DEEP SCRATCH

Category: war

  • Heathcote Williams and hard poetic critical trews

    After watching the much hyped latest episode of Question Time i quickly fixed up proper with Heathcote Williams, my new fav. UK poet-rebel. Williams can say in a 3 minute poem what would take a question time guest a decade to communicate (perhaps the comedian could keep up?) further evidence to me that poets hold the key to understanding politics, and Heathcote Williams speaks for Billions of people around the world with his critical prose. Lets hope that more people hear and read him, especially those in the UK.

    I would highly recommend his work titled ‘American Porn’ featuring a prose poem about Alan Turing which i wager contains more information, as Claude Shannon would define it, than the entire new Hollywood movie about Turing. I doubt, for example the movie will include the link with Apple computers, and the current exploitation of foreign labour and the need for suicide nets at some Apple workcamps, which in the capable hands of Heathcote becomes a poetic fact, and in my head yesterday when i heard it for the first time, epiphany.

    http://www.sea-urchin.net/news/heathcote-williams-american-porn-news-2/

    http://youtu.be/x-QqMKdexZA

    Steven James Pratt

  • An ark of sympathy in the new dark age of retribution

    An ark of sympathy in the new dark age of retribution

    (dedicated to all haters, griefers and those full of furious vengence)

    I am against capital punishment, against violent punishment without trial, against the wild west mentality of the vigilante, against taking the law into your own hands like the vigilante from the movie Death Wish, or untold other Hollywood tales of going beyond the law to serve up justice. And lets not think too much about the global death wish mentality of many global militant organizations. Stop! 

    I could not shoot an animal for sport. Yet, under some circumstances, if armed, i might pull the trigger. Place your fictitious ‘what would you do’ scenario here […..]. But, this shoot-to-kill would be a terrifying experience for me and i would regret having to resort to violence, in retrospect. I admit, i may not be able to control myself in some situations, but, situations which i hope i will not have to endure. The opposite feeling to joining the armed forces to fight a war where shooting and bombing to kill are often the drives, both physical and psychological, of the troops.  

    To relish and roll in the stench of death, in the idea of killing another human being, for any crime, never mind such crimes that involve no personal physical harm, seem like a gross misconception and example of supreme ignorance, to me. But these values will eternally change depending upon who decides what is right, where they are, when they are, and under what circumstances. Are you in Gaza, or Glasgow, Syria or London, the arguments will rage on and usually the loudest, angriest and rudest voices will rise in a stale society fascinated by such violence, money bling, gossip gobbage, and an eye-for-an-eye mob rule. Gangster gangster all the way.

    This revenge strategy feels like a return to the dark ages to me, i can imagine angry mobs visiting suspected criminals in a varying array of scenarios, delivering they’re idea of justice with deadly force. No suspended judgement, a clear conscience to kill another human being, or physically injure them, torture, humiliation, public floggings and perhaps a return to public hanging, all this seems good game in the minds of some people. Who knows how many? who cares when its happy hour and the weather is hotter than since records began?

    Friends…i am not trying to persuade you that your vicious revenge and willingness to kill, as punishment for various crimes, is wrong. I wish to point out, first of all that violence breeds violence, anybody can see that the classic mafia type of system of revenge just leads to more misery, loss, death and sadness. While governments and corporations wage war on the vulnerable and the poor, we, the people, squabble and in-fight, a microcosm of the problem, greed and physical might against intelligence and rational thought, sympathy, compassion, humanitas, for crying out loud! Secondly, violence is psychically self-defeating, the game of life, the will to life, the meaning in a very general sense is to expand the psyche, to love, explore, perform by example.

    How easy and predictable the calls for killing and death to the scumbags, compared with arguments for some kind of life sparing alternative, a trial perhaps, or maybe a willingness to listen to them, sympathetically, to begin communication for rehabilitation? Difficult i know, but achieved by billions of people every day, the masses of the people on planet earth are not killing one another. A small minority of soldiers, terrorists, murderers and their backers, do the killing.

    In my limited experience, the majority of thinking humans on earth oppose war, and violence, especially if they have ever been in the thick of it themselves, not just spectating from the safety of the screen world and newspeak culture of sleep induced complicity and hypnotic induced apathy. A desensitization to the suffering and general well being of anybody not them, not their own family and relatively tiny, insignificant social circle. Peace comes of communication, killing stops all possible communication, its the ultimate one way directed manifestation of ignorance, total certainty and inhumane action. I am against killing, against death, against violent mob revenge.

