First word for Alchemists of the Gods, vol II, by Derrick Gaskin

First Word

When Israel was in Egypt land,

Let my people go,

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let my people go. - negro spiritual

In Exodus (7:16) the God of the Hebrews says, "Let my people go." Yahweh is telling Moses to go to the pharaoh and to pass on the message, which is: let the Israelites out of bondage, let them migrate out of Egypt. The subsequent Exodus has been dealt with in Book One of Children of Israel (Sections 4 and 9) so the quest of this the second book is to test the validity of not only the Old Testament account of the Exodus but also the claim that the Israelites were in fact Hebrews.

Book One gives among other things a chronological history of the Hebrews, Israelites, Jews and Israelis. When dealing with the Hebrews and Israelites the main source was the Old Testament. When the Jews entered the story after the Babylonian exile again the Old Testament was referred to but it was also possible to verify much of this history by looking at the records of other cultures, races and nations. The Israelis needed no such verification, only the way that Zionists interpret their own Bible and their own history was questioned. In other words Book One was mainstream in that it used sources that are accepted by a majority, its conclusions were a concensus using the views and findings of scores of writers that were Atheists, Christians, Muslims or Jews. Having said that Book One was subjective and biased in favour of the Jews who were subjected to horrific abuse by Church and state for nearly two thousand years but Book One also put forward the case for the Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Book Two is not mainstream and uses very little Establishment history. Book Two is not interested in a winner's view of history, of state manipulation of events, but relies more on the history of ordinary people - on the opinions of the masses. Also, Book Two is not an attack on the Bible, per se  but in the manner of many Jews and Israelis the Old Testament is put under the microscope. Towards the New Testament, Christianity and Islam there is ambivalence. Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria "edited" the New Testament in 367CE, which is suspicious but many archaeological finds have substantiated the writers of the Christian bible - archaeology has given substance to the final Gospel, many places mentioned by John could have been put down to John's imaginative mind but recent excavations in Jerusalem (the pool of Bethesda John 5:2) have proved that this site exists in reality, not just inside the Fourth Gospel.

 The very meaning of the word Islam is "submission"; let no outsider forget this - one who is in a state of Islam or submission to the One True God cannot be judged by atheists, Jews or Christians. If Zionists of the 19th and 20th centuries had given just 1% of their 100% effort in establishing a colonial state in Palestine to understanding Islam there would not be the amount of violence in the Middle east there is today.

i

The blame does not rest solely on Zionists but also on the British cabinet who knew  that their foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, was biased in favour of the Zionists but  prejudiced against the indigenous Arabs in Palestine. The French, the Russians, the League of Nations, the United Nations and also the USA - all must take responsibility for the subsequent nightmare in the Middle east. In addition there was the Holocaust, an unholy tragedy for millions of Jews but for Europe a quickly executed Hail Mary to expiate its State and Church guilt by allowing the formation of an unnatural State of Israel in the legitimate homeland of the Palestinians. Also following in the footsteps of the Sykes-Picot agreement the west were able to have some control over the Middle east, via the westernised Israelis. Oil in Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and Iraq is like a drug for the west. They can never get enough of it but it is locked beneath Arab land; the idea being for the USA to invade an Arab state then allow the Israelis to colonise it as they have done in Palestine. At the moment America has only a footprint in the desert sand. Soon they hope for a jack boot on the Muslim neck.

However, the wealthy bubble of prosperity in the west is being prodded and poked by "terrorism" in the twenty-first century. But the attack on the twin towers and the Chechnya freedom fighters backlash against Russia are logical consequences of the state terrorism of both America and Russia in the twentieth century: American terrorism against the Vietnamese people as well as their military and espionage strategy against central and south America, Iraq and Palestine - the USA has sown the wind and now reaps the whirlwind; Russia has tormented Hungary and Czechoslavakia and now (fatally for Russia) Chechnya. Chechens have always hated the Russians - Putin and his stormtroopers must now pay the piper. The state terrorism of the Israel Defence Force is a world-wide legend but for Palestinians it means exile, bulldozed homes, imprisonment without trial, massacres, assassinations, curfews and starvation, and especially the killing of women, children and babies - their homeland turned into Hell itself. Therefore Israelis cannot complain at the Palestinian backlash, what the Syrian president compared to the freedom fighters of France who fought the Nazis: the guerrillas of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah etc.

Book Two examines the ancient world and its legacy for modern civilisation. What has it given us? In its last will and testament it gave us the potential for democracy, freedom and dignity - inevitably this has been squandered by the powerful, the privileged and the wealthy. We now live on a planet divided by wealth. Those who own the west also have designs on the Third World. But the underprivileged have rebelled into what the controllers of governments and the governments of control call terrorism. If terrorism is defined as actions against civilian populations then few governments on this planet can plead innocent to this accusation. Nevertheless whether it is the firing of a cruise missile or the detonation of a bomb, all killings of civilians are acts of murder. Collateral damage is no excuse, few massacres are unintentional. Each one of us makes a choice. Which side are you on - peace seekers or war mongers, the innocent or the guilty?

