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A contemporary artist can use the findings of all epochs and all styles, from the most primitive literary expressions up to the most refined products of the baroque.

quote by Juan Goytisolo
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Dinner Menu Affected The Bedroom

Insecticides concentrated
in meat and fish cause sterility
Amyloid plaque from meat
and fish... cause senility
The animal fat in meat fish
and dairy
clogs the arteries
reducing sexual
ability
*

PREVENTION OF SEXUAL TRAUMA

Impotence And Animal Flesh

A. CONQUERING IMPOTENCE
Dr. Michael Klaper, Md, in a public speech mentioned that a 25 per
cent blockage of penile arteries from cholesterol (animal fat) accounts for a quadrupled lack of function. Elimination of animal products in many cases returns sexual function. The Physicians' Desk Reference lists sexual dysfunction or impotence as a byproduct of many psychiatric drugs.
(Dr. Klaper is available through archives and live discussion on the web
at
Drs. Neal Barnard MD and Chaitowitz both concurred in this opinion in an
article in May in the Montreal Gazette.
National Public Radio on Sept 9,98 hosted the author of a book on Prozac
who stated that 30 to 40% of users feel a loss of sensation sexually.
Viagra has been correlated to heart attacks. (Eli Lilly and Pfizer
make these 2 drugs.) Fox News reported June 10,98 that Viagra in combination
with nitrates such as sodium nitrate used to color hot dogs can be lethal.
Dr. Drew, MD, host of Loveline, stated one should research the many
antidepressants which cause impotence.
B. CURING BREAST CANCER
(See the Ohio file no.7 under Nonviolent Action for an analysis of
federal and state programs regarding breast cancer.)
The New England Journal of Medicine in November of 1997 stated that
animal fats which become trans-fatty acids are a cause of breast cancer.
The major cause of breast removal in the U.S.is animal products.
(The five countries with the highest rates of breast
cancer have the highest animal product consumption. They are
Scandinavian countries, the U.S. and one other. Women with mastectomies lose
none of their beauty, but they have
a difficult time adjusting. Elimination of the butyric acid in animal
products makes the body more fragrant.
(Other factors in sexual dysfunction are generalized anger, anger with
the partner, low self esteem, general exhaustion, female hormones in animal
products, etc.)
The dietary causes of breast cancer are both the animal products and the
female hormones given to the animals. The Dept. of Defense Health Section in
October did a symposium on the trans fatty acids found in animal products as
a cause of cancer.
The administration's plan to give 450 million dollars to the testing

[...] Read more

poem by O. Anna Niemus
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The mother and the artist

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of wonderfully emollient freshness; every
unfurling instant of impregnably magnificent existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of spellbindingly undefeated innocence; every
unfurling instant of symbiotically pristine existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of timelessly unconquerable truth; every unfurling
instant of bounteously magnanimous existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unfathomably unfettered creativity; every
unfurling instant of timelessly burgeoning existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of royally triumphant resplendence; every
unfurling instant of unconquerably majestic existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of eternally exhilarating vivaciousness; every
unfurling instant of redolently insuperable existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unbelievably ameliorating optimism; every
unfurling instant of marvelously benign existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of brilliantly liberated camaraderie; every
unfurling instant of iridescently inscrutable existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unshakably virgin righteousness; every
unfurling instant of beautifully untainted existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of uninhibitedly heavenly frolic; every unfurling
instant of tantalizingly sensuous existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of compassionately humanitarian friendship; every
unfurling instant of magically mitigating existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of miraculously everlasting freshness; every
unfurling instant of invincibly coalescing existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of pricelessly ubiquitous oneness; every unfurling

