THE ENGINE 2

THE ENGINE 2

This is the second editorial of THE ENGINE. In the context of recent events literature has been overshadowed by power politics. After the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre by terrorists America and its now discredited puppet, the Northern Alliance (the former Mojahaden who had fought and defeated the Soviet Union and driven its troops out of Afghanistan) defeated an army of Taleban and Al Quaeda fighters in Afghanistan, establishing a puppet regime. America and its President, George W Bush, is now contemplating new targets in Somalia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other so-called ‘rogue states’ while an international peace keeping force establishes itself in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden (the supposed mastermind behind Al Quaeda) has disappeared, as has Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taleban.

This is a brief narrative of those events that have preoccupied the news programmes and daily newspapers over the last months. In essence, some Arabic men with no biographies killed three or so thousand people, some of whom had biographies, because they were rich, or famous in Western terms. These more or less unknown men have seemingly changed the world, the aircraft industry has been in turmoil, an economic depression which was expected anyway has hit us, and war has spread beyond Afghanistan, de-stabilising Pakistan and India and other countries. The world Capitalist system has been shaken, but in reality what has happened is only a pin prick on the hide of an elephant. The system has stuttered, but has not collapsed.

In essence what is wrong with Capitalism and what is right with the Taleban? Capitalism has followed its onwards and upwards movement with its new project of Globalisation, an anti-Globalisation movement has appeared as a critique, consisting of Anarchists, environmentalists, Greens, former Communists, Socialists, and other members of the Left which had been in seemingly terminal decline since the 1970s. Capitalism, we are told, has won, it is now only important to save ourselves, and not have illusions/delusions of saving, or even worrying about the world. Essentially the Taleban orchestrated an unpleasant regime, banning television, music, exercising a Fundamantalist version of Islam, and continuing on with the oppression of women which is a muted feature in every other Islamic society. But what was it that the Taleban, and even more moderate Muslims found to be disagreeable in the West? For a long time now it appears that they felt the West to be decadent, in that it followed the progressive, secular ideals of the Enlightenment, rather than the religious fundamentalism of Islam, where religion and the State are not separate. Hence, although we disagreed with Islam’s treatment of women, Islam disagreed with our slackness of morals, especially as regarded sexuality. It saw Western tolerance of supposed ‘deviant’ sexualities such as homosexuality as decadent, and to fanatics, decadent civilisations are easily overthrown by regressive but determined ones. Obviously Afghanistan was left to its own devices after the Russians were defeated, America was only interested in the country as long as it helped de-stabilise the Communist Bloc, and also set up Bin Laden with a private army, which was trained by American and Pakistani experts. America has supported unpleasant Islamic regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, and now Pakistan, as it became convenient to use this country as a base of operations against Afghanistan. Also American involvement in Terrorism has been a feature of their foreign policies in Latin America and other parts of the world. So essentially Bush and his group of military and political experts are little better than the Taleban, and the issue of terrorism and supposed ‘rogue states’ is a non sequitur on an absolute level of hypocrisy. America is reaping the harvest of death and destruction, and its Cold War against the Communist Bloc. But Russia has also moved to America’s side, with the Russian Premier Vladimir Putin using ‘the war against terrorism’ as a pretext to deal with his terrorists, (who are alternately seen as guerillas or freedom fighters, depending on whose propaganda you might happen to be reading) in Chechnya. Other countries such as China and even Zimbabwe have followed suit, retreating on commitments to human rights, civil liberties and the Geneva Convention. America has flaunted all of these as well as the United Nations, where it consistently uses its veto to block movement on the Palestinian and other issues.

Writers must consistently uphold the responsibility of all governments to abide by the legislation that has been created in regard to human and civil rights. America has approached this question as if it were the victim, not the playground bully of our darkest imaginings. The mediocre hacks which Bush, Blair et al trundle out at these moments to provide us with our dose of Newspeak have to be regarded as the liars they are. Truth is a thing which attempts to hold contradictory viewpoints and move forward from that point, not simply obliterating any other possible truths in a catchall ‘you are either for us or against us’. We cannot go back to the McCarthyism or Stalinism of a previous era, but forward to an integrative vision of that debate which was so self-evidently missing in the run up to September 11th. Bush and Blair must admit to the possiblity of political opposition, an elected government with a radical vision must be just that, and not the Tory Labour Party or even worse the Lone Star Republicanism that we now have.

This edition of THE ENGINE is dedicated to the victims of September 11th, to the dead on all sides in Afghanistan, and to the hope for rational politics, compromise and respect for international law and international institutions.

No, I’ve changed my mind, this edition of THE ENGINE is dedicated to small buildings, walking, and modest pusuits such as stampcollecting, trainspotting and writing poetry. Hopefully America will see in future that The Lord of the Rings is neither to be taken literally or seriously, as Bush/Sauron contemplates the ruin of the Two Towers and sends his Orc army fed with rotting meat and scraps from his table to do battle with the peoples of Middle Earth.

God Bless America

If you have any poems, short stories or articles please send them to Paul Murphy at Quinqureme@Hotmail.com



















At the Snow Queen’s Breast

It’s a snow crystal day.
The possibility of niceness falls
Foul to the windward side of her bed

Her little cherished pet is washbowl pink,
Smelling of pasteurised milk
And honey dew of Spring paddocks.

This is how she was taught
To bring up babies…

But as a mother, not too fond to play-act,
She deliberates the chiding
That will keep him extraterrestrial today,
Sparking the skin-crisping match,
Exercising the victimising flexibilities
Of her thumb.

Christopher Barnes





From the Francis Bacon poems

At Queensbury Mews West

The night-house bulb spangles across the wall,
Visualize its candour, a clear beam.
On what tabloid splotch does it glitter,
What amputation plate, movie-still close up?

It shafts, crinkling to the floor, absorbs more creamy
Over offerings of colour supplements,
A deal of foursquare faces
In varying degrees of stress.

How can I witch-doctor an earth of my own, I am
Francis Bacon, the painter, fondling the rivets
Of the bed, musing by the river of creation.

My gouaches are body-fabric objects, add-ons
To a globe which subsumes mobs of portraits.

I’ll filter late hours, grip my heart
To natural silence. A slug-a-bed slouch,
Waiting to snatch the admissible image
To pounce on the merest blur

Christopher Barnes

___________________________________________


Freud was Right

We are no more than what we were.
Our flesh remade in the seven years,
Even the old scars that
Taught us pain and selfhood.

These wounds are great seducers;
And the greatest of them is age,
The bones that gave us something
To go through towards others.
R Hall

War to be

On faces, bluebottles for eyes
And mouths in voiceless cries

In frail sanctuaries of leaves
In both the guilty hemispheres

In both nights as moonbeams turn
Where life like fever burns

On temples where the priesthood sleeps
Dreaming of the vanity of grief

Through the shadows of the mind,
The forest of humankind

Across the pages of our history,
Profane with moral palimpsest

Through frail declensions of the fact,
A Heruculean artifact

On the ruined sky as white as thought
And the iron bitterness of the heart

The artificial suns now rise
Burning with sublime device.
R Hall

_____________________________________________

Steven Taylor was born and brought up in Hyde, near Manchester, and now lives in Kilburn, north London. He is widely published in magazines and journals and is currectly assembling a first collection of poems.

Prater Park

A café in old Vienna

A mirror reflect
A mirror reflect
History is straw
You smoke a cigarette
You smoke a cigarette

Lust does a tipsy
Cognac a majorette

Stephen Taylor
_______________________________________________

Andrew Detheridge has been writing poetry since 1993 and now has over 600 poems published in the UK as well as in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the USA and Greece. He won the Partners in Poetry Open Competition in 1999 and was voted one of the Forward Press Top 100 poets of 1999 as well as being a runner-up in the Ilkley Literature Festival in the same year.

Andrew Detheridge is Poet in Residence at Sandwell College

Inkblots

You hesitate over the blank page
Then plant it with looping strokes,
Sewing words and phrases
In the hope that I will nourish them
And then they will grow into something special.

But it is too late for all that:
We have drifted too far and now
You are the moon, washed up on the beach
By shimmering satin waves, and rockpool-trapped,
Waiting for a morning that never comes.

I am seated on the Siege Perilous*
And your tigress-beauty only shows itself
As animal ruthlessness now.
I want to do something to recapture
What was lost, like gambol,
Or say we’re courting,
But the words are as distant stars.

How can you see what is right before
Your very eyes?
We are both looking at the same inkblots,
But you see denial and I see white lies.

Andrew Detheridge

*In Arthurian legend, the Siege Perilous was the seat at the Round Table that could only be filled by the Knight destined to find the Holy Grail and that was fatal to anyone else.