Introduction to Alchemists of the Gods, by Derrick Gaskin

First Word - more of a dust jacket than a synopsis

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. - Martin Niemoller

This book is an oblique look at the cosmos, the aim being to fathom out this child of the universe, the animal called Man. The current view of Creation is the Big Bang, which we are told was a violent event as was the formation and development of Earth, our memories and actions shaped by chaotic eruptions.  Within these pages Israelites become one of many tribes surviving by fighting, killing and occupying land where other people lived - Hebrews and Jews a chronological river on which many ideas are floated; the Fertile Crescent and especially Palestine merely backdrops before which humans swarm over the rest of the world. Abraham and his Old Testament ancestors lived in a region where cities, towns and villages were already established, Judaism evolving from ancient social, religious and economic patterns. Hebrews became part of these elements, having little effect on the growth or formation of human society as Israelite traditions and Jewish culture grew from Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian and a host of other civilisations. From Moses receiving the Decalogue to rabbis compiling the Talmud, all were merely spin doctors, alchemists transmuting pagan gods and ancient beliefs into the one untarnishable deity of Yahweh.

After Bar Kokhba's (Simeon ben Kosevah's) revolt (132-135AD) Jews lost control over Judaea (Palestine) for nearly 2000 years but even before that Israelites and Jews were only sojourners in Canaan where the indigenous population had existed for a hundred thousand years. In the mythical world of the Bible King Solomon was a murderer who not only killed enemies but also friends, colleagues and relatives. Solomon's kingdom survived by selling Israelites into virtual slavery and when he died his nation fell apart - arguably, this is when history began. The northern territory became Israel, which lasted for just two centuries until Assyria abolished this first state of Israel, giving birth to the legend of the "ten lost tribes." All that remained of Solomon's empire was Judah, which fell to the Babylonians in 587BC. Israel was not reinvented until 1948 when Zionists drove Arabs from their homeland as Israelites had done before in the folklore of Joshua, Saul and David.

Using mythical and historical events and following the diaspora it has been possible to suggest, assert and record not only how history has shaped Judaism but the manner in which Jews have contributed to the literature and culture of Europe and the New World; without Judaism Christianity would not exist and Islam could not have evolved into its present form. For a hundred generations Jews have been harassed, persecuted and massacred by both State and Church. Many individual gentiles also stand accused of anti-Semitism. Consequently these horrendous experiences and unforgiveable memories have evolved into a continual holocaustum involving innocent Palestinians and other Arab nations. Palestinians may be innocent but that does not mean that some Israelis are necessarily guilty. Like the rest of us Arabs and Jews are beholden to primitive laws. We all belong to the same savage tribe.

  DJG 2002

What is poetry?

Worthwhile poetry is never manufactured in minutes. Outstanding poetry takes years of experience and study, which then, sometimes(!) culminates in a work of art. It is true that many if not most of the great poems written by masters of poetry would have come from a single idea or even one word. Yes, the first line would have been written down quickly but then worked on as a first draft. However, later the original would be revised several times over a period of days – and sometimes years. Dylan Thomas wished that he had had the time to go back over his poetry to revise and improve it further but he was too busy writing newer and what would turn out to be even better creations!

Poetry is like any other artform, totally artificial – perhaps a better word would be synthetic. There is nothing wrong with that. Poetry does not grow naturally on trees like autumn leaves (which can evoke a very poetic vision) and without the human race on this planet would never evolve from the handful of letters and thousands of words or symbols that make up each language into a poem. It’s like going into a field day after day with a skip full of bricks and tipping them onto the grass – in a million years they will not form a house. A dictionary will never become a poem without a wordsmith concentrating with single-minded purpose on shepherding these lonely words into a concise image or flock of images.

Poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and the playwright’s stage are all synthetic; architecture, the theatre and orchestral works being not only fabrications but are (as someone has observed) art by committee – the architect, scriptwriter and composer depending on others to transform the original idea into a finished work. Poetry (and to a lesser extent, sculpture and painting) on the other hand is the product of one person’s imagination that has been fired up by an experience or the actions of another person. Inspiration, there is no other word for it, turns the act of creating a poem into a war, a battle with words that are sometimes the poet’s friend yet very often turn against the writer and become the enemy resulting in deep disappointment. To turn these twenty-six little soldiers of lead (harking back to the days of the hand compositor) into words that are then arranged like an army bent on only one mission is not easy. Expressing a human emotion or feeling into something that can be read by another person in a concise yet poetic form is a challenge. The difference between poetry and prose is that even poetic novels are too long to have sudden impact, whereas the poem, especially the sonnet and other short verse forms, can hit the reader’s mind like an axe.

