haiku 28 Mar 2018

Fearful of shadows
In love with consumer goods
Lonely, lost, and sad

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

on one who

One who hasn’t studied the ill effects of war will gladly resort to it.
One who is ignorant of the lessons of history is bound to repeat past errors.
One who is obsessed with his own ego will serve they who stroke it best.
One who bathes in a torrent of lies will ignore droplets of truth.
One who prefers hatred to compassion represents but a misguided few.
One who stands indebted to shady foreign lenders is in their constant thrall.

As one who knows no scruples, he approves the killing of innocent foreign children to gain fleeting domestic support. False flag attacks are useful to men such as him. Should American soils once again burn, patriots-turned-nationalists will stand by as our few remaining freedoms are stamped finally out.

The ones who came before him at least tried to pretend they weren’t tyrants.

This one revels in it.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

keeping out friends

Every door in this hunting-shack that leads to the outside has a lock; every night, as I practice my tactile awarenesses by stepping gingerly throughout this hovel with the lights off, in pitch-blackness, I activate these locks one after the other, with a few flicks of my fingers locking out the dark, the cold, and all things unforeseeable. And yet, every night, after basking briefly in the fleeting surety of my false security, I laugh out loud at myself for ever having believed such nonsense in the first place.

Locks only keep out friends and people who might desire to enter one's home but who are too nice to smash in one of its windows. Robbers and thieves are not deterred by locks – they never have been; they never will be; and there is nothing one could ever do, short of encasing one's entire home in a shell of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick and never leaving, that would be able to prevent a dedicated and determined person from gaining access to its dusty interior. (I doubt that even such measures would keep out someone with time, a cutting torch, and a pneumatic jackhammer on his side.) Locking one's doors at night is a good idea, especially where I live out in the sticks where there is really no one else around to watch my door or to keep an eye on things regularly; and few insurance companies are likely to compensate for stolen goods if they discover that exterior doors had been left unlocked; for the most part,however, leaving doors unlocked is a sign of one's abiding faith in the goodness of mankind, a beacon of love to one's neighbors, proof of one's detachment from material goods, and a strong indication of how little value one places on the trappings of the harsh outer world and how greatly one cherishes the tender peace within.

A better writer than I once urged us to invite in anyone who knocks on our doors, to grant entry to any person coming to call – be that person angry or joyful, bearing arms or bringing gifts – into the shadowy recesses of our homes, and, thereby, to allow him to plumb the deepest depths of our buoyant and exuberant souls. I struggle to follow this saying, preferring too often the calm of safety to the excitement of risk, trying too often to erect walls against the messy Great Unknown instead of welcoming it in with open arms. If I have learned anything during the past three-and-a-half decades, however, it is that, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or stop up my ears, the Universe always finds a way to access those areas I would prefer to keep hidden, and to pierce such veils as my ego tells me I need to keep in place. Slowly, then, and only with considerable effort, am I learning to let go of my fears and to drink as deeply as I can of the horrible beauty of this wonderful thing we call life. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on b.i.b.l.e – 2

A month ago, I wrote a piece ridiculing a bumper-sticker that read: B.I.B.L.E. – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Upon further consideration, the Christian bible does in fact contain a few passages in which the god of the Christian sect, a god called YHWH, spells out in fairly simple tones exactly how people are to comport themselves (if one actually believes that this god dictated to the members of a long-since-vanished desert tribe his outlines for living a good and a virtuous life, which I do not believe). The primary passage is found in a chapter called Leviticus, in what the Christians refers to as their old testament, under heading number 20.

In Leviticus 20, god YHWH (who is supposedly also his own son as well as a spirit known as holy) is said to demand of his followers that they murder homosexuals, people who engage sexually with animals, and those claiming to be mystics or spirit-mediums. The teachings of this bloodthirsty god furthermore demand that his followers slay in public young girls who are found not to be virgins on their wedding night, and that they put to death persons guilty of worshiping idols other than those of the Christian's own triumvirate. YHWH commands this in no uncertain language; this god makes these demands using clear and simple words; these are basic instructions by which the true Christian might prove to the member of his sect that he should survive the forthcoming progroms; they pose a way by which he might prove to his god that he is worthy of going to the sect's Happy Place In The Sky.

Please, believers in YHWH, carry out the clearly worded mandates of your god, and stop standing around bitching and moaning about abortion and the separation of church and state. If you do come at us, however, we rational, open-minded, freedom-loving people shall defend ourselves, our bodies, and our property with terrible purpose, with righteous fury, with passionate rage, and with any and all weapons at our disposal, including yours.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit