If we had a law like the French about conspicuous religious clothing would it affect Indian women wearing saris and Jewish people in Stamford Hill wearing special clothing?
I expect some do but should we compel them ?
I feel it is really Muslim clothes they hate
The old kitten is replaced by a new baby kitten the old dog by a new pup like a dead Monday by Tuesday. They stroke the new kitten in their laps so that their excess affection won’t go sour, so that it will love them in return, like the old one did. But for me they aren’t replaceable, not the kitten, not the Monday, not anything else; for me they never die. They only distance themselves, or dwell in me disappearing into the distance: they dwell in my heart and ears, like the Moonlight Sonata dwells in a piano. Gone? No new rain rinses the shower-scent of an old Monday from me, no matter how hard it pours, hisses, stream
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/serious-art-thats-funny-humor-poetry
Quote:
“Carolyn Forché, someone who has never been accused of being a funny poet, has said “irony, paradox, surrealism . . . might well be both the answer and a restatement of [Theodor] Adorno’s often quoted and difficult contention that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But what did the philosopher and critic Adorno mean by this fatuous statement? No poetry? Or just a very, very serious and earnest poetry? Because, let’s face it–earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. Often, but not always, satire does this too. But earnestness almost never does this–that’s not its job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort – cultural and aesthetic oppression. Irony and satire are such a good antidote to oppression because oppression needs to be earnest (or at least look earnest) in order to be feared by those it seeks to cow. Oppression cannot work alongside irony because it believes in its own righteousness and a monolithic concept of truth that must be asserted to the oppressed with a straight face. Irony and satire are the tools by which the oppressed get to make fun of the oppressors without the oppressors getting it.”
He says we’re going to bed this afternoon
As melancholy clouds droop from the sky
I like the sun to fry, to heat my womb
I like the flowers each with its dull dead blooms
On burning grass with him, I sinned to fly.
He says we’re getting bail this afternoon
If there is no sun, there is no moon.
If we cannot stalk, then we can lie.
I out my sins to thrive, to bring down Rome
I scorn the beach, where Europe showed it’s ruined
Nude starched police with guns strut stiffly by.
He says we’ll have the climax S & hemmed,
I sing in tunes invented by my clones
I would be dumb yet how the grey ghosts sigh
I hear the sunbeams screaming in the Zone
If it’s very hot I have clothes my own
Burkinis are the big hits of today
They says we’re going to Jail this afternoon
I hope that God will speak and throw us down
How my heart sings 