    I hope to many of my friends that this seems like restating the obvious, but i have seen an uprising of angry outrage and violent threats toward other people, groups, and nationalities on social networks that blew me away. Unless these people are a surreal league of fuckers just playing around with the language of violent revenge and bloody murder, in a ludicrous synchronized outpouring, i am totally repulsed by this kind of negative vibes and medieval mob mentality.

    Yes, we are all getting bombarded with terrible stories and images and cases of violent crimes, abuses against the vulnerable, economic abuses and local crimes, all mixed up in the painstream media, without much balanced guidance and helpful hints and methods for distinguishing the difference between opinions and humanitarian principles. Do you really wish to reenact these violent episodes in your own neighborhoods, villages and cities?

    x
    Steve fly Pratt

    Steven James Pratt

  • TY is for TRANE YOURSELF. Nov. 2003

    TRANE YOURSELF.
    By Fly Agaric 23.

    Fly: Selected Poetry

    by Steven Pratt

    Link: http://a.co/3of5XFj

    (more…)

  • Freestyle Raps Sun 6th May 2007. Eat me.

    Welcome to my blog, a break in between the supermarket shopping news,
    My views, my writs, raps and thunderclaps, unedited excursions
    Through valleys and down various avenues
    Like that I believe its healthy to have a hierarchy of values
    A spectrum like a rainbow, a selection, an array
    I think about values each moment each second, each day
    What’s important and what comes next
    Have i put the maximum meaning in my text?

    Although metal and organic material
    Can be easily distinguished like the difference between a mushroom and an aerial
    Politics oscillates like a food blender blade, leaving me head in bits
    Left and right wings switch sides when that crazy bird flips
    Without your grounded values laid out on a landscape:
    A Mountain, a crop field and a cooking stove
    Liberty, Justice and Freedom are like wild Starlings
    Twisting, turning, falling and rising
    Poles shift each day, and most political dogma lacks
    A true varied hierarchy

    Of values.
    Ivan the terrible and the Dali Lama
    Mahatma Gandhi and Stalin
    You always need a contrast to make sense fast
    Somethings to refer to, more than one
    Like the 1968 Chicago fiasco or
    The whole Bay of Pigs thing or The British miners thing.

    How many died how many live with the scares
    How can you calculate the amount of people who died in cars
    Going to work? Think i’m bezerk wanting to abolish work?
    Work kills, and work is genocide and factory fascism
    I agree with Bob Black and i too want my Freedom back
    If my body is the earth then i speak for humanity
    I want my freedom back, hey dude where’s MY country

    Who owns the rivers who owns the soil?
    I sit smoking blunts contemplating this huge capitalismicrophone boil
    On the landscape, i escape temporarily into an Autonomous Zone
    Dial up global internet with my phone
    And search through a wide variety of metaphors for
    Mankind and Nature entertwined, a rose in the iron dust?

    A weed growing through a leak in the pavement.
    A ant colony that functions like New World government?
    War, i will be your abolishment.
    What can we learn from Natures ecology management?
    By 4 A.M my minds spent, the roses on my table are loosing their petals
    But still, they provide a contrast against the various metals
    On my desktop tables, a pen, a knife, a gun and a bullet
    Inspiration for blended fables,
    Like flesh and plastic talking through interactive turntables
    Like a sound-wave transforming into neuro-electric impressions
    Like the sun that still can cast the darkest of visions
    Like the signals that consume us coming from outside our televisons
    Kill them! With TELL YR/ VISIONS.

    here then, from my beer pen is my hierarchy of values
    The black and the blues
    Here’s what i think is most relevant today, my views, my news:
    -Transposeons in Biology that link species
    -Quantum insperability principles that link all things
    -Renewal of the natural environment to its healthy balance
    -The end of the means to create war, monopoly.
    -Prove that no one has the right to kill anyone, killing is wrong.

    But a hierarchy of values implies that you choose
    What values go above, below or besides B’side Education
    B’ Side Defense and B’ Side Economic senses
    All ebb and flow
    What comes first, what go? what gives?
    The starving majority or me and my blogs to the Universe?

