Chants. Reflected off gold spires.
Swirling incense.
The prayer wheel.
Sangham sharanam gacchami.

Shuffling footsteps
A silent march.
The golden mean. The six fold path
Sangham sharanam gacchami.

Bowed ochre, the crack on wood on bone
Thudding boots on paved stone
Shots zip overhead
Sangham sharanam gacchami.




http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/world/asia/26cnd-myanmar.html?hp

Orange sherbet and Jemima Rabbit
And of course Sherbet has an Arabian Nights feel to it, a jewel-bedecked, pale as alabaster Scheherazade swathed in the finest of rose silks, with diamonds in her hair, spinning her tales through endless nights of star-crusted velvet, veering her tale to a dreary end so it just about splutters to a certain death, and THEN with a single brilliant turn of phrase setting it adrift like a kite, to another startling level, a gasp at life, surviving another sunset. Arabian Nights, and you; and I try keep my mind on the price of oil, straight roads and chrome and glass buildings of the bustling modern Arabian city you live in, force veer it away Scheherazade-like, from thinking of how straight a nose you have, the feel of your skin, and how your curiously-slit eyes shine like diamonds in the dark. But I’m no Scheherazade else this story would have had a different ending or none, and you wouldn’t perchance have tripped, hunting for a Scheherazade to call your own, roving past high-rise towns, past marketplaces, minarets, chat rooms, and skyscrapers. I was good, I was sweet. Nice, goody-two shoes nice; why, I can make a little go a very long way: three subs, one poem one haiku, scrawled black on white. I’ve just about begun.

History throws a golden sheen on events, a pale filtering sunshine that softens the harsh edges, blurs them to an indistinctive-ness, allows the luxury of selection, of dark and light, that real time do not. So that randomly or quite by choice: events, sequences, people, can be highlighted or played down. In a sense an ultimate play with words, with presentation, use one or another, add a mite here or an easing off there, or word a statement from quite another perspective, and meanings can change or be hinted at, distanced, quite at will. This then, is the force, the power of it all, majestic in its sweep, and with a turn of phrase or a casual word, interpretations can be created or reputations shaken.

The color red spread like a series of dots across the city, red dots joined by a thin thread, red dots pierced with manic intensity on white immaculate blotting paper where the color had diffused around pretty pin-points. Nine flare-ups and the sizzle of frying flesh preceded the dots, or maybe nineteen could have, but didn’t quite, the people refused in their wisdom to believe what the officials said, recognizing a cover-up for what it was. What could have been, what might have been and why on effing earth was it not, the people were so nice, no heads rolled, and every slip filed away under a big holdall labeled karma. This is one law that had always worked, it always had and would this once too. There was a cruel steel edge to it, it cut harsh sometimes but they went on, drinking in this hurt as well zombie like.