by Heathcote Williams

http://thisfragiletent.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/rat.jpg ?w=497&h=375

Rats are beating us
In a competition that
We’ve now dropped out of.
‘And what might that be ?
Why would we compete with rats ?
For food ? for water ?
Spreading diseases ?
Performing on a treadmill
As it spins around ? ’

None of the above.
It’s empathy.  Compassion.
They’re in the lead there,
For they’ll always help
Another rat in distress.

Even when something
Else, like chocolate —
A rat’s favorite treat —
Is offered instead.
A rat will spurn it
To help another escape —
They’ll worry away
At a little door
And open it from outside,
Until the trapped rat
Is liberated.

Then, when it’s been freed,
The pair seem to dance.
The rat that’s released
Will then follow the other
One round for hours
Licking it, to show
Its appreciation.

When a rat baby
Cries, other infant
Rats, the babies in the nest,
Will cry out in sympathy.

Rats give their children
Toys to play with, bits of stick.
All of these reactions
Show the rat has a
Neuro – biological
Mandate to help rats.
It’s rat altruism.

Rat poison doesn’t
Fool them, they’re intelligent;
Not nightmare robots.

The street activist, Charlie
Of the Love Police,
Set up a series
Of human experiments

In the financial
District of London.
He appeared to have a knife
Sticking in his chest.

Spread – eagled in the street,
He looked as if he was dead.
Blood was oozing out.
A friend filmed the experiment:
The passers – by ignored Charlie.
They were on their way
To their offices.
They left Charlie where he was.
Money and mortgages trumped
Saving someone’s life;
The passers – by chose chocolate
Over helping someone. 

Could this perhaps prove
That in a profit – driven
Economy like ours
Compassion is rare
Since it slows things down ?

Yes, rats’ll leave sinking ships
But that’s common sense;
Humanity’s so – called ‘rat – race’
Seems to slander rats.

Social cohesion
In cockroaches is tight too:
They don’t borrow money
To fight wars, only to be crushed
By debt mountains.

Rats and cockroaches
Test our comfort zones . . .
It’s best that we despise them
To know who we are.
Though, of course, we’re them . . .

In the year 2000,
Chinese scientists
Unearthed a fossil
125 million years old.

They gave it a name,
‘Eomaia Scansoria’
Or Dawn Mother.

This tiny tree – rat
Was a placental rodent —
A cunning, and curious
Tree – hugging shrew
Which, when it was free
Of dinosaur predators,
Turned into us.

We were rats once.
Now we’re ex – rats —
Self – hating ex – rats,

While Rattus Rattus,
The unevolved rat,
May be the happiest in its own skin
And see human revulsion
As laughable.

Rats can laugh.
Tickling them, and slowing down
Their vocalizations reveals laughter:
High pitched sounds of enjoyment.

Rats then follow the hand that tickles them,
And nudge it until it tickles them again.
Rats can get us to make them laugh.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/09/study – shows -lab – rats – would – rather – free – a – friend – than – eat – chocolate/

by Andrei Codrescu

Exile is the most radical form of translation
writes Calin – Andrei Mihailescu in “Happy New Fear”
an English – titled book in Romanian
that will never be translated into English
excepting the above line because Calin
writes in rhapsodic idiomatic punning lingo
in a Romanian resembling a wolf with seven teats
from which hang the other seven languages he is
Romulus and Remus – type pups ready to build cities
I mean essays about time – travel in the tunnel
between languages that I have traveled myself
a few times but didn’t really frequent like Calin
who has a sleeping bag there and knows all the bums
some of whom are fashion models he writes odes to
many of them Czech who have read Hrabal and Kundera
and can sleep anywhere if the stories are funny
and so yes translation is just how one lives with oneself
from minute to minute from home to street from street
to office from office to the bar and to bed and in dreams
and each moment has its own language that puts it in the next
moment in another language made complicated by style
which is the design of alienation residing in orthography
or hesitant speech while translating oneself or others
thus to write on translation is to translate and to write
in language that cannot be translated is to be totally great
a state only Czech girls in sleeping bags can and do love

by David Bulbul

An outdoor wedding.

A summer evening.  Dinner.

Music.  Dancing.  And

someone’s gorgeous lusty wife.

A lusty poet.  Trouble.

by Ewa Chrusciel

I smuggle her hula hoop skirts.  Queen of the oven and drawers
stuffed with candy.  Hysteric who chased us with hunks of bread
upholstered in honey.  Czarina of household complaints, cicada
of suitors,
hippo of hypochondria, curator of covert farts.
Countess of church bazaars.  My posthumous bride
now interred in a vat of poppy seeds:
Babushka.  Grandma of flower pots dressed up in gold foil:

How can I find you again
in the bog of this world ?

This poem was written originally in Polish and then it was translated into English by Karen Kovacik and then mistranslated by me back into English.