These three photo-poems were posted on Mastodon January 21-28, 2024, and I was shadowbanned on the site after posting the first poem. Because I was left with no way to use hashtags or tags, no way to post comments on other people’s posts, and no way anyone could search for me on Mastodon, I left Mastodon. I had gone to Mastodon because I had been shadowbanned on Twitter/X, but on returning to Twitter/X in February, their shadowban had been lifted.
Posted January 21
All photos my own unless otherwise stated.photo by Douglas
I will not speak. My inability to speak keeps this bottled up inside me so I don’t feel it. Do you trust me? Some day I will touch this pain again and tell you how much I love you my very precious daddy. I cannot do that now. I’m sorry. It hurts too much.
Signed, Nithish
Okay world, you got your answer. The boy will not stand up for me. He will simply let me die without saying a word, if I choose to do a hunger strike. That is powerful pain I have to deal with, my boy’s denial of me when I am doing everything I can to help him, as I promised I would when I spoke to you on the phone Nithish, not long ago. Has it only been two weeks?
Okay Sandiya what can I say but I’m sorry? I made a very big mistake in challenging your pride, and no there was no blackmail with the intention of putting you or your husband in jail, no matter what the boy said the day you took him from my home. He was confused. Throughout these two months, in everything I’ve done, in everyone I’ve spoken to, I did not try to put you in jail. I made no attempt to file a case of any kind. The video lies there unopened. It’s never been used to get you arrested.
Will you please forgive me? If not for me, then for the sake of your son? He needs me and you know it. His heart is a battlefield, and he’s just lost a major battle of the war. You don’t understand love, how it can’t be killed, and it only hurts your child to try.
Do you know how much time together we have spent? Many years of his childhood, formitable years, influential years. We have been so together for so long, and he can’t just wipe that out of his life, like it never happened. It’s too big a hole in his childhood. He can’t get rid of it. What you are asking of him is too much, and it is too cruel.
I can only ask you again to forgive me for this boy’s sake. Where does this go? Let me see him, and we can avoid this drastic measure I’m about to take. Can you see that? Can you see that with your heart?
After all the years we’ve spent together Sandiya, since you yourself was 12, you do not want to let me die refusing to allow me just two hours alone with your son, after all that we’ve been through together for so long. Please Sandiya listen. For God’s sake listen, and let us avoid catastrophe, let us avoid more pain. Lay down your arms, and I lay down mine, and let us make peace for children’s sake, and I do not have to lay down my life for the sake of this boy. It is not just me seeing him; it’s about letting Nithish be Nithish, what I will truly be fighting for.
Will you accept my apologies? And we can move on, get through this, and give Nithish what he truly needs, and he needs both of us for that future. Listen to his English. Listen to his ideas, his manner of speaking, his manner of thinking. That is my stamp upon him not yours. You are not an intellectual nor someone culturally refined. I am sorry but you aren’t. I have sophisticated this boy, cultured him, in things that are the high pass of humanity, and I have shown him God reaching down into his life, and I have shown him the opening to the well of soul.
Listen to his poetry very carefully, and you will not find the stupidity of a child. That is not a baby there rattling off with no will of his own. It is a very alive and mature soul wanting this boy to fulfill his purpose to manage his destiny, and that is not my destiny nor yours. It belongs to Nithish alone. Grant that to him and let us pass this brush with death. I beg you Sandiya. What else can I do?
I can give him America and U.S. citizenship and what his future could do with that, anywhere in the world. You can’t give him that. You are limited to India for this boy. Why can’t I open up the world to him? Because you need him to fulfill your life? Isn’t that what you told him I wanted him for? Please Sandiya, think on yourself. Doing evil to me with no goodness involved is a grave sin, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days if we cannot make amends, and my death will be between you and Nithish even unto the afterlife, if you let me die and do not let him to speak.