    I’m playing swingball on the lawn, drink in hand
    There’s a barrage coming from the garage thats the sound of a band
    Prophets hunched around microphones, spitting as the rains come
    Themes of Justice, nature and revolution drift into the garden

    Khemical agents here to dissolve terror and error
    Its simple, just lick me and look in the mirror
    Not the paper, the polished glass crystal spaceship
    Me and you, out on a whim, breaking down the mess we’re in
    TOGETHER

    On the verge of obscenity with an alternative reality
    Sex drugs and revolution, whatever it takes to pull on the breaks
    And change vehicle, we need a miracle, a magical rising
    To dissolve the fakes and feed the fat and greedy bastards their cakes
    Speak out, breathe in, relax to some tracks and crack some four packs
    That’s what it takes, make grape juice of your enemies
    Squirt lemon in the eye of the Bavarian Illuminati,
    Don’t try, do.
    Source out your truth and then spit out your poo

    Worlds ablaze with war machines and metal giants on the march
    Time to straighten out this dirty laundry with exotic salts and starch
    Old guard dinosaurs taking their last breath,
    New flesh cyborgs just becoming inspired
    Fire in the head and the flames spread like FLU to the Kings bed
    Put the lights on red, get out your truck and look up
    Times up, were all HERE already
    And we don’t need your laws no more
    No more laws distributed by santitized tele
    I no longer sleep with my teddy, i don’t need no government to own me
    I diss-own you back, i am expat; and i post and roast your hungry ghost
    Salute – a toast.

    Raise another toast to the end of the word
    The end of imperial rule, a swollen inch with a pinch of pepper
    I’m with the criminal classes, with the heretics, the outcasts
    I’m a loner, anarchist, poet and leaper
    Come step and keep your reppup’
    Hope you get my letter, but the less you read the better
    Maybe the ghosts will gettcha’ like they got me,
    Forever tuned into flies psychic T.V,
    My wireless MP3 tech support cloud that follows me,
    I call it “SHE”
    Because she loves me
    At least Temporarily!

    Swam the sea and now i’m beached up with just a log from a birch tree
    With salted eyes i spies the city through the jungle lozenge
    Steel and glass and concrete, totally alien, totally viral
    Lights, a low hum and pre cooked pre packaged foods, um yum.
    From the ocean to the car park to power stations
    That power nations

    Species integrations limited by the harsh metallic environments
    Even Bees now die off like democracy
    In an upside down Bush/Blair world of disspair
    Don’t…
    Not for those pair, say you don’t care, show some flare
    Make your face bare and stand your place, then move on
    Run your things, ride your truth and raise the roof, write your
    Spoof, be tuff, call out the killers and crooks, don’t buy Nike
    And abstain from Mcfries, Tesco and Starbucks.

    So, i secrete the secret secret into your nickel bucket,
    Give your SUV a soapy wash with a chemical called POSH
    Post Ontological Silicone Heroin,
    The surface contains liquid crystals within
    So the car can play the image on its hood of a dead boy in Iraq
    Next to his toy, OY! what about that boy, what about that girl?
    Wake up and smell the OIL

    Here’s how you get out of a war, breath deeply
    Pull down the all the wall and any boundary
    And pull down
    Trade embargoes
    Pull down thy vanity and gain sanity
    Size up your liberty and compare with celebrity
    Pull all the troops out out of their jobs, turn them into
    Squads of circus performers

    Decommission all your weapons of mass and – less than mass – destruction
    Turn them into rapid food delivery systems
    Catapulting wealth to the poor and those in need of aid
    To end war you must make your enemies friends
    And make communication a priority above all other ends
    Dissolve all the worlds sovereign nations into lessons
    In cooperative global villages, all independently
    Interrelated like an M.C Escher painting

    I can sense authority fainting in the face of a painting
    And the gov is panting, the gov is necromancing
    History of corpses and ghosts dancing
    Whirling through Oxbridge and Yaleard encircling
    Churches
    Disembodied events pitch themselves in History like tents
    Blowing in the WIND –
    Wars end with the end of history. So let it be.
    So said she.

    Brew the new tea to replace T.V
    Helps you see the bomb and the tree equally
    In our hierarchy of anarchy and sarky sparky rhymes to drop in the park
    Tune into dark with a spark a light a flash a new, flesh.

