Thanks Lizard!

Posted by: beq | Apr 29 2009 11:09 utc | 3

One bright spark in all of this is Craig Murray, who wrote Murder in Samarkand to expose and protest the acceptance of the use of torture there while he was not yet fired as the British Ambassador for doing this. A fine book, a fine honest strong man, and he has suffered for this! At last he has been allowed to testify about torture, in the UK, and did yesterday. A link to this is in
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher said years ago that her government did not want any info got from torture…

Posted by: lambent1 | Apr 29 2009 11:42 utc | 5

thanks b for front paging this, and thanks y’all for the comments. putting together a few rhyming verses doesn’t go far in alleviating the guilt and disgust i feel, but i guess it’s better than total impotence.
there is simply no denying what this nation has become.

Posted by: Lizard | Apr 29 2009 15:54 utc | 7

lizard, thanks for your poem & i would like to respond to it with a poem, a poem written nearly thirty years ago in australia about a small town. a small town where the everyday inequalities often led to death. a city of churches where the brutality of the state was as casual as their caresses. the alan i dedicate the poem to is an aboriginal boxer (golden gloves) who was my teacher & friend. he was murdered in the police cells where they sd it was a suicide by ruptured spleen. he was a glorious man, teacher & friend. 30 years later i still miss him. the person in a freezer was my lawyer – a man who had been a fittter & turner on the docks & who had by an incredible diligence become the most feared lawyer for power in that town – he was once asked by a judge whether he had read the trial transcripts & he responded with “no, its much too boring i have been reading pliny” – tho he once gave me a clap around the ears for behaving like an undergraduate – he was one of those exemplary men it is easy to fall in love with – he too was murdered by the police tho another man was charged in one of the most fictitious cases that must have ever graced australian law
when i speak of the police cells of ceduna – as hellish as any in america – i aam speaking of the massacre of aboriginals in what was called in a royal commission on deaths in custody. here where homicide mixed with negligence & was very, very clear – no one was charged & the many many aboriginal boys & men who had died in police custody were again given no justice. on the contrary from what i read online — it is still customary to kill these boys & men. australia was then & is now a deeply racist country tho it hides behind a softporn veneer of cultured christianity. it is, in essence, repellant
the darlingotn i speak of – is a moment when during a public reading in a hall i sd i would not read while those ‘cunts’ were in the hall, a little later i was taken in the street & went through a night of brutality that has never been forgotten where for hours on end i was taken within an inch of my life. because they underestimated me – they charged me with multiple assaults against them but because i lived with a doctor – she had everything photograph, my lawyer took evidence – we countercharged because the leader of the massive brutality against my body & spirit was a part of what they called star force – an anti riot & specifically anti aboriginal group within the police force. it ended after almost daily stops by the police & searches etc – with both sides dropping the charges. my lawyer wanted to go full steam ahead but it was i who lived on the streets & it was i who had been consistently a victim of their corrupt practices & so i told my lawyer in a walk on the beach that i would let it go. it was not the first time i had been brutalised & it wouldn’t be the last but it was so excessive i know i saw the soul of how men can torture other men
i thought this poem was lost to me but it was given to me in an email pnly this week by an old collaborator who had found it amongst his papers. it is a crude poem but i iam proud of it, all the same
adelaide city of th quiet night & slow murder (for alan)
adelaide city of th quiet night & slow murder
how do you carve your name you cut yourself clumsily
seperate from edges of daytoday horror & call it grace
when can i wake in th morning
& not have to go to sleep forgetting
five year old girls battered & raped
in your beds & holy baths when can i forget
th blood that flows so easily
into your hands pale now from th abrasion of loss when
can i open th paper forget that cops killed duncan
& go on killing when can i hide from knowledge
of a friend left in a freezer to expose your coldness when
can my sweetangel boxer be redeemed from you fists
in th haunted cells of port adelaide & call that suicide
( i bury my head into my fist & let th vast rain
of my holy tears melt into my skin & and i bash th wall
forgetting you) & th burden of an epoch recreating good
& evil in police cells at ceduna this is no lament
death does not dance after death death gives birth to death
when will i forget being bashed at darlington
issued with seventeen bruises & abrasions run home to mama & ask why
when can i open th papers & not seee names i shall never forget
you are not chile you are not south africa you are not even new york
yet each year i do a body count you are a city that has lost faith
you are a city that ejaculates belief like a drunk husband
spreading semen on his daughters pajamas you are a city
where soft walls of th church
sepulchrally lays in my hand & boonger i want your warm fist
to pound me in th face & wake me up & wake me up

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 29 2009 17:03 utc | 9

Thank you Lizard for the poem, and for the pleasure of seeing the burgeoning growth of your powerful clarions!

Posted by: lambent1 | Apr 29 2009 18:08 utc | 11

r’giap…so many aboriginal ‘suicide’ hangins in those aussie jails, the preferred method. ruptured spleen? yeah, maybe he was ‘special’ to the murderers.

Posted by: annie | Apr 30 2009 2:29 utc | 13