Let us put his future together, as I am not a mean man, unlettered. I have the college education you want for him, and I have the experience of an unusual and varied lifetime that reaches for humanity’s heart. I do not believe you are filled with so much hate you will let me die. I do not, and I stake my life on that belief. It is not my folly that I hunger strike. It is your folly, your heartbreaking refusal to let the boy and I see each other. Okay Sandiya, where do we go from here? It's for Nithish.
I want to be Rivendell to meet, not some pedophile sandbag. A lot of people meet me everyday. I’m countin’ the reaction when you’re encountered with pedophiles. I’m goin’ to school where I meet yah, and would you believe you could learn about the sky here? They stole it, people who let social stigma get in the way of their judgment. Did we just mention everybody? For awhile there, Jesus was not one of ‘em. Now he’d be right there judgin’ yah with everybody else, because he’s a Christian.
Do we have anything fat to look at? Can we get into a different defense cave? Social stigmas don’t have sting anymore. It’s not visible too seen. You think you know everything. What does this cost us? Would you believe the stars? You can’t go there. You can’t even run. It’s got yah by the balls. You’re not helpin’ anyone sexual sinners included.
Did we just mention social stigma? The heart of the disease. It camps us in the hatred of the sinner. It’s here we have social margins, places we cannot cross, the ultimate taboos of society, bigger than even eating your neighbor. Can you feel the hate down there? What riles you up more against the sinner? Where do you go with that? In the news.
I’d like to lesson faith, put Christ there on the table and examine him. Let’s start with Buddha. Do you see love? Hell even Krishna would say no in a pedophile open container. Muhammad would just deny that it ever be. I’m countin’ populations of this faith or another, that give us Godly love. The population says no, if we’re lookin’ in sexual drawers. Why is that? Godly love’s not among them.
Progress, we haven’t seen this yet to stop hate here. Have I come to a common denominator what eats the heart of man? And we can come further. We can see this thing. We can liken it to our lives. We can know it hurts us, to always have the scarlet letter we give people to wear. I’m talkin’ about every day, every hour, every minute, on this Earth, and multiply that times humanity.
Silent the Staffers are about this, the administrators of humanity, the ones who give us the news, the ones who sell religion, and the poet, and the playwright, and anybody who makes noise. A lot of people mention queers and transgenders and other fancy stuff, but they sure aren’t showin’ us the leaven of the rule to hate sexual sinners, very different from accept me I’m gay.
Did Jesus come to heal that? A powerful religious figure. Have we come that far, where we can recognize the sinner in the ones who are to us Gods? And the ones we recognize as Gods, they wear perfection you see, so they have authority, so they don’t blind us with true vision. We can’t take that light. Mother Mary was a saint, and Jesus never sinned. Can we get outta here? Out of wedlock has got us by the balls.
It damages us, makes us see right in lying about the Light. Muhammad never loved women and failed God there. Can we see this for the truth? I think someone would kill me if I said it, and word got around. Our religious bringers, even if they don’t know it, are tryin’ to heal humanity where their own lives are concerned.
Of religious hate, it can’t see this. Of religious hate, this is all over the place, and here it’s most prevalent and mean, most pronounced, and it’s there in your jury room, and it’s there in your heartbeats. What do we need to heal? Society, if we ever hope to help the Earth. Environmental change to a better Earth for all begins there. It’s our starward. It’s our hope. It’s where we meet each other.
Who do you revile the most? That’s the key ingredient of our change. It’s where we find each other on common ground. It’s where we pick apart humanity and find its managing flaws. It’s where we touch base with one another, and it stinks to high heaven. It’s beyond the pale. It’s what moves us to rape, murder, and war, because it’s our common denominator, LCD hate, the hatred we all share. Move that, touch that, and we all quiver.
Are you there yet? I’m roundin’ you out some. I’ve got a field to show. Hear my heartache? I am everywhere. I’m in your shoes now. Feel free to put your comments in the minus bar, is that what you say Eddie? Is that where you’re at? It’s where we draw morality today.