Poets have a responsibility to the past, the present and the future. We are merely handing on Greek and Persian traditions – maybe even fragments of the ancient Hittite culture - while at the same time remaining true to the present age and being conscious of how the future will judge us. Before writing the first word of a poem it would be a nice gesture to think about the thousands and millions of writers that have gone before us. To respect them is to respect your self and your own mind as you forge one smaller link in a very long chain.

Derrick Gaskin

ttruk: Four poems from, The Common Women, by Derrick Gaskin, ISBN 0-906369-24-X

ttruk: Four poems from, The Common Women, by Derrick Gaskin, ISBN 0-906369-24-X

Four poems from, The Common Women, by Derrick Gaskin, ISBN 0-906369-24-X

THE POET GOES TO PRISON

I

Immeasurably heavy decibels

Shaking the earth with throat thick hands of night.

Bone-white, the motorway is out of sight,

Rattling the moon’s shield brightly as it dulls

The owl’s cry: multi-axles, running down

Blackness with squirts of headlight foam, flooding

And extinguishing stars, still flickering

Like diamonds on a dark velvet gown.

Hemming the fields, elf-high mist levitates,

Hovering, bowing low, preparing dawn

Before Corsican pines. These refugees:

Transported, driven from their homeland states;

Forced against the native oak, hacked and sawn,

Not asking, which road brings us to our knees?

II

The crowd which numbers, perhaps two hundred,

Has gathered in a special anger.

As yet without expression, this hatred

Has kept hands in their pockets. A languor,

Waiting and searching for confirmation

That contained violence is normal,

Aware that any sudden elation

Simmering in their eyes, is criminal.

At last there is overwhelming relief:

The molester is brought before their screams,

Within reach of their justice. So, this thief

Who has stolen a yearning in their dreams

Must be punished. Tongues lash at the crowd’s lip

As it surges forward, curved like a whip.

WATERCOLOUR CHRIST

In delicate pastel the painting,

Untainted by the world’s depth,

Is complete. Yet there is a devilish

Temptation to fling

A crimson hung cloth

On His naked skin. A flourish,

                  

A brush, over the glass;

A scarlet razored wine, drained

From the poor.

Now, the image appears

More, as a rich powerful god,

Enforcing His law,

Instead of this anaemic legend,

Which is not believed.

But there is faith of a kind,

As the ashen earth at the end

Of Winter is conceived,

Scattered, in the ageing mind.

When the gold of Autumn

Is spent and ragged trees

Shiver. Then the suffering

Dignified face in

The picture, makes these

Rich colours pale to nothing.

ARTICLES OF NIGHT

  

I live with wolves,

See eyes staring from within

Caves and know that soon I will

Belong to them – they who taste my eyes,

Tongues molten on my face, saliva on

My unhurried grave.

                  

When night is alone and cold

Bitter wind sulks in our room -

They return. Without words their meaning

Clear. With perfect tense, they

Have spoken. Understanding floods my skin,

Bloodwarm, their breath like fire.

Syntax correct,

Each rule observed, they converse.

Heads lowered, teeth bared,

Minute sounds gathered, indefinite

And definite, their communion

Speechless.

Night is articulate, quiet.

Unnatural soft paws enter,

Without disturbing fear;

Trapped, between darkness and dawn

Grey skies are calm like dust.

I my own victim

Agree:

There are no words.

They also are silent.

Their white light muted coats

Predominate, their eyes

Going to earth.

THE RETURNING

  

Distraught, the spirit of Winter

Is broken, an earthly skin cracks

Into snowbell and crocus.

The sun

High, on wild scent,

The yellow archangel dissembles.

Promiscuous wheat is large

With Autumn’s child. Eagles

Have their way with the wind;

Their soliloquy of flight

A chosen claw,

An impartial judgement.

A gathering

Of frivolous seed

And sheaves of gentle promise.

The sun

Low, on broken fields;

A barren wind

And black wings shiver,

Remember,

A bare haunted land.

Derrick Gaskin

SNARL-UP ON THE A128

Eventually things will change

On this narrow overworked road.

In April there is always a tractor load

Of chopped logs and the strange

Slow convoy of vehicles, snorting

At the trailer’s rear.

But the seasons, also predictable,

Travel with ease, unhindered

By men and their cluttered

Lives; Spring leading small

Children by the hand and revealing

The Summer fields.

Showing them that here, for a time,

Is youth. Where mistakes, easily made,

Are quickly erased; where the old are laid,

Creaking with error, unable to climb

Through the altering jungle

Of new ideas.

Possibly this, an immobile invitation

To an Essex day,

Will become the perfect memory.

Dry leaves of old Autumn on

The moist young grass, lying

Like dead Romeos,

Under balconies of flowering cherries,

Over generous in a blush of pink, waving

And curtsying to birds who, perching

And searching like desperate memories,

Examine without hope the brief forever

Of petalled faces.

Derrick Gaskin