may · contain · language

Det är också på det viset att det även av andra skäl är bra om det här kan gå lite snabbt.

Det är slutligen på ett tredje vis, nämligen: Jag har ganska systematiskt hystat upp allt engelskspråkigt gammalt skåpmatsmaterial jag har på lager på bloggen men lämnat det svenska relativt orört, troligen eftersom bloggen startades som renodlat engelskspråkig.

Alltså:

Självporträtt i ferlinpastisch
En clown som aldrig lärt sig att jonglera
och som glömt sin röda näsa på station,
En gycklare som inte ens kan rimma
är jag. Tjohej!

*

Men det lät väl inte alltid just så illa
som den behandling Edra öron nyss har rönt.
Ja, nog råkade min tår nån gång att trilla
just på den lutsträng som för tillfället kved skönt.

Jag har länge haft en känsla av att vilja säga
utan att nånsin riktigt veta vad

så här står jag

och efteråt kanske en applåd
någon vänlig kommentar

och så klarar jag mig någon vecka till

i alla fall
detta med att säga
en konstig känsla av
nånting ni borde höra
nånting som borde ut

stannar

och så säger man nånting
om jordens fortsatta snurrning

eller

behovet att förlåta

eller

frågetecken

eller

priset på bananer

och så ler då, lite lagom ursäktande

och, faktiskt
världen är förändrad

men
ingenting är sagt
 

Detta inlägg skulle innehålla en dikt på svenska men jag har inte riktigt lyckats få till formateringen på livejournal, så jag länkar till min geocitiessida i stället: Dikten!

 
ANSVAR ÄR OMÖJLIGT
SAKER BARA HÄNDER
MAN RÅKAR T EX TORTERA NÅGON
ELLER FÖRTRYCKA HALVA MÄNSKLIGHETEN
 
DÄRMED ÄR DET FÖRSTÅS OUNDVIKLIGT
OCH INTE ENBART ATT BEKLAGA
ATT NEURONERNA KOKAR IHOP ETT HAT
I SOMLIGA MÄNNISKORS HJÄRNOR
 
OCH KANSKE RÅKAR DESSA SLÅ TILLBAKS
I SIN MER ELLER MINDRE RÄTTMÄTIGA VREDE
 
ETT LIDANDE UPPSTÅR
ALLA ÄR SKYLDIGA OCH OSKYLDIGA
OCH JAG BLIR MYCKET SORGSEN
NÄR JAG INTE RÅKAR VÄLJA ATT TITTA
PÅ NÅGOT ROLIGT TV-PROGRAM I STÄLLET
 
HATET ÄR ALLTSÅ NÖDVÄNDIGT IBLAND
SOM JAG VID DENNA PUNKT FÖRSTÅR SAKEN
MEN JAG ÄR OCKSÅ RÄDD ATT DET KAN GÅ RÄTT ILLA
OM VI GLÖMMER ATT IBLAND RÅKA FÖRLÅTA

...och jorden snurrar vidare
som jordar pläga
ett tag till.
Ett rätt bra tag.
Det är inte så dåligt.
 

Så. Här kommer en av fyra nya dikter jag skrev till uppläsningen på Stadsbiblioteket. Jag tjuvhåller på de andra så jag inte behöver tänka så mycket vid några senare bloggtillfällen. Man får inte vara dum. (En av dikterna kräver dessutom lite extra formateringsarbete som jag inte tror jag har tid med för tillfället.)
 
Priset på bananer
 
Kanske finns det ett pris
för att alltför mycket ägna sig
åt politik och slagord
men nog har det ock ett pris
att alltför mycket undvika
så låt oss tala några ögonblick
om priser
och bananer.
 
(Och ni som redan hör till kören får ursäkta om ni hört predikan förr.)
 
Priset på bananer är alltför högt
för de som tvingas betala.
 
Vi skämtar om goda och onda bananer,
men där finns ett allvar
 
Frånvaron av de goda märkena
är ett DÖDSMÄRKE.
 
Bananerna är ett exempel
och problemet så mycket större
men låt oss ändå bli snäppet mer konkreta:
 
Forty-one of the children began working between the ages of eight and thirteen, most starting at ages ten or eleven. Their average workday lasted twelve hours, and fewer than 40 percent of the children were still in school by the time they turned fourteen. In the course of their work, they were exposed to pesticides, used sharp knives and machetes, hauled heavy loads of bananas, drank unsanitary water, and some were sexually harassed.
 
Så
kära. Köp inte onda bananer,
är ni snälla.
 
***slut på dikten***
 
Det är Human Rights Watch som citeras på engelska och det handlar om förhållanden på plantager i Ecuador. Citatet återfinns bland annat här.

Current Mood:

cold

Your hair is winter fire,
January embers
My heart burns there, too.

Current Location:	here
Current Mood:	happy

...or I can has skanner, Part II.
 
First, this is what the famous notebook looks like.
 

As you can see I have carefully labelled it "THE ISTANBUL NOTEBOOK", but that is a rather late addition.

I made a few drawings in the notebook during our stay in Istanbul. One or two have even been mentioned in earlier posts. The first one I think must have been this, a pier full of birds seen from the ferry to Kadaköy:


Then there's this framed portrait of Kemal Atatürk, found in the Russian restaurant Rejan:


We have this cartoon from the weapons room at the Topkapi Palace, with an authentic overheard comment (spoken with an Indian accent, I seem to remember):

("I wonder who had that in his pocket!")
 