This is the station of the Earth. How are you? A thousand at gunpoint. The quality has left the brigade. It’s in the stars now. Not a soul sees it, except you and I. I have no reason to write. This has no fellowship. I’m not cryin’ about it. I can see what’s goin’ on. I can see the brigade.
I lift my voice up, even though it’s meaningless down here. I have a field to write, and that is my star-gas, and that is my thang to do. Goodbye cruel world, you won’t hear me say that. I’m mountain sing. I’m all over the place. I’m at your door right now.
Shoot me will yah. You hate pedophiles, even if they don’t molest children. I’m not your moppin’ bucket. I’m taller than that. I have Heaven’s spears. Where you goin’? I thought you were ready for art, and I’m not a pain in the ass. I’m always chapter of my other dinin’. I can’t call you up here or me down there. No, I’m not an hourglass in the sun, but I see wide and free. I don’t have band-aids on where I reach for the sky.
I’m Marcus Aurelius on steroids. I can show you more of the world than you knew existed, the letter of more than the Earth can show. I’m daring. I have lifted the timetable at the art college, and I expose you to poems now that come straight from the rising sun. You are so derelict I am dead before I am read. Is that how it’s gonna be?
I write anyway. I write the commodity of the sky into your habit, and I know what I’m doin’. You guys aren’t listenin’. We’ll be here for few minutes. How to make a report and give it to society? You’ve seen the Earth from afar. You’ve had God’s eyes looking at it, and you were behind them, and you saw the Earth from there. Just one direct flash, some seconds and it was it. Maybe a half minute? This came to pass.
I had no idea this even existed. I met Myself on high. That was 30 years ago. It redirected my life. It was the only thing I saw for some time. I was turned on. I went crazy with the Earth. I lived in isolation in a college setup, my little job and me and a handful of family, not all of them related. You get the picture?
This just happened. It wasn’t the first thing. Would you believe me if I told you I found my soul first, and, before that, the station of the Gods? Not all in the same week. It was why I was stationed there. I had seen the Gods in cutout portions of Them. So I settled in to get more at it. I knews the world was strangely arranged. I had questions, and I asked them thoroughly. An open consciousness had visited me to do so, what the initial opening did, seeing how God thinks in Overmind.
Are we gettin’ somewhere? Why me? I had the consciousness for it. Infant orgasm had opened me to the Void a childhood demon had tricked me into. Weird I know, but that’s how I came in life. I don’t think you have that structure. Are you listening to me?
We gather too let’s take a pedophile and change him into someone that helps the Earth. Can you believe that? Listen to my voice. We start with the bottom-rung you know. How else do you see the whole bunch? Oh man I’m talking Earth. What a head trip.
Can you just stop a moment? We are not your regular keeper. I was born this way, put in the sauce, and I have been weird all my life. My story would make you question reality: Green Beret, Classical Greek scholar, tactical nuclear mission, I mean like the bomb, world crawling vagabond, like for seven years, then in India behind an iron curtain that only let the net out, and I’ve been here 20 years. You tell me I’m strange. Do I have the prerequisites to give you the lowdown?
I put up poems in Jerusalem on the Fourteen Stations of the Cross, after a fall, inside the Great Pyramid and on the top of Mount Sinai. I was a gold digger on fire. I put that in. No one paid attention then, and no one pays attention now. I’ve done the groundwork to be a world speaker.
You’re confused. Is this true? My history’s online. You will find out I’ve been suppressed some. The major articles of the press know I’m here. They never say anything. I’m not just a loon to them. I’ve seen one site change policy over a single poem. Now the agencies, who are they? I do imagine I get watched. I don’t even worry about it. I see the Earth. Why wouldn’t it look back at me?
You guys are just stupid and won’t let me out among you. I’m banking on you to try. This is some weird shit. Let’s go back to a funny video or a world I can believe in. I’ve never heard of such. Now whaddawe do? You should read my other stuff. I’m dancin’ in music here. The view from here’s incredible. I’m not an unhappy man. I get so excited just being on a moment on earth. It’ll wipe the tears outta your eyes it’s so miracle arranged, the whole damn world. I just rub my eyes and see. Are you seein’ this? The Earth’s just moved.
