HOWL FOR THE OWL

by George Salamon

The survival of one owl species hinges on the demise of another. That’s what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argues in its proposal to allow the agency to shoot hundreds of thousands of barred owls (above) over the next 30 years in West Coast forests. The service says the barred owl, which is not native to the region, is crowding out the spotted owl, a close genetic relative… Human influence—as European settlers spread west—likely caused the barred owl to colonize the Pacific Northwest. Now, the proposal raises questions about how far people should go to save a species and the costs of righting a historic ecological wrong. —NBC News, December 25, 2023 

When the first owl flew

into our world it was at

noon, as the sun blinded

human vision to the world's

horrors, but the wise owl saw

the horrors of yesterday, and

those of tomorrow.

George Salamon thinks he understands why owls don't hang out much in the metropolitan St. Louis (MO) area.

BYE, BYE, HOMO SAPIENS… WE HARDLY KNEW YA

by George Salamon

“‘All the cemeteries are full': Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza.” —Reuters, November 22, 2023

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." —John Donne, Meditation 17, 1623

On the pile of rubble

the wailing of a mother

means nothing.

On the broken street

the raised fist of a father,

nothing.

The weeping of entire

populations on both sides,

nothing.

The killing of the air,

the end of our oceans,

nothing

In times of exhaustion

and nihilism, values

have vanished and we

are turning into machines,

surviving to function, not

to live.

George Salamon thinks the lords of Silicon Valley have,  million clicks after millions of more clicks, succeeded into turning most of our minds and hearts into file clerks and bean counters.

DISPLACED PERSONS

by George Salamon

“Israel-Hamas war said to have… displaced 70% of [Gaza’s] population in a month.” —CBS News, November 7, 2023

The DPs fleeing Gaza remind me of those I saw in the hall of a Swiss railroad station after the end of World War Two—Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, slave laborers from German war industries, resistance fighters from occupied countries… all had been waiting in DP camps in Germany, rounded up for "their own good," still not free men and women, still "inmates," still not possessing any rights, legal or human until the Red Cross and other aid organizations could open doors for "repatriation" to their old homelands or transportation to their new ones—their bodies pressed against each other, the faces of the men pale and gaunt, their eyes staring into a middle distance, the women clutching babies, their hair flapping around their heads, the hall reeking of hunger, sickness and yearning. When their eyes met they shuddered, stood there, unable to embrace each other. It is more than bodies that are displaced.

George Salamon did not know he was a refugee or "displaced person" when he, three years old, and his parents escaped one night in the fall of 1938 from Austria to Switzerland. He now lives in St.Louis, MO.

THE FALLEN WARRIOR OF JIHAD AND ZIONISM

by George Salamon

"To understand the Israel-Hamas war, you have to understand how we got here." —Vox, October 19, 2023

Historian Rashid Khalidi: Palestinians “Living Under Incredible Oppression, … It Had to Explode” —Democracy Now, October 9, 2023

“The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Atlantic,  October 27, 2023

His corpse lies all over town,

in all streets, all courtyards,

all rooms

drained out from his blood.

Air raid sirens yawn aloud

and roar, boom a

hollow scream

all over village or city.

A shimmer of light falls on

the corpse, bounces off his

glassy teeth and a smile

forms around his lips.

George Salamon talked years ago to a young Palestinian recently released from an Israeli prison for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. "I just want to have a life," he said.  I wonder if he is among the fallen now. Also years ago a "revisionist" Israeli historian said "there is sympathy for both sides." All sides have failed the "Holy Land," and it is now a Bloodland.

RED BLOOD OF HUMANS

by George Salamon

Icarius (Diomedes Wounding Aphrodite When She Tries To Recover The Body Of Aeneas) by Arthur Heinrich Wilhelm Fitger via wikigallery.

"Israeli-Hamas war death toll nears 1,500..." CBS News, October 9, 2023

Red hot blood of old men,

red hot blood of toddlers,

red hot blood of grandmas,

red hot blood of soldiers,

red hot blood of musicians,

we spill you in Israel and we

spill you in Gaza, we spill you

in Ukraine and Russia while

they're counting the corpses

and wait until they reach the

numbers when the world's

institutions urge  an end

to bloodshed  and demand

return to the old status quo.

There's no elixir for bloodlust,

there's no drug to cure madness,

there's no vaccine to calm the

fever of death and destruction.

We never conquered humanity's

cruel face, its heart's hungry

gorge, the human form of its

terror.

We heard answers, but watched

as the messengers died on the

cross, by fire or by bullet, we are

left alone by and to ourselves.

Nothing is more terrifying in a

soul-less and bleeding world.

George Salamon was born in Vienna in 1934, as Communists and Fascists were shooting at each other in low-income housing areas. The Holocaust was a decade later, the Israeli-Arab wars of "annihilation" followed, then the bloody wars in Asia and Africa for wealth and economic "supremacy," and the endless Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed and terror for ownership of the "Holy Land." The carousel is still spinning.

CHANNELING CASSANDRA

by George Salamon

The Daily Tar Heel, August 30, 2023

All values are fleeing,

there's no home for

them in a world run 

by power and money.

