Operating Instructions For Plants

not hanford nuclear plants
mind you

filled with radio
active frequency shifts 
seeping, bleeding 
55 milion barrels

of spent uranium

plutonium fool fuels

130 feet down into through

to Columbia River 
water table
transparent tables
where drowning skeletons devour 
questions 

old fears sifting
healthy dust, no.

these plants evolved in northwest 

Podocarpus, ‘maki’ loves some direct sun
needs to be in east winter window.

Ficus nerifolia, ‘willow leaf ficus’ bonsai
east window
watching for summer sunburn
likes dry air, misting is helpful.

Asparagus plumosus,
 ‘plumosa fern’
needs south window
during darker months
don’t water when soil still feels wet.

Dracaena compact will tolerate lower light
trim back to encourage branching.

writing, sex and censorship #301

A Chinese computer science professor received a 3.5 year sentence for "crowd licentiousness."  This is vague government wordage. It covers crowds. It covers licenses. It means a crowd gets together and applies for a license. In this case with broad overtones they applied for a license to swap identities.

He led informal swinger clubs for partner swapping. He pleaded innocent. "I had nothing to do with the North Korean submarine attack in an apartment with eighteen people. I was only the middleman. I was formatting my hard drive and downloading data."

He was charged under Criminal Law 301. 

A Chinese academic said...“I feel that the thought process of the Chinese authorities is always to try to manage and control the population, the people. Beyond prosecuting criminal activities, they feel they have to control or manage people to their standards.” read more...

Turkey also has an infamous Article 301 law. This law makes it illegal to insult Turkey, Turkish ethnicity or Turkish government institutions.

Turkey's imprisoned 49 journalists, Iran 45 and China 32 as of December 2012.

Writers Orhan Pamuk, Noam Chomsky, Elif Safak, among others have been charged under this article. All the cases were either dropped or acquitted.

A spoiled young girl in Ankara was recently arrested and charged under Article 301 for insulting her mother's cooking.

"I hate Turkish food. Too many tomatoes. I don't want black olives. I don't want fresh salad. I don't want fresh seafood from the Marmara Sea. I want Italian pizza with extra cheese please squeeze." 

Her mother said, "Eat what I give you. Hurry up. I'm late for my wife swapping seminal seminary with binary logic."

It was thrown out for lack of evidence.

Number 301 is very popular. The number of words mating and swapping with other words is increasing. Words remove an article of clothing like a, an, the.

Burma
 

China

China

Turkey

wandering words

There are so many messages I can't interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange,
orange, in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.

How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?

Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so the shepherd has to
go climbing up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy
in his chest until he spies them off there under

that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.
 - Patricia Fargnoli
Pastoral
Then, Something
zen humanism
journal of a nobody
a poet reflects

tomita park, asahikawa

enter 
face 
stone basin water temple
clap hands three times

throw water
on grey stone guardian lions

red, orange, yellow leaves
fall 

into sky mirror reflections
escaping fresh snow dust 

old people shuffle along earth path
wearing intricate kimonos

designed by
stone 

Asahikawa loom creators 
weave wool season colors
into old mountain fabrics 

protecting brown bear families 
preparing their winter solitude

bow low 
o mountains
o west wind
o glorious lions 
at the entrance 

 

Cross a border

I’m sitting in the air conditioned nightmare of an office and the maintenance chief comes by and tells me a little story.

He’s worried. He’s married to a woman from Mexico living here illegally. She migrated to the Pacific Northwest supporting herself doing migrant labor. Picking fruit. Delicious apples.

They met through friends, dated and got hitched. She doesn’t speak Engish and now they pay a lawyer BIG BUCKS to handle her immigration case getting exercise jumping through INS hoops and she’s preparing to head south and the chief’s afraid to death she will cross the border and never return.

In Mexico she broke down after her first husband, depressed about lack of work, sat down in front of her one night, opened a bottle of rubbing alcohol and drank the whole thing. He started foaming at the mouth, went into spasms and died in her arms as his liver broke down. 

That’s why she left.