ELEVENTH HOUR FLASH

The head mechanic's guillotine
Where my car engine is hanging
Is hanging my car engine by the head
Its bolts and nuts, seals, and joints
Interspersed all around
Its apertures agape
Bleeding dead lubricants.
With his hand of iron
The head mechanic securely framed by the right hand
Is firmly securing
The center-slanting iron carcass
Into new middle ground.
Said she before he got
The chop-ahead sign
"You know, iron brother,
I can't make head or hose of us
But why bother to comprehend
The local structure of the act
Where the means justify the end;
Dispose of me wherever
You deem fit to
Dispose of yourself:
We are both expendable".

BETRAYAL

With the palm of your hands

Amidst the cries of seagulls

and the deafening thunder

You could barely holler  

Your voice lost in the brouhaha.

I paddled my way to you

Despite the tumult

And against practice

I reached out

And by any measures

I delivered…

As the scribe later penned the bond

The waves and the clouds and the moon far up

Bore witness to our deed

Only to realize

Ten cycles later

It was mere theater

To be replayed

On other random stages.

Ali H. Raddaoui

10/19/2019

AUGURIES

I asked a small bird
Barely a few weeks old
A novice still at wing fluttering
And water diving
Who migrated from
His hatching place up north
In the mountains and trees
Ever humming the song of birth
Where home was.

"Wherever I roam is my home"
He said, panting,
Awkwardly palming
Behind the flock.
"Every sport,
- Liquid or rock -
And wherever a birds' eye view is caught
Is a nest I cherish
And an instant where I flourish
I know of nothing
You call jet lag
I'm all the time zones of the world
I've been and will be to.

Yet,
The one spot
I wanna rot
Is the one
Where I was hatched."

RAPPELLE-TOI CELESTE

Rappelle-toi Céleste
Des contrées qu’on a traversées
Entre le nord et le sud-est
Des collines qu’on a grimpées
À la recherche d’un instant
Des amonts sous lesquels
Nous avons tous les deux édifié un recours
Des mots qu’on a tissés de part et d’autre
De nos rencontres
L’eau qu’on s’est partagée
Au milieu du désert
Rappelle-toi Céleste
Ne me dis pas que le temps est plus fort
Que la vie à des manières inédites
D’éteindre les murmures
De faire ensevelir les mémoires
D’enterrer les pistils et les fleurs
Céleste, chérie;
Jette un coup d’oeil sur le trajet
Qui sait quel serait son concours
Pour toi, et pour les images
Qu’on a peintes sur la toile de ce parcours
Qui est le nôtre
Quand j’étale le bagage que nous portions
Tous les deux, l’un et l’autre
Ses couleurs, ses refrains, ses odeurs
Ses promesses et ses lueurs
J’aperçois un soupçon de ce qui fut.
Merci tout de même pour les mots
Les gouttes d’eau, les traversées
Et les mémoires
Au revoir.

WHAT ON EARTH OVERTOOK THOSE CLOUDS

What on earth overtook those clouds

Happily fluttering in the sky

On this special summer day

And wrapping the heights near and far

And stroking with their sea breeze

The landscape all around

And the twenty-seven trees

Shading this abode in the middle of nowhere

So much so that the skylarks

Thought it early autumn

And went a-fetching twigs and sticks

From last summer’s crops

To build their nests

And prepare for mating

Come December...

Whatever overtook

Those clouds

Fizzling out in the heat of the day

Without a moment’s notice?

THE TRUTH CARTEL IS FALLING DOWN: WHAT TO DO?

PLENARY SPEECH

Venue: Higher Institute for Applied Studies in Humanities of Tunis, Tunisia

Occasion: 2^nd International Conference on Truth and (Mis)Information

Language: English

Date: 04/12/2019

Length: 0:45. Size:

Media Type: mp4 (please scroll down below the summary to view)

Summary: How knowledge is constructed and whose truth is received have always constituted the focus of human endeavor in the fields of social sciences as elsewhere. However, the proliferation of knowledge-making paradigms, now accelerated by ease of publication and dissemination on cyberspace, has yielded a state of extreme relativization and erosion of what was traditionally canonized as truth and knowledge. The current landscape amounts to a collapse of the knowledge cartel and calls for an examination of the status quo, in order to theorize it and to delineate the lines of corrective or preemptive action. This presentation starts off by identifying and explaining the traditional rivalries between two major cannons of knowledge production, namely the scientific and interpretive paradigms. The next step will be the description and analysis of the effects of the technologically-mediated, web-based, social-media paradigm on the domain of knowledge construction. Preliminary analysis reveals a host of gains emanating from this paradigm shift, with attributes of democratization of de-commodification of knowledge assets, and an evening of the playing field allowing more users to contribute their versions of reality. A more sinister take on this shift will be described as one leading the academy, society, and the world into a state of chaos obtaining from lack of distinction between what truth and knowledge are, and what they are not. The final leg of the presentation suggests the lines of action which can be initiated by individuals and institutions to offset the effects of the coming destabilization and loss of meaning.  

Keywords: Knowledge, Truth, Post-Truth, paradigm shift, social media

ON SISYPHUS'S ROCK

Whoever said
One should envision
Sisyphus merry
Rolling the rock
Back to the top
Of the Rockies
Week in week out
Can go
Eat schist.