How do I show this to you? It’s dancin’ right before my eyes, and it’s big. I see that, this smallness I am, wrapped around the machine, trodding on earth. I’m just a part of it all, not it’s maker or mover and shaker. I’m like you, but I see, where a seer meets the Earth, and I’m changin’ it a little more directly than you are, just by my see.
If I get out among you, I’ll replace the room, give you something to think about, so many people in the machine. We will see the future curve in my thoughts of it and be the world I predicted. We’ll talk about it later. Now I just got some things to do to keep goin’. Take a look. Give me a read and see what I’m talkin’ about. One move forward in each and every poem, you will see that, and I will see you again next poem.
A Palestinian boy sits on the rubble of his house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, in Beit Hanun, Gaza. Photograph: Mohammed Saber/EPA
When the ticks were talking about building churches,
it’s free speech.
I don’t know who I have a ham on today.
I don’t know who’s worthy.
I don’t know who I’m talking about.
It’s race cards.
Can we talk about the Black Lives Movement supporting Israel?
It did in Chicago—
okay Hamas,
you terrorists,
thank you for being a friend.
I don’t know what I’m saying—
that was a Harvard trainee.
Let’s be blunt about this:
can we support Israel,
and they treat Palestinians like shit?
They are the oppressors.
Oh my goodness a homegrown flag:
the Palestinians weren’t there before Israel.
They became a nation under Israel’s cause.
Now they’re out to do harm,
indiscriminately killing civilians,
or that’s the show they put on
when they got out of their fence.
I mean they murdered.
It hurts doesn’t it?
The Palestinians want to show you
what it means to be Palestinian,
where Jewish means Israel.
That harms.
Okay we put Hamas in the kitchen and praise them.
You inhuman bastards,
is that how you gain freedom?
We don’t know.
We just hate ourselves
and see a Jew and want to kill them.
That’s the dry land:
we can’t kill Jews.
We shoulder our own freedom.
It must work among ourselves
before it goes outwards.
How is this done?
I have a naked little boy and don’t rape him.
I pull myself together.
I tie his shoe instead.
A poet will always speak in symbols,
his life the bait.
We learn to stop violence towards our children.
We are gentle and soft with them.
They eat out of our hand,
and we feed them warm and honey.
We do not blister them
with having to hate Jews.
We do not require this of them.
We do not indoctrinate them to kill.
How kind are we to one another?
We let our humanity light up our life.
A stray dog is an opportunity
to give our world some compassion.
We hold each other tightly,
as the brothers and sisters we are.
We do not do violence to one another.
We try to show each other love,
or at least the patience
you give a friend.
We strong arm no one.
We stand up for human rights.
We stop hurting one another.
Then our gliders come in peace.
We show the Israelis what they’re missin’.
We give them reason to respect us.
We brush aside their hatred
with the real human being.
This is all we can do.
War will kill us.
It will enslave our land.
Go to the heart of the conflict,
the hatred of the Jew,
and bury there.
Can you understand these people?
Can you see their plight?
More than a few are good-hearted towards you.
Not all are racists.
Not all think it’s their human right
to be the chosen people.
This is the dragon in the land.
It’s this we must eradicate,
not Jews.
It’s this we must show is wrong,
the essence of Jewish hatred,
the hidden core of their persecution.
We must not bury Jews
or destroy their peopleness.
They are a tower and a might,
and oh we need the Jews.
Can you sink them?
Are you rubbin’ elbows with those who’ve tried?
I think you need new friends.
Even in hell Jews triumphed.
They fight differently than most men.
They fight with their brains.
You’re gonna do them in?
We count on you
to show Israel its humanity.
You are the problem they cannot solve.
Their brains can’t grasp this:
there were a people on their land they took,
and now they must oppress them.
