to paraphraseimaad majeed

a good paraphrase...

...is not a summary

...does not contain most of the words or phrases from the original.

...includes all minor details from original.

...is clearer to the reader than the original text.

...restates the thesis.

...is usually longer than the original.

in the following poems...

I have sourced language from articles or books that I have read, and, in some cases, reports from a world disaster alert service, to craft the appearance of a poem. I have done this in a manner that a rhythm is allowed to come through, reinforced by line-breaks, without being concerned with conveying the original message of the source language.

I am subverting the message, most often, and that is where my role as a poet comes into play.

God is not dead

When I was a teenager,and … the world was soon to end,He could describe the afterlife,the fate of Hitler’s soul.

He was an intelligent and amiable man,a teacher and a scholar,a source of spirituality and transcendence,tolerance and love,charity and good works.

The natural world,let alone a world beyond nature,for better or worse,define[d] religion as billions of peopleunderstand and practice it.

When asked for details,Woody Allen once said,“I don’t want to achieve immortalitythrough my work.”

But America is an anomaly, isn’t it?isolated from the intellectualprogress made by the rest of the world.

Finally, consider scientists,but not by a huge amount,no mealy-mouthed evasionssuch as “I believe in the totalityof all that exists” said yesto a belief in this kind of God.

These facts are an embarrassment,soon to be erodedin evolutionary biology,cognitive neuroscience,and developmental psychology.

The Performance

As a preparation for the [recital],all the fires in the villagewere extinguished, and the ashesswept clean away.

[The poet] mimics the effects of serotoninby providing an alternatealgorithm of processingsensory stimuli.

The sanctity attributed to the personsof <insert point of authority> in <insert nation>naturally extended also to their [poets], whichon the primitive view are hardly separablefrom the <insert superstitious constituent of consciousness>of their owners.

The means by which they were supposedto effect this end were imitationand sympathy.

If we find it hard to throw ourselveseven in fancy into a mental[hospital] in which such thingsseem possible, we can more easilypicture ourselves the anxietywhich the savage, when he first beganto lift his thoughts above the [algorithm]of his merely animal wants, and to meditateon the [process] of things, may have felt asto the continued operation of whatwe now call the laws of nature.

Even tribes which do nottill the ground sometimesobserve analogous [recitals]when they gather the first wildfruits or dig the first rootsof the season.

The sight once seen can never beforgotten, but we turnfrom it and pursueour way darkling.

This page intentionally left blank

Translator’s Backward

to read it as a challenge: to pry open the vacant spacesSome might call that promiscuous.Out of habit, purely out of habitthere exists a “secret link constituted bythe critique of negativity,the cultivation of joy,an affectionate study of “an enemy”precisely dated, but can be readin any orderby “good” sense, of rocklike identity,“universal” truth, and (white male) justice.as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what amountsto the same thing, an immaculate conception.

“Philosophy, nothing but philosophy.” Of a bastard line.

To Scrabble Or Not To

I want to unpack what it means to be “good at”language. The bad feelings come fromthinking, well okay, yeah. This is obvious: to beimproving your Scrabble score is to memorize wordsin a way that can be oppressive,what I’m calling “smart-ass” words.

In order to be good at Scrabble,valued by society atlarge,establishes a binary:soccer or poker,“good spelling” and “large vocabulary”,to be alist of words that are “valid,”some other words have to be “invalid.”

a harmful binarythat exists in the real worldwhat kinds of English areconsidered “correct” and “incorrect,”people who use languagedifferently, who have “low” literacy, are “stupid” or “lazy”

a good move in Scrabble is saying more than “I’m a betterScrabble player than you.” It’s saying “I’m a better person than you.” a harmful form of privilege.

spelling is not real.spelling is the way that itisrelatively contemporaryreforms wereessentially arbitrarylogical,aesthetic and politically expedientaccess tospelling is obstructed along any number of axes.

proving howsmart you are has a long historyand so it continues today—

Adharma

literally, the worldswell-versed in … wealthdesiring the benefits of Dharma with evil intellectcraving for the fruitand bliss immediatelyincrease the joy of the mind

in the future, no essenceof the good … is seen on earththe observation of those desiringthe great faultknowing whichthe mind becomes angry

A Drama

You must come out.Come out.That’s a beautiful image.What a beautiful image!A couple is about to break up.x and y are about to break up.I think it’s better that we break up.Then what have we been doing together for ten years ?I and you, here and there, now and a little while agoLook there it is, the proof I was looking for!Something for recording the voice?That’s a mic, like this one here.

This page is whiteand is not whitefrom there, it is gray.

What can be shown,cannot be said.

The Poets of Allah

They have already denied, but there willcome to them the newsof that which they used to ridicule,and that my breast will tightenand my tongue will not be fluent,so send for … sin, we are with you,listening, the messengersof the worlds, I did it, then,while I was of those astray,is this a favorof which you remind me?

“Do you not hear?your ‘messenger’who has been sentto youis mad”

He drew out his hand,suddenly,it was a serpent manifest,a learned magician,to drive youout of your landby his magic.

“Throw whateveryou will throw.”

No harm.

“Travel by night.”

Be pursued.

“We worship idols and remainto them devoted,we found our fathers doing thus,ancient forefathers,enemies to you,cause you to dieand then bring me to lifeplace me among the Gardenwith a sound heart.”

Deviators,all together,dispute therein,in manifest error,denied the messengers,followed by the lowest class.

