The Concrete Tomb of Hradzka

Sometimes there's one who wants to go back.
Sometimes there's two. Men. Women. Boys. Girls.
You quiet them sometimes. You have that knack.
But you know all too well: not each seed makes a pearl.
This one won't listen. The way of the world.
God would not give you too heavy a load.
Follow the gourd. Remember the girl
forced by her brothers to turn from the road.

The tremors still plague you. They'll go. They'll come back.
Arms and legs locked, with your head all awhirl,
dead yet awake. Ever since your skull cracked
from the weight that was thrown -- oh, not at you, girl,
but it hit all the same. And that's a slave's world.
Sent back to the field, even as the blood flowed.
Follow the gourd. Go on, for the girl
forced by her brothers to turn from the road.

Harriet, know: he'll be put on the rack.
He knows where you've been. What plans were unfurled.
Men, paderollers, will be on your track.
You went underground to forge a free world.
The gun that you stole, with its handle of pearl,
is there, in your hand. The metal is cold.
Follow the gourd. Fight hard, for the girl
forced by her brothers to turn from the road.

This coward would run. You'll suffer no churl.
Pay him his coin. He deserves what he's owed.
Follow the gourd. For you were the girl
forced by her brothers to turn from the road.

Just in case you were sleeping peacefully: an excellent round-up of January 10 anti-Israeli protests that turned nasty.

¤ In London, protesters physically attacked police officers with unrestrained abandon and no fear of arrest;
¤ In Copenhagen, Hamas supporters screamed in public that they want to kill all Jews;
¤ In Calgary, neo-Nazis marched alongside leftists and Muslim extremists, in a grand coalition of anti-Semites;
¤ In Los Angeles, a car full of Israel-supporters barely escaped serious harm when an enraged mob tried to attack them;
¤ In Duisburg (Germany), police broke into a private home and tore down a flag displaying a Star of David, to appease stone-throwing protesters;
¤ In Belfast, an Israel-owned mall kiosk was surrounded and menacingly harrassed;
…to name just a few, as you will see in the reports listed below.

Of these, two are of particular concern to me: the one in Calgary and the one in Los Angeles. And not just because they're near where I live. Neo-Nazis -- seriously, they call themselves the "Aryan Guard" -- showed up at the Calgary demonstration. And they marched. And the organizers let them. That tells me everything I need to know about the people who organized that rally, and I don't expect to ever see them quoted with respect in any mainstream publication. Ahhh, who'm I kidding? Nobody will remember this. Most interesting bit: the "anti-racist" organizations that protested the Aryan Guard when they marched on their own didn't raise one little peep of objection when they joined with this crowd. That tells me something about them, too.

And Los Angeles. There's video of this one. Watch it. After the crowd does some milling and chanting, a car pulls up. The car's occupants have an opposing political view. They've got an Israeli flag in the sunroof. The stoplight changes, so they're stuck in front of the crowd. And the members of the crowd start working themselves up to attack the car. The protest security guy repeatedly heads the most irate one off, thus barely preventing the mob effect. When the light changes, the car peels out. If it were me, I wouldn't have waited.

This protest, incidentally, was organized by the good Communists of International ANSWER, who also ran the protest where an attractive young woman told Jewish counter-protestors to go back to the ovens.

Ignore these people at your peril.