Victim turned victimizer once again,
we can’t see this as human frailty
common to everyone.
So what can you do to Israel that Israel needs to see?
You are a fine people
together in your lot.
You take hardship and spit out pearls.
You sacrifice for those around you.
You take your humanity
and circle the wagons with it.
It’s the way you meet oppression:
you are a noble people,
and therefore hard to abuse.
How would this act
when faced with aggression?
You kill the combatants
to defend yourselves,
and there you’ll win the respect of every nation
and show the world who’s wrong.
I think we complete this
in the issues of the night.
Glory hallelujah it’s dawn.
I thought I’d made you up.
This is a little spark of God in life.
You’ve pointed out the errors
in human ways.
A call to arms,
humanity’s arms,
wow you have children there.
Well spoken said.
Oh statute of limitations,
it’s just a matter of time
the Palestinian cross.
You’re kidding me—
the Palestinian blues.
Those are Greek and Roman myths
made real by human suffering.
It’s a Dispatches’ record
my hullabaloo.
Now they can be up there.
Give me a credit.
I’m pickin’ up the pace.
Gloria in Excelsis Deo. [line heard sung, from “Angels We Have Heard on High”]
Just put boiled rice,
I just put boiled rice.
What did you put in the blue container?
I’m all here bitches, shoot me.
I don’t think you understand the situation.
You’re gonna have to get bigger than you are.
It’s not gonna work killin’ people.
You have to show Israel who’s the human being.
Is your culture up to that,
to self-develop?
You just continue
life along the shores of persecution,
so you can stop its history on you.
This is done slowly.
Every man, woman, and child
must agree to band together
and be good to one another.
This is the team roll.
This is how you begin.
You’ll be working with each other’s subconscious, that’s for sure.
Study your dreams that will help you out here.
You have to learn not to react,
and you have to learn not to be mean.
It’s a process
doable.
It will improve conditions right away.
You’re gettin’ ready to love.
You’re gettin’ ready to be a balanced people.
This is not wishy-washy handshake bullshit.
You do things for one another.
You don’t slap, hit, or cuss out.
You keep hatred out of your voice.
You be the real thing to each other.
You be a friend.
It’s all over your face
when you are.
The Israeli settler
or the Israeli enforcer
will see you a human being,
not a rock throwing mob,
and they will act accordingly,
when they’re embarrassed by their own actions.
You don’t know the bone of contention here.
Will the real humanity please stand up?
You stand up and show Israeli yours.
Obviously if they’re shooting you you can’t,
but barring that.
I’m not talking lambs to the slaughter.
You never surrender your dignity.
You just comply with regulations
a noble human being.
Show them who’s boss,
and it’s not the Jews.
It’s our heartfelt humanity.
It’s our great get along.
I’m liberty speaking,
and you’re looking for that equipment.
I’ve spoken enough to Israel
in a book I’ve left on Amazon—
definite flavor
reconciliation.
It’s not your own state you want.
It’s that:
to live at peace among the Jews equal citizens.
That’s the example Earth needs
to keep our world from blowing each other up.
Can you do that Arab citizen,
Palestinians of Israel,
Palestinians held hostage by Israel,
Palestinians in the land of Israel?
Under the Israeli banner
so bigger
than for Jews and Jews alone,
Palestinians can be free again.
If you look at the roads there’s no other way.
Between Jerusalem I’m Sorry
will point out the crossroads.
It’s a matter of seeing them
and not do anything shameful.
Love towards Israel,
can you fit this into your schedule?
If you’ll be one nation you must.
Put this in your resettlement plan.
Now Palestinian refugee,
give resettlement a chance,
cause there’s a secret ingredient to Israel.
It comes
if we labor together
for a common goal.
The secret ingredient is floating off the top of my head,
and it’s called the home for the human being.
Enough of religious politics.
God is not the wrathful, bigoted, murderer you all suppose.
Find God and see.