Two views from a hotel room bed:


...and, finally, me being sleepy on the flight home. This image is drawn into a block of text, and should if possible have been included in an earlier post, which had a translation of that text into English.



And then there's these, neither of which has the slightest thing to do with Istanbul. Except they're in "the Istanbul Notebook", of course.

These are both from a meeting with a writing club that I'm a member of, Ordbrukarna, and connected to two different writing exercises. The left one is an illustration to a group poem where death was referred to as variously "he" and "she" (well, "han" and "hon"). We'll leave the actual poem to another time. For now, the top priority must be the text actually pictured to the right. It's a sentence, rather nonsensical, with words chosen so that the initial letters make up a given word: "tjugohundraåtta" ("twenty hundred eight", the recommended Swedish speech-form for the present year). "tänk, jag undrar gräsligt ofta hur underligheter nekas delning redan av årtalsuttalets tiofalt tusenhundrade advokater." If anyone who does not know Swedish actually reads this, this would translate to something like "you know, I terribly often wonder how curiousities are denied sharing already by the year-pronounciation's tenfold thousandhundred advocates." 

Ok, that's all for tonight, I guess...

Except: Earlier Istanbul posts at http://martinho.livejournal.com/6918.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/7372.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/7430.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/7691.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/8409.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/8573.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/8930.html , http://martinho.livejournal.com/9025.html. And I guess at http://martinho.livejournal.com/6539.html , too.

I can't say I think this is very good, but it's meant to be song lyrics, it's in English (of sorts) and it's written by me so I think it needs to be here, especially now that I've spent silly amounts of time looking for the damn thing. So...
 
So
So,
you did it your way, did ya?
The girls all loved it, did they not?
So,
no compromises, there were?
You stood tall like a grand fir
And you were grand yourself and 
fuckin' great and noone liked you
and everyone admired you and you
said you didn't care and
you were oh, so cool but
oh, in retrospect it all seems quite
pathetic
and please forgive me if I ask myself
"So what?"
 
So,
it wasn't quite so easy?
Just like the clown who cries at night? (eh)
Oh,
you want my pity, you do?
Well in a way you have it
but can't you see I'm crying
Yes, still I can't help crying
Pretty hard to be objective
Pretty hard to be forgiving
No fun to lick a hand that's struck you
Can't really love your executioner
No, I hate you, mr. once-so-very-perfect,
you must excuse me but I think it serves you right.

Current Location:	left of center
Current Mood:	artistic
Current Music:	background music on NCIS, which Anna is watching

I've been wanting to write something new for this journal, but now I'm just too damn tired and it's sunday and I need to do my post for this week. So on with the recycling... though I'm sort of running out of things I've written in English. This is a bit fun though. Through the run of Narbonic I actually got a few things published in the sunday strips of the comic - maybe a testimony to

shaenon

Air: 'The Ents' Marching Song'
 
Great ringing sound:
blip-blop-bleep!
 
We come, we come with blops and bleeps: ka-blippi bloppi blippi kzz!
We come, we come with bad-ass guns: ka-boom kaboom kadünka dooom!
 
'Bleep, rrriinnng! Here we come with a flash, here we come at last! Come, join our March! Resistance is futile. We're off to planet Earth!'
 
'To Earth!' (in many voices)
'To puny Earth!'
To planet Earth! Though that old ball has never yet been conquered all;
Though planet Earth has nuclear bombs, it still is puny, old and dumb;
We go, we go, to Madblood's war, to pillage, loot and sing bad songs;
For algorithms are running now, which say One thing - Let's go
  to war!
With algorithms of blood and gore, with bleeps and blops, we come, we
  come;
    To puny Earth with doom we come!
    With doom of Wolf, with doom we come!
 
                              :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
 
(There was much more. A great deal of the song had no words, and was like a music of instruments things of flesh and blood would not want to be near. It was very exciting.)
 
And here is the original marching song by J.R.R. Tolkien, taken from http://tolkien.cro.net/talesong/entsmarc.html . 
 

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!
We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa runa runa rom!
To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!

As far as I can remember this was written second of the handful of pop-songish things I've made. I don't really remember anything about writing it. A very talented friend of mine, Erik Rådbo, actually tried it out (in a reworked version) with one of his bands. I don't think they played it that many times, though. Still, I really have to check with Erik if they ever made any recording - it would be really fun to put that up here. Now the only thing I have left to say is I had the idea fairly early this might work for Tom Petty.
 
The Death of a Clown
 
He was a clown in life,
in death he was still a clown.
He was known as funny Johnny
throughout most of the town.
He took farewell
by one last joke.
He stayed to hear the laughs,
then he started to choke.
 
Chorus:
He took a bow and walked out of the room.
The cameras had to use their super-ultra-zoom
if they wanted to catch the flash of sorrow in his eyes,
his life was a glimrin' web of wonderful lies.
And I guess in his way he was happy.
 
The funeral was surely a sight for a god,
at the party afterwards they used 18 kinds of mud
to throw at eachother 'til they all looked deranged.
He had said in his will how it should be arranged.
 
Chorus. x2, 2nd time laughing

Current Location:	a certain piece of furniture
Current Mood:	tired