Friday, September 19, 2014

On Ukraine

"Ukraine" itself is an artificial country, with two very different conceptions of what nationhood entails. Such a divided nation cannot sustain itself for long. Why people insist on treating Ukraine as such an indissolvable, inviolable political unit is simply beyond my powers of comprehension. An eventual partition of the country in question along ethno-linguistic lines is going to be inevitable at some point in time, whether now at Putin’s behest or a century from now. This Progressive project of forcing varying peoples into artificial cultures is both ironic (see: Wilson and self-determination) and destined to fail. Current rhetoric from both sides is at a fever pitch and has been for some time, even since before the events of Euromaidan. Nothing short of partition will suffice to end the conflict in a cost- and life-effective manner.

Given that much of western Ukraine has little to no cultural affinity for Russia (and far more in common with Poles, Czechs, etc. than with their fellow citizens in the south and east), it is only natural that this region (Lviv, Chernovtsy, Kyiv) should form a more coherent national entity. At the same time, folks in Karkov, the Crimea, Donetsk, and so forth are for all intents and purposes Russian, and given their attitude towards Euromaidan, they'd likely be happier (and better off) being annexed by Russia than being forced to stay in a loveless union with the Ukrainians to their west.



Thursday, September 18, 2014

Stones

I heard the stones cry out over the horizon.

They wake me.

Keening air runs over half-buried shack, carcass that Nature's jackals picked clean. Gray-blue wind snakes in from outside and tugs the sheet off.

Cold then heat.

Hear the stones again. See a sunset half a world away. Sky's blood-fire cauterizes wound between earth and myself.

I become whole for an instant.

Soul-embers pierce skin and fiber and meat and bone, and then more. Drink in the honey-wine, Gods-blood running from hand outstretched from stone and stream and old millhouse in woods pockmarked with unmelted snow blanketed in Dawn's dying fog. Feels like sword in the gut as it goes down but the pain is ecstasy. Sweat and tears like sun-melted glacier and dirt under fingernails like flecks of gold.

Find myself under the skein, shack-carcass left behind. Fingers of juniper brush the horizon as sun comes up out of the butte and warmth intimates vitality and dog shifts against my head. I've not died but something greater.

Born, alive, from dead womb in dead land.

The Ship

Broken spars on lighted shore
Bones of ship keep them alive

Dead hulk out of Ædger
cannibalized by its children

Long had they rode the sea
They, of the North

The end comes now

Huddled together, sharing light
And warmth, and strength

On a spat of sea-dust
Below the cliffs of Brittany

Bodies flung together by fate and by wave,
Waiting for an end

November in Owyhee

Fire in the skies
Embers of souls dusting the black

Sun's pallid sister ascends the star-stair
Children of the night cry for their Mother

Mesquite flames before me
Book in hand, dog and gun to the side

Embers of souls
Scarring the November desert sky

(Another) New Beginning

My old blog was a little overambitious it terms of its scope, but I still feel the need to put up lengthier posts than what is possible on Twitter. Thus: Books and Boomsticks.

Posting will be infrequent. Lengths of posts will vary, sometimes hilariously so. Topics will likely range from college life to global conflict to firearms. Also bad poetry. Lots of bad poetry. You have been warned.