It will revolutionize your life,
and you’ll be kind to your fellow man.
Jews will not be the inescapable people,
Muslims will not be the only ones on earth worth.
You have to integrate.
You have to learn to live together.
This is your mandate to each other.
Not big enough
to be only kingpins
Mr. and Ms. Jew.
You have to concede their plight,
so they can see yours.
A resettled human being
has that in their plan:
keeping humanity safe.
You give it
to everybody around you:
safe passage from point A to point B,
and let’s go from there.
One key thing
rule book the exercise
of your warm humanity.
I know this sounds very arranged.
You keep time
I’ll give you something.
I would just love to.
That’s an Israeli learning what it means to be Israel:
really going to court
to learn our humanity.
It’s like you’re free there.
The Mother told them to do that.
That’s hope.
In a large distribution gap saw man,
a wide, territorial spree.
A trouble on islands,
they could not chapter this.
They saw each one to blame
but themselves,
or if they saw their faults
they didn’t recognize them in the field of play.
This screamed solution.
No power on earth could stop it.
Everyone saw themselves the leader of the play,
even when no leadership bore.
Listen to me I’m human—
social media post after social media post.
And they all cried:
I’m the development of man;
listen to me.
Nobody was a warehouse
of the exact thing in ourselves we needed to see.
This was how we play ball.
The game itself had no meaning.
We were Earth flat.
Nobody spoke our language
or could write up their own,
but they kept speaking.
Well the only thing I could do was cause trouble
with the abundance of you and I
in such a routine I told you so,
in such an abundance of I told you so.
I don’t think you understand this.
I think we are all spokesperson for humanity,
but what we are speaking we can’t say.
It’s all void of meaning,
not big enough to show the problem.
We nosedive into it
and break apart upon the seas.
It’s terrible inane,
and we can’t get past chapter 1.
Take it upon yourself to show this to us,
and no one sees it.
Everyone is a brick wall
when they need to see something
they don’t want to see.
Can we see nationalism in India?
Can we see Sri Aurobindo?
And we see Sri Aurobindo?
You read the Torah?
If God Himself told you to change it,
would you?
Muhammad’s infallibility,
tell me he’s not
something human.
Kill people because he is,
and that just puts us down.
Everybody see the Son of God?
Everybody see the fatherless God
born from sin?
And that’s how I believe in miracles,
excluding reality.
Are we alright with atheists?
I don’t want God to exist;
therefore He doesn’t.
Now let’s just start with standard room.
I hate bad people,
and they should be punished.
Oh great we saw man,
and wanted us to rub our nose in it.
A holistic reality isn’t a thing among us,
and here we are at where we’re at,
and no one could care less about reality,
and that’s my thought for the day,
where this poem sits in your lap.
Can you grasp inside it?
Can you get behind it?
(this poem was written as comment on the blog Helena, The Nationalist Voice for the post “Mass School Shooting, a Mental Health Common Denomenator”. Click here to see the entire conversation)
The seated with identified and hate
confuse multiple speakers.
We think we got a land problem.
They just don’t know the story from inside.
We let it in
all these ill wills not ours,
a big bad packaged hate.
It has moved us from afar.
I know what to do.
Let’s kill all these people.
And we do.
There it is the ugly truth of the matter
fired upon the scene.
You think it’s American.
How little countries move among you,
as if our consciousness is organized by political boundaries.
That’s the joke:
you are a nationalistic speaker.
You are so much more than that.
Humanity is everyone.
Now I think that’s got a ride,
the joy of being human.
Our consciousness is all over the place.
You see it in your smile.
We are so much more than hate.
We are bigger than the stars.
You ever seen this in your living room?
We’ve got every welfare at heart.
We genuinely do care about one another.
That’s that process of soul.
It’s what we’re here to study.
That’s what brings us to God,
but don’t forget
it’s a cruise ship,
and every human being’s on board,
and that’s just the human side.
We care about animals.
Oh the soul they watch too
you see.
Harm's End 