“Strike, strike as tyrants,gardens and springs,affected by magic,hamstrung, regretful,a people transgressing,upon them a rainand evil was the rain,[for] companions of the thicketweigh with an even balanceamong the liars,the day of the blackcloud seized themin a clear Arabic language;scriptures of former peoples,enraging us, a cautious society,removed … from gardens and springs,pursued at sunrise,you’ll drowned the others.”

Are you impatient,availed by the enjoyment?

Lower your wing,when you arise.

Your movementis the hearing,the knowing,in every valleythey roam,those who have wrongedare going to knowto what returnthey will bereturned.

It happens that you doubt

You doubt

A sentence is not emotional a paragraph is

If two sentences make a paragraph alittle piece is alrightbecause they are betterapart

When it is thereit is out there.

This is a sentiment not a sentence.

Sentences make one sigh.

Never ask any one what a sentence is or what it has been.

This is a simple meaning.

A sentence says you know what I mean.

And a phrase

The outrage of selecting phrases from Gertrude Stein’s text: I utilize them,make them servean argument. a discourse that subjugatesphrases, that fills the abyssesin “my” text, separatesand unites themfrom afar.

In Stein’s text, a phrase is one time,an event, it happens. The anxietythat this will not start up again,that Being will cometo a halt, distends the paragraphs.

I doubt

There has been a phrase

There has been a phrase / follows / I doubt

There has been …follows …

Languageis this and thatand this is languageand so on

What is not doubtful?

There is no phraseis a phrase.

I lieis a phrase

What do I know?

Dubiety

errorist tackofficial sour sad13 people we killedand to others we injuredon Tuday mo[u]rning when men pen fire at tree hic in War province.

cord to a state sued by he prov[e] over, a groupof med men hot he ices, leaving 13 asses dadand to wound. he me[a]nt de[a]d hat a womanas a mon[k] he ceased an er n[u]n-ear o sonon bard a us as [c]ured.

he hooting i dent cured in [d]aft ab ality ofay bad strict on he man rod inking a bulto and a h[e]r [w]ince. he jur[y] vit im we rushdto spit or merge eat men. s f p[a]ss time, no du[e]lor ou ha clai med cre dit or he tack.

MAIDAN SHAR

Three persons have died and around530 people affected by foodpoisoning in Assam’sBarpeta district afterconsuming ‘prasad’at a religious event.

There have been three newoutbreaks of high-pathH5N2 in poultryin Taiwan, affecting morethan 56,000domesticbirds.

Seventeen people were injured whenthe flooring of an ancestral housein Liliw town in Lagunacollapsed amid feast dayrevelry on Thursday (19).

Disaster, Like This Is

About 2,000 migrating snow geeseapparently diedof aviancholera in the MudLake and MarketLake wildlife managementareas, the IdahoDepartment of Fish and Gamesaid Monday (16).

A suspected case of avian influenzahas been identified in poultryin Arkansas, the third-largestU.S. turkey producer and hometo Tyson Foods Inc,the nation’s biggest chickencompany.

A large number of deadfish and a dead dolphinhave washed upon the beaches ofthe Outer Banksover the pastfew days.

The threat of an avianflu outbreak forcedthe UttarPradesh governmentto sound an alerton Saturday (14).

Health officials in Queensland,Australia, issued an alertto local media and the publicon Wednesday (11)after doctors determined a man was a measles patient.

Suwel Sung and Liyong Siyang,masterminds, sent beggingSi Yang Sin, Sun Bautan,Si Dong Shing and Yang Sun Chinfrom a house they had rented outin Kollupitiya, obstructing the peoplenear the Fort Railway Station.

Arrested by the Fort Police,Fort Magistrate was toldthey had committeda punishable offenceunder section 3(1)of the Vagrants Ordinance,and charged themwith a fineof Rs 100each.

Made In China

The mind of an artist is an open, dissipative systemwhich absorbs information from the external worldand producesentropywhich could take the formof an artwork.

Self-organizing processesin the brain of an artistcreate ideasand emotionswhich, by meansof the artist’s brush strokesare transferredon canvascreating”higher organization of meaning in the work of art”.

It is not necessary to knowwhich work of art is originalas long there is another art workfor comparisonfrom the aspect of originalityand creativity.

The Artists Who Forged Themselves

The actualfunctioning of a paintingor a piece of music is all mental,and the artist’s strivingtoward orderlinessis guidedby the perceptual pulls and pusheshe observes within the workwhile shaping it.

Creating and viewing visual artare both nonlinear experiences.

Creating a work of art is an irreversible processinvolvingincreasing levels of complexityand unpredictable events.

This familiar deskmanifestsits presenceby resistingmy pressuresand by deflectinglight to myeyes.

Entification beginsat arm’s length –in thisthere is little causefor wonder –through the observablemouthing of words,the things in sharpest focusare the things that are public enoughto be talked of publicly,to be talked of often,to be quickly identified and learned by name;each of us learnshis languagefrom other people.

Of Depicting Matters

A derivative idiom,as like that of rotten eggs,resorts to reference to public things,as one sees his nose best in a mirror,reflecting in external objectsin all their innocence of interpretation.

The motivating insightguidedby the same sort of knowledgethat prompts it.

in the heartof forestsclear[ed]a householderis founda[n] … other … lifestage … not enforcedthe ideal of … restraint

The Highest Spiritual Ideal

you who are possessedcome to this calamityboth stable and movingfollow virtuous vowswicked ones, uselessterrible, calamitousgood deeds tied, killed

what can it do?it is killedand it kills the otherit is invisible

O destroyer of enemiesthe Dharma abandons the weaklingand follows the powerful

So abandon the Dharmaas your fatherwho was dishonestand devoidof compassion

The Creator