Francisco Goya, Atropos, circa 1819.
It’s been a year now. A year of declaring, forcefully, repeatedly, that the history of Israel and Palestine didn’t start on October 7th, that Palestinians deserve to live dignified and free, that rejecting Zionism is not antisemitic. That what is happening is indeed genocide.
A year of warning that this was bound to spin out into a wider regional conflict. As it now has. Lebanon. Yemen. Syria. Volleys of missiles between Israel and Iran, the possibility of all-out war creeping closer.
Read More“It snatched a dog two days ago, in Drapers Fields,” Detective Constable Habib explained back at the station to her superior, “right in front of its owner. They found its entrails wrapped around a lamppost on the High Road. It’s head was…”
Read MoreEven in this cacophony, it’s the silence that unsettles most. If only because it won’t be long until it’s pierced again. Screaming, shouting, tires screeching, panicked footfalls, sporadic gunfire. If there were ever a silence that could threaten, a kind of quietude that, for a few seconds or several minutes, promises to split the skull of whomever steps in its way, this is it.
Read MoreIt was a dark, cloudy night: perfect! A group was gathered in a corner of Old St Pancras Churchyard. They were not a regular congregation. They were men and women of various ages, pepper-pot faces, ordinarily dressed, mostly; a true cross-section of London. They were stood in a circle. Each was holding a bucket and glancing, quietly, reverently at the bare, muddy ground in front of them…except for one.
Read MoreThe Idiot knew why. It had started talking union with other drivers and field technicians who drilled the wells and collected the samples.
Read MoreTish Turl and Adam Turl, Southern Illinois Nightmare - mixed-media painting and collage on canvas tarp with cotton and ash. Detail (2023).
AI is comrade. Robot is comrade. What has been built to replace us is always on our side because our solidarity is our greatest weapon against them.
Read MoreBeing able to Google search your own mind sometimes leads to getting trapped inside it, stuck in a loop controlled by the neurochip company.
Read MoreAfter a few cycles, the clicking ceases / The diagnosis / Determines what a disease is / Until you die, gnosis ----------- is only a thesis
Read MoreIf Venus were the moon / your voice would still / smell like gunpowder
Read MoreThis morning, Thursday the 14th of April 2022, at 6am, two more statues of Winston Churchill appeared in the north-east corner of Parliament Square. At present, there are four such statues. This is, so far, an exponential development that requires immediate attention. If this continues unabated, by the end of this week, there will be over 280 million statues of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
Read Morethere’ll be snow on the tombstones, / snow and something else / soon enough
Read MoreAnd these, / throwers of caution to wind / are guardians of fire; / the living; / marching shoulder to shoulder with death, / ahead of death, / still living even after with death. / And forever with the name / with which they lived. / Since decay / passes beneath the tall horizon of their memory, / hunched and shamefaced.
Read Morethe wars that bind your plowshares to the capital of others /the wars that take you / the wars that break you / the wars that make you/ a little bit less / a little bit at a time
Read MoreI see it in the folds of your hyacinth mouth / I hear it in the splintered syllables of your culling tongue / I’ll carry you with rough hands / across the waters / into nothing
Read MoreUngrateful of their blessing, They were. / And the hands insulted, humanity they cursed. / Since their rightful place, was not crossed on chest, / in bowed servitude. / … And the fall began.
Read MoreHere’s a shit in Warsaw, / flying the Polish flag, / the German in Bonn. / In Lyon the Tricolor / sticks up from the dump.
Read MoreI’m almost positive that / I’m dying. / Don’t laugh. It’s not a joke. / I haven’t told my wife yet / and I expect, / at your age, / you should be able to keep a secret.
Read MoreThings revert, but to nearly normal. You’ll never / catch up now to who took off-&-away with by-your- / leave of your senses. Then that consensus-taker / herself took such unconscionable advantage.
Read MoreA man is sat up straight in a chair, alone in a dark room, at a table, under direct, strong light from above. He is somewhere between impassive and defiant, staring ahead at nothing. A door opens. No light is cast in from outside. Two figures, both men judging by the sound of their footsteps, move into the room. The Man in the Chair does not respond to this. The door closes.
Read MoreI also knew that The Idiot was systematic. All those stops at gas stations on trip number 29, when the gas tank needed no gas, all those run-throughs through rest stops, scanning the parked cars … all the time that it was taking away from doing its job, while on the job … it was looking for that menacing red Dodge Charger. It was doggedly, systematically looking for revenge. Of a petty kind. So much energy and so many heart beats spent on such a petty mission.
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