Desicritics Author: david raphael israel

Poetry: At Nam Viet Pho 79: Dining Alone, I Browse the Paper

david raphael israel — Sat, 4 Nov 2006 12:42:38 EST

As a special treat I've ordered Pho Seafood tonight
awaiting my bowl I glance at the newspaper headlines
if marine biologists really have got things right
the bowl of the ocean is facing a treacherous deadline
the sea after all is source of an ancient breadline
the fisherman stands at its window beaming and bright
every day for a million years on these loaves he's fed fine
as a special treat I've ordered Pho Seafood tonight

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An international group of ecologists and economists warned yesterday that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, based on a four-year study of catch data and the effects of fisheries collapses... World's Fish Supply Running Out, Researchers Warn

Poetry: Shashi Tharoor Bows Out - UN's Loss, Fiction's Gain

david raphael israel — Tue, 3 Oct 2006 13:03:35 EDT

Whereas Shashi was shushed it's a shame
worldly facts have their wax and their wane
thus Ki-Moon gets the chair while Tharoor
wanders freely in fiction again

India's nominee Shashi Tharoor has pulled out of the race for the post of the next UN Secretary General.

Senate Passes Detainee Bill - The Military Commissions Act of 2006 - "American Shame"

david raphael israel — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:45:01 EDT

This is a day and time of American shame
the monster we decry we must not mimic
when fast and loose you play in such a game
the gun of fear is no mere nasty gimmick

the monster we decry we must not mimic
this is a basic principle for the civilized
the gun of fear is no mere nasty gimmick
who'd dream the Magna Carta would be trivialized?

this is a basic principle for the civilized
brutality contradicts our human aim
who'd dream the Magna Carta would be trivialized?
this is a day and time of American shame

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A response to the headline "Senate Passes Detainee Bill Sought by President Bush" (in the New York Times online)

The bill, approved 65 to 34, establishes far-reaching new rules on the treatment of terrorism suspects and is expected to go to the president by week's end.

States have a tendency to slip towards fascism, and it is the watchguards of an independent judiciary and a free media, among others, that prevent this tendency from flowering into the excrescence of full-blown state control. India has experienced the consequences of limitation of judicial overview and rights first-hand. The United States republic may have been fundamentally changed today.

Quisnam vigilo custodiae custodie quisnam vigilo custodiae custodie? (Who watches the guards who watch the guards?)

Dalai Lama Urges Compassion, Love

david raphael israel — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:32:34 EDT

"Dalai Lama Urges Compassion, Love"
the headline reads at 6:00 a.m. it's Monday
there is an earth below and a sky above

the contours of the hand are shown in the glove
he addressed the Denver Pepsi Center on Sunday
"Dalai Lama Urges Compassion, Love"

to fifteen thousand he spoke for an hour of
the value of human tolerance as some say
there is an earth below and a sky above

"I'm a Buddhist monk now becoming a defender of
Islam" he remarked decrying how after that numb day
one September many lost track of compassion and love

"Take care of others, you will benefit. Think only of
yourself, you will lose" seems it was a plum day
as if an earth were below and a sky above

autumn returns toward winter you feel a shove
a week ago human beings remembered a glum day
now "Dalai Lama Urges Compassion, Love"
there is an earth below and a sky above

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The headline and quotations (as found poetry), found here:

Dalai Lama Urges Compassion, Love

"Soon to give birth" - Eli Shafak's Fictional Crime

david raphael israel — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:19:45 EDT

Which is the fiction? the Armenian's words? or Turkishness?
the novelist Elif Shafak is soon to give birth
is memory the crime? or conjecture? heaven or earth?
the trial presents for novelists a murkishness

if punishment follows rhetorical crime I wonder
if reward might likewise dog the heels of sentences
when I say "the sky rained roses today!" repentances
could spring from implicit thorns an obvious blunder!

walk carefully love the hedge of thought is blooming
there's a whisper in the wind and the wall has ears
and the allergy might react to the faint perfuming

that inheres in syntax juries are packed with peers
yet what if the judge has empaneled a fictional dooming?
till the next frame of the cartoon allays your fears

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Response to a news report -- "Turkish Novelist Faces Trial," by Lawrence Van Gelder (New York Times, Sept. 13, 2006). In her new novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, Armenian characters make disparaging comments about Turks and refer to the genocide of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire, a massacre denied by Turkey. She is being charged, she says, for 'words uttered by her fictional characters', apparently a first.

Shefak's bio-note is certainly interesting. Perhaps (as with Rushdie), the opposition will bring her work to heightened international notice. Her first novel written in English, The Saint of Incipient Insanities, was published in the US in 2004.