Only one principle

remains to which we

owe loyalty, the cry

for help, screamed

or whispered.

If we give aid, arrival

of our downfall may be

delayed.

George Salamon channels Cassandra only once in a while; doing it too often would be too depressing.

LET PEACOCKS BE PEACOCKS

by George Salamon

"The birds are breeding and running amok in Pinecrest, Fla. The village will test a novel solution to rein them in: peacock vasectomies." —The New York Times, August 9, 2023

It's not just novel; it's

cruel and unusual.

but who will take the

case for the birds all

the way to SCOTUS?

The procedure will be

done without peacock

consent and snip the

honesty of their promise

to beget by displaying

beautiful plumage freely

and proudly. Now falsely.

The male peacock is a 

a born polygamist "bona

fide" as the vet who'll do

the snipping admits, so I  

say: 

No consent, no vasectomy,

Let Peacocks be Peacocks!

George Salamon expects Yankee ingenuity, even way down South, could find a better solution for the problem in Pinecrest, Fla.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

by George Salamon

Nette Reed checks on Desi Hurd, 62, near the Human Services Campus in Phoenix, where there are several major shelters, a medical center and respite centers. (Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post)

"The lie has become the order of the world.” Josef K. in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial

"More people in the country's biggest cities were becoming homeless, more were living outside instead of in shelters, and a record number of people from LosAngeles to Denver to  New York were dying in premature and preventable ways on the street." —The New York Times, May 13, 2023

“Nearly a quarter of a million people 55 or older are estimated by the government to have been homeless in the United States during at least part of 2019, the most recent reliable federal count available.” —The Washington Post, May 22, 2023

Josef K. uttered the lesson he learned

as he was about to die, the lesson our

homeless have not yet fully grasped:

they, like Josef K., have no right to live

because they are abandoned and weak.

George Salamon thinks most of our politicians are not eager to deal with homelessness (or poverty) because their sponsors would tell them they're wasting their money, while it's OK to throw money to the Military-Industrial Complex because it does its money-wasting for a Strong America.

MAY 6, 2023: A DAY TO REMEMBER

by George Salamon

"Saturday is a tea party for a country that sorely needs it…"

—MP David Lammy, The New York Times, May 4, 2023

It also is the day

on which yesterday

became tomorrow.

George Salamon says cheers and good luck to the people of the United Kingdom.

THE TERRORIST

by George Salamon

Rahul Gandhi delivered a lecture at Cambridge University [February 28, 2023] on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century.” Recounting how the yatra [the march he recently led through India] changed him, Gandhi said the interactions with the people who held his hand during the yatra trusting him as a brother and confided in him changed him as a politician, his perspective. As the yatra entered Kashmir, Gandhi said, "As I was walking, a guy came up and showed me a few men standing nearby. He told me they are militants. I thought I was in trouble because in that situation militants would kill me. But they did not do anything because this is the power of listening.” —Hindustan Times, March 3, 2023

Can anyone ever reach you?

Would we have to dissolve

into the white hot fire inside

of you to see you?

Would you talk with us then,

touching the rivers of fire

cooling in our own blood 

so we too become weightless

like you, no longer capable of

joy or grief, and rise for the

journey that unbinds us and

knows of no return?

Most of us remain weighed 

down, unable or unwilling to

submit to the exuberance of

terror that nothing can appease.

Terrorism is not merely an act

of terror, but also one of

nihilism

Its fire burns all—motivation,

victim and terrorist.

George Salamon recalls reading Hermann Rauschning's 1939 book TheRevolution of Nihilism meant as a warning by depicting Hitler's National Socialism as, at least in part, a "revolution of nihilism," a pact between leader and people for destruction and self-destruction. 

BLAZING SLIPPERS

by George Salamon

The choreographer Marco Goecke with his dog 'Gustav' in a photograph from his Instagram account.

Marco Goecke has been suspended from his position as ballet director at Hanover’s main opera house after he smeared excrement on a critic’s face." —The New York Times, February 13, 2023

High culture's going

to the dogs, to the

dachshunds in Germany

this time, where once the

learned scholars

marched step in step with

thugs in brown shirts.

Vulgarity can still be bracing

or honest, at its most violent

expression it often swings

from rhetorical bullshit 

to the berserk Bolshoi 

acted out in Hanover.

George Salamon thinks Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest movies ever made. The real violence on the Frontier was not too funny, perhaps only to those who conquered it by the gun.

THE SHOW-ME STATE GOES ROGUE

by George Salamon

"In Missouri, a new state law that took effect on 1 January makes it a crime for any person to sleep on state property. For unhoused people, sleeping in public parks or under city highways could mean up to $750 in fines or 15 days in prison for multiple offenses." —The Guardian, January 5, 2023. Photo: An unhoused person in Los Angeles. Photograph: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Homelessness is a crime

in the state of Missouri,

where sleeping on the 

street is not punishment 

enough for so capital a sin 

by those who belong in a

loony bin for the criminally

cruel and heartless, claiming

the voices in their heads

are those of God or Jesus,

without even being facetious.

