Resistance can come in the form of simply not doing something–and not making too much of not doing it.
Genocide is genocide (VIII)
Genocide is genocide (VII)
All of our festivities or events or gatherings should at the very least remark on the genocide before commencing or at some point of the occasion, or the occasion becomes grotesque.
Genocide is genocide (VI)
I am starting to feel about the world the way I have felt when my friends committed suicide: that I could have done something more, that I should have listened more, that I should have engaged with them when they cried out for it, whether quietly or loudly.
Genocide is genocide (V)
The prized groups of ethno-states and white supremacist states are not truly prized, but rather kept alive and kept flourishing to prove a point, i.e. to demonstrate power.
Genocide is genocide (IV)
Nation-states are now unabashedly showing themselves as what they have always been: killers, or accomplices to killers, or victims of killers on their way to sharing in the killing.
Genocide is genocide (III)
Alongside the horror of genocide is an equal or greater horror: the horror of our powerlessness to stop it.
Genocide is genocide (II)
My friends want to gather around beer mugs and bags of drugs to take it easy. To lighten the load–of livestreamed genocide. I cannot help but join them once in a while, if for nothing else than to–qualify the occasion.
Genocide is genocide (I)
Genocide is genocide. I spent too long trying to get to the bottom of things human and things not human. Now, when human beings have hit a bottom so bottomless even terror is not appropriate, I find myself speechless, dumb. I can no longer muster the strength to utter a single meaningful phrase to my friends or to strangers, as the being to whom meaning matters, means anything, is being wasted before our staring eyes without so much as a word, at least not a meaningful, that is effective, word. If with a word, then without an ear. If with an ear, then it is an ear incapable of anything that could be called hearing, an ear incapable of hearing even the most basic cry, the cry of the child.
State of Palestine Addresses the United Nations
They wanted to know what it was like
They wanted to know what it was like
To be human, how much we made up
And how much was genuine.
They wanted to know whether perhaps
We made up everything,
Our sorrows, our loves,
Even the inevitability of death.
Life in its everyday
What it’s like to take your choppy breath,
That they wanted to know.
Or how long it takes you
To get to the bank from the house
Walking, or taking the bicycle,
Or driving some motor vehicle.
Why would someone lie about
Such trifling things?
What would be the point of that?
To think we traveled
Past our own long lives,
Generations gave themselves
To the black and the fire to learn of you!
This one complained after learning
Humans lie, are forced to lie
About even the smallest things!
Another thought he had the way
To something true,
And asked the earthling the color
Of the vaulting thing he had come from.
Blue, the funny looking being said
With utter confidence, bringing others
From every corner of the planet to confirm.
And in a thousand tongues
They said blue or a word like blue,
Whatever disputes there were
Seemed absurd and were short-lived.
If the visitors could have shaken their heads,
If every movement of theirs wasn’t like liquid
Shifting from one place to another at a tremble:
They shook their heads at the cackling planet
And boarded their ships like water bottles
And shot up into the air without a sound of parting.
God write now
What would God have me write now?
That I am alone, still alone, forever, eternally alone.
What would God have to say to that?
That I am partially right, but utterly wrong.
Why would God have been so equivocal?
Because God lives, and all that lives is equivocal.
How is God alive, who is this God?
By being the life of all that lives, God is the living God.
Where is God now?
Alive, somewhere--hidden--living.
Be like Thomas
Be like Thomas, and don’t just throw yourself into anything until you are able to put your fingers into its flesh.
An inhuman fate
An inhuman fate. The philosopher is not condemned to be free, as Sartre said of human existence; he is rather condemned to be a student, condemned–to learn, at whatever cost to him.
Genius of survival
Let us not forget the specific power of an addict who is able to pull off being an addict, and this to the maximum: he or she, more than any other in existence or conceivable, is a genius of survival.
Such a Show
Who asked you to go on
And give such a show
And bow
And draw the curtain?
No one was there, watching
Anyhow, how I can tell you
Is I heard of how it went:
What a flop it was.
Now, you want to know for certain
Whether there’s anyone watching?
Well, I wouldn’t have built the stage
The way you did, so blocked off.
Neither would I have supplied
Applause on a track on a loop
To play when your piece reaches highs
And lows and ends.
To begin with, I would have turned around,
I wouldn’t have had my back to the crowd,
It seems so ostentatious;
And you could have told it was empty.
Although the curtain was down in front of you,
Through the light you would have been able to tell;
There would have been silhouettes and murmuring
If people were there.
Then you pulled up the curtain
Instead of lowering it, at the end,
When a tear comes to your eye and you wave
And you bow; it must have been embarrassing.
But no one
Harassed you, to begin with,
Into putting on such a show
For any open, absent jaws.
Love the Dust 