddamn lies

Gee kindly Dr Fauci I think it was Belloc who once said
Apropos irony, that altogether sublime form of jest,
That it was in the nature of irony
That it should avenge the truth
But there's no consolation as yet
The cowboy never came to save America
They say that he died in his boots

Dear kindly Dr Fauci I confess that I rather miss the joys of indoor dining
And movies, and nightclubs, and the fun of entertaining
It's a bit like swallowing a bitter pill
A part of my life sadly forsaken for fear of falling ill
Instead, prudence, it's takeout and Netflix and Chill

Gee kindly Doctor Fauci, consider a play in two acts
For, in this day and age, we need some relief
Between an audience and writer there exists a kind of pact:
The suspension of disbelief
Between a population and a virus there is a matter of fact:
The immutability of the laws of grief

Dear kindly Doctor Fauci please give me a break
After seventy stanzas I thought this must be a mistake
That our conversations were surely complete
Instead, I've had to admit a miserable defeat
And call you up for yet another consultation
For this pandemic shows no sign of ending...

Soundtrack for this note

A few playlists that the good doctor and I have enjoyed over the pandemic

• The Grand Reopening of Texas, a playlist (spotify version)
• Herd Immunity, a playlist (spotify version)

...

See previous consultations with Doctor Fauci:

• The Grand Reopening of Texas
• Gee Doctor Fauci (Remixed)
• Telemedicine Consultation
• Gee Doctor Fauci (Revisited)

This lament with the good doctor is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: humour, satire, culture, observation, coronavirus, pandemic, politics, rogues, public health, policy, strategy, hatchet job, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log: February 16, 2024

Brow of Discernment

The kind of man that says unexceptionable and significations without irony
His every pronouncement comes weighted with ballast and profundity
The stylized pomp is deadly earnest and has no end
Behold, in its full glory, the brow of discernment

The arc of his thought, it is said, bends toward the contrarian
Witness his long-standing battle against the conventional wisdom
Very important this man, and altogether immune from mistakes
Forget the previous discourse, here comes the definitive take

Dizzying opinions fervently held to all appearances
Beneath a surface layer of puffery and self importance
Self identifying as a public servant of mankind
Truth be told, he is a legend in his own mind

Much like his peers, say, the mustache of understanding
And erstwhile nemesis, the bow tie of fulsome waxing
A mouthpiece to righteous blather,
   ever prone to attacking cartoon villains
Sample accusation: unlike him,
   "no one is thinking about the children"

Aspirations of grandeur,
   capital's spokesman-in-chief
Empire's useful idiot,
   providing oligarchs comic relief
Forever flirting with the masters of the universe
Still there's something staid about him,
   he's cool's dour obverse

Paradoxically, one can point to
   a thin veneer of past competence
Before the turn to punditry,
   there were some tangible achievements
But hubris is all these days,
  riding high, he's nigh invincible
Try to pin him down though,
   you won't find a guiding principle

His stock-in-trade is outrage,
   yet he's always on the side of angels
Labels galore in his arsenal,
   he knows how to turn the tables
Throughout, he's surprisingly adept
   at knowing where the money is flowing
Mind you, he always checks first
   to see which way the wind is blowing

Backslapping repartee as befits the unctuous
His prose style never varies from the oleaginous
His days of punditry rather embody the savior complex
But when caught out, his words were "taken out of context"

Observe well,
   his penchant for bonhomie and folk wisdom is rather notable
With his idiosyncratic way with the mixed metaphor,
   he remains ever quotable
"Rising empires never sleep on blankets
   forged in the fires of benign neglect"
Car crashes have been caused
   while trying to decipher his arch concepts

Humanity is always on the precipice,
   society is always at the crossroads
Norm policing is his business,
   he's prone to pearl clutching episodes
So quick to assume the pose of the supercilious
Even as he proudly wears the badge of the incurious

After prefacing his remarks with a counterintuitive statement
Comes a nod, that's when you'll find him fully in his element
His favored weapon finally ready for deployment
Raised and furrowed, the brow of discernment

Puff, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Self regard is everything. (spotify version)

• He's Misstra Know-It-All by Stevie Wonder
• Talking Loud and Saying Nothing by James Brown
• Legend in his own Mind by Gil Scott-Heron

See previously: A Taxonomy of Useful Idiots

File under: humour, satire, hatchet job, culture, observation, perception, rogues, useful idiots, gremlins, parasites, opportunists, ignorance, shell game, Buyer's Remorse, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: March 24, 2022

Operation Urgent Fury

Barracks
Truck bombings
Bad optics

Casualties
In a foreign land
French and American marines

Contingency plans
Swift change of the narrative
Operation Urgent Fury

Small island, little scrutiny
Marxist Bishop, revolutionaries
"Visit America before America visits you"

Structural adjustments
Our sphere of influence
Washington consensus

Destabilization strategy
Of brutal leftist thugs
A base for aggression

Scripts readied
Protection of the free world
Prime time address

Rollback of influence
Strategic vision of democracy
Liberation, security in our hemisphere

This is a dangerous situation
The threat posed to our nationals
For their safety is paramount

We decided on preventive action
Moving forward to restore freedom
And bring about regime change

Rapid troop deployment
Our special forces
Armed intervention

Simply responding to an appeal
A formal request for aid
This morning's invasion



After Grenada, 1983

Soundtrack for this note

• B movie by Gil Scott Heron

See also: Excellent Discussions


File under: culture, observation, perception, rogues, USA, war, blood, imperialism, politics, Reagan, policy, strategy, Grenada, language, cold war, Great Game, hatchet job, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 4, 2022