George Salamon thinks he sees where this is going. As Richard T. Evans pointed out in The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History (1988): "The Nazis planned their first big round-up of the homeless as soon as they came to power."

OLD MAN IN WINTER

by George Salamon

CBS News Sacramento

You live long enough

you're no longer afraid

of death, but of what

life can still do to you.

George Salamon lives in St. Louis, MO, and had his 88th birthday in October.  

WHAT MONEY CAN BUY

by George Salamon

US billionaires' demand for 'golden passport' schemes that sell citizenships to 'safe' countries for up to $6.5m including New Zealand and Portugal rockets by 337% in three years as fears of civil unrest spike. —Mail Online, May 7, 2022

Good riddance, and safe trip,

but before abandoning our ship,

make them sign a promissory note

forbidding return to their original boat.

George Salamon looks forward to the inevitable movie version, "Ship of Wealthy Fools," starring celebrities who appear in ads for beachwear.

CHRISTMAS CARD

by George Salamon

We have not yet been touched by

the better angels of our nature,

I hear the music of our time

singing songs of ill will, waging

campaigns of hate, shouting

murderous chants, but few

angels singing.

Let us wake them up and let

them sing of peace and good

will and join them by sharing

fruitcake and gingerbread

by the same tree in the

spirit that  has been fleeing

from our land.

George Salamon hopes those better angels will touch America on both sides of the many-sided divide that has settled upon our lives.

THANKSGIVING ON MY MIND

by George Salamon

Digital Painting of an old woman’s hands by Victoria Castro.

I confronted my fondest memory of Thanksgiving,

not long ago, as the oven door was opened to baste

the turkey with yet another coating of bubbly pan

juice, that was to make the meat more tender, when

I heard the scratching of Cleo's paw at the kitchen 

door shut to her, Cleo the golden retriever who knew

what she smelled and what she wanted, while the

humans were told not to didscuss the important things

they cared about—politics and race, the economy 

and money, having it all or having nothing at all, the

state of the union and the abuse of the environment—

while the word important made my skin crawl I

thought of Cleo's paw and glanced over to the old

grandma, eyes shut and the sensitivity in her lapped

leathery hands, that feeling in the tips of her fingers

for all living things and understood the paw and her

fingers mattered and counted, and the rest belonged

with all that stuff we sought and still seek at the mall.

George Salamon is fond of the German word Fingerspitzengefuehl—the feeling at the tips of your fingers. It seems to him that we will lose it completely with all that clicking on the computer and smart phone. Have a lovely Thanksgiving weekend —anyway.

PANDEMIC ON MY MIND

by George Salamon

In my head nobody

knows anybody else,

men and women come

and go from long ago

and far away, but don't

say where they're going.

George Salamon had his two jabs and the booster shot in St. Louis MO where people ask each other which high school they attended, pandemic or no pandemic. He does not know if that is a good or bad thing.

ANOTHER LESSON FROM AFGHANISTAN

by George Salamon

“The United States could have left Afghanistan in the hands of a new generation, not the Taliban. But they didn’t invest enough in strengthening institutions and empowering new generations in urban areas who really wanted to rebuild the country and take over the reins. In 20 years, you could have transformed Afghanistan and that generation.” Journalist Adriana Carranca to Isabela Dias, Mother Jones, August 20, 2021. Photo: Gozargah school in Kabul in 2008. Courtesy of Adriana Carranca via Mother Jones.

As the sun sets on

yet  another place 

sought for America's

empire, one thing we

did not sell successfully

was democracy, the other

thing we couldn't buy

triumphantly was peace.

George Salamon thinks America has not yet stsarted learning from history, its own and that of other countries and peoples. George lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

BEFORE EARTH IS LOST

by George Salamon

“In Conclusion” by Peter Kuper at The Nib

"Humans have become as great an influence on the planet as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," Anthony Barnosky, Stanford University biologist, quoted in The New York Times, July 30, 2021

Paradise was lost long ago,

now it's the turn of Earth,

where humans have assumed

privileges and rights for themselves:

this island belongs to us, one

nation claims, another the right

to inhabit space.

We're mammals, denying the

prehistory of our origins, the

story of how our ancestors

turned the earth's jungles into

today's fortress of machine

and stone.

We've moved too quickly past

the awe for earth's order, left

behind in the wild, playful

nature of the child, now that 

we are beginning to feel the

coming storm.

George Salamon lives and waits, hoping for the best, in St. Louis, MO.

CAN YOU TELL ME?

by George Salamon

As a tribute to the first responders, victims and families of those missing in the partial condo collapse, Miami Beach announced Thursday it will replace its originally planned fireworks celebration with a moment for residents to “shine a light in a symbolic gesture of unity,” according to a city press release. ... Miami Beach residents will have the option to mark Independence Day in a way that may feel more reflective of the ongoing tragedy and families’ grief and hope. —Miami Herald, July 2, 2021

Digging into the smoldering

ruins, looking for lost people,

their ashes have drifted into

the crushing water by now,

the rescuers are seeking

shadows, do their souls

enter the spirit of our

language, will we hear

them inside any thought

we utter?

George Salamon survives in St. Louis, MO and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, and The New Verse News.