    End of history, the word and all that resembles it.
    Never forget who started the end of the end of it.
    You want to end wars then you must master Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
    Forgive the mistakes i make, but i’m deep in the lake
    Giving to take back the sack with imperial letters of attraction
    And manufacture a crystal structure to remove the hex of tax on a ration
    I keep my mind in traction when i make a financial transaction

    Who distributes it how, who’s moos define the cash cow
    Impeach Bush and Blair for their crimes, today, NOW
    Impeach God and replace the void with new woid,
    Stay cool and calm now, don’t get annoyed
    End wars by being overjoyed in the face of shattered times
    Forgive all the terror and brutality and government crimes
    To End wars start a new, turn your gun barrels into daisy spouts
    And your mortar back to poo.

    Turn your wars to the canvass the page the air if you still must fight
    End wars by converting them into white phosphorus poems
    Blow up your art, kill your characters and take over your gallery
    But End wars which blind and burn and mutilate and really hurt everybody.
    End wars start parties, kiss cuteas and shake booties,
    Build your peace zone and claim the earth temporarily
    Therefore in harmony with change, process and temporality
    Don’t fight gravity, love levity.
    Turn tanks into turntables, secret plans into fictional fables

    To end wars declare peace, its over its over again, its over
    End the pain and spend a thought for those poor slain
    In memory of the lame and sick involved in the thick of it
    End wars by showing that to Kill is to loose,
    You carry that bruise with you, murder is known for eating your brain
    Murder is psychically self defeating, thats why its eating the killer
    Like Hannibal lector.

    End wars by becoming a benefactor of change,
    Be the one to experiment and re arrange the pieces
    Follow the creases and fight the mental diseases that tease us
    Turn banks back into bakeries and put icing on the similarities
    Between bread and bread.

    End war by using your head, end war by staying in bed
    End war by stopping work on the factory floor and together chanting
    No more. Settle the score but not with violence. With L’amour.
    More debate and more alternative models – the cell, the spore.
    Say what are we fighting for, ask this question and STOP war.

    A new hierarchy to combat oligarchy
    To excorcise the demons and end the malarchy
    End the paranoia and the Scanning Darkly, quickly
    Make haste we have so much time to catch, just ahead
    A non-war torn home and a non war torn bed,
    End war and rest your head, raise your hand and voice
    Embrace the not language of Joyce’s and histories dead.
    Gone forever, overruled by a new vision, capable of lifting the veil
    I’ve been following for 10’000 years hot on the veiled trail
    Methodically and carefully like steven the slug or Smith the snail
    End wars and admit the apocalypse, get over it
    Move on.

    Stop wars with your shoes by standing your ground
    Stay around don’t be square, wear flowers in your hair
    Wave your hands in the air like you just stopped an F 16 fighter
    Yeah, switch off the war at the controls,

    In your mind find the blind of ignorance and then open it
    In your heart find the part that is art and just peddle it
    In your friends find the lens to see yourself look at it
    In the dark kind the key to the door and then skip through it
    In your life make the meaning in words that refer to it
    In love find the dove and the peace and commune with it
    In death cherish breath cuz your now here without it
    If your sure look again because there’s reason to doubt it
    If you got a song like this don’t be afraid to spout it
    In this spacial place i guess the ways to face it

    What’s it? Why’s it? Are you it? if its Bullshit?
    Who disperse it, how, are you milking her cash cow?

    Outerspace to find a new place to re create it
    Outside there’s a slide i’ll think i’ll climb and descend it
    Out of time, out of lime, if there’s lemon i’ll squeeze it
    Out on the town with my spiked crown to tease it
    Nowt that you write can ever contain it
    How do you explain it, maintain it, how do you chain it?

    I am it you are it, each and every bit, we fit the same slit
    You are it, that pefect fit, my words your eyes, flies on it
    Talk seems cheap when hiding behind it
    That, them, the thing, the big swindle – a broken spindle, a parasitic nit.

    Black white red yella we gotta get together
    Be a rainbow arching over any bad weather, what infinite ever?
    Sleep on each others wing, as birds of a feather
    The infinite within “IT” also haunts never and whatever.

    Eat me! Lick me.

    Steven James Pratt

  • WG is for WAR GAMES: Do you want to play a game?

    McKittrick: See that sign up here – up here. “Defcon.” That indicates our current defense condition. It should read “Defcon 5,” which means peace. It’s still on 4 because of that little stunt you pulled. Actually, if we hadn’t caught it in time, it might have gone to Defcon 1. You know what that means, David?

    David Lightman: No. What does that mean?

    McKittrick: World War Three.

    Steven James Pratt