[...] Read more

poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Primitive Love

Primitive love
I want what it used to be, primitive love
No modern love, its all a hustle
Whats done is done, now its my turn to have some fun
Youre much to sly, dont give me alibis
I dont want to know, I dont want to know
Primitive love
I want what it used to be
I want it, primitive love
Primitivie love, I want what is used to be
I want what it used to be, primitive love
I want, I need, primtive love
You dont have to worry , I dont want your money
I dont have to think, right now youve got me at the brink
This is good-bye for all the times I cried
Dont want no more, dont want no more
Primitive love
I want what it used to be
I want it, primitive love
Primitivie love, I want what is used to be
I want what it used to be, primitive love
I want, I need, primitive love
Is it right, or is it wrong?
Primitive drums call me backward into stone
Pack up and leave, Im not yours to deceive
Dont want you no more, dont want you no more
Primitive love
I want what it used to be
I want it, primitive love
Primitivie love, I want what is used to be
I want what it used to be, primitive love
I want, I need, primtive love

song performed by Gloria Estefan
Added by Lucian Velea
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Primitive

Primitive feeling, primitive way
Getting closer to the primitive day
Intuition wherever it goes
The primitive day, the primitive way
Primitive feeling, primitive way
Getting closer to the primitive day
Follow the feeling wherever it goes
The primitive day, the primitive way

song performed by Helmet
Added by Lucian Velea
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Primitive

My heart keeps beating me to death
I see you move and I can't catch my breath
I want to touch you with my lips
I want to touch you with a kiss

My heart keeps pounding like a fist
I see you there and I just can't resist
You make me tremble like this
You make me tremble like a jellyfish

It's primitive
You got me
Oh
It's primitive
You make me feel
Primitive
When you lock me in your arms
You chain me to your heart
...Oh

I hear you calling out my name
And when you talk your words they numb my brain
You make this fire in me start
I want to touch you with my heart

I hear you whisper in the dark
And when you touch me I just come apart
I feel the fever in your hands
We feel things we don't even understand

It's primitive
You got me
Oh
It's primitive
You make me feel
Primitive
When you lock me in your arms
You chain me to your heart
...Oh
It's animal

Like the moon pulls at the tide
I'm at your side
The world in which we live

It's primitive
You got me
Oh
It's primitive
You make me real

[...] Read more

song performed by Cyndi Lauper from A Night To Remember
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Charismatic Personalities Transcend Styles

there is a trendy style
trend seekers follow styles
slaves to fashion styles

style is the moves of the moment
the status looks feel of the moment
style is sold trend setter moments

three choices define criteria styles
follow trend current styles be styles
be out of style or transcend styles

unique charismatic personalities transcend styles
transcend fashion defined now hype popularities
star quality self shines in spaces of hyper realities

poem by Terence George Craddock
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Double Ballade Of Primitive Man

He lived in a cave by the seas,
He lived upon oysters and foes,
But his list of forbidden degrees,
An extensive morality shows;
Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,
But he shaved with a shell when he chose, -
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

He worshipp'd the rain and the breeze,
He worshipp'd the river that flows,
And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,
And bogies, and serpents, and crows;
He buried his dead with their toes
Tucked-up, an original plan,
Till their knees came right under their nose, -
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

His communal wives, at his ease,
He would curb with occasional blows;
Or his State had a queen, like the bees
(As another philosopher trows):
When he spoke, it was never in prose,
But he sang in a strain that would scan,
For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

On the coasts that incessantly freeze,
With his stones, and his bones, and his bows;
On luxuriant tropical leas,
Where the summer eternally glows,
He is found, and his habits disclose
(Let theology say what she can)
That he lived in the long, long agos,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

From a status like that of the Crees,
Our society's fabric arose, -
Develop'd, evolved, if you please,
But deluded chronologists chose,
In a fancied accordance with Mos
es, 4000 B. C. for the span
When he rushed on the world and its woes, -
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

But the mild anthropologist,--HE'S
Not RECENT inclined to suppose
Flints Palaeolithic like these,
Quaternary bones such as those!
In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.'s,

[...] Read more

poem by Andrew Lang
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What for is money?

I thought on how could be the life
Without having to work for money.
After all this is the money which we work for.

Had we only have enough money to spend
We won’t have to toil our body or brain.
Solution also seemed very easy to me.

Just have a lot of mints to mint money.
Make as much money as may people need
Give them as much as may people want.

All problems are seemingly soon gone.
The root of all evils I thought could be
the root of happiness of all kind instead.

“How could this easy way out be overlooked? ”
Thinking furthermore I thought.
We need mints and we need paper and ink.

We need banks and a lot of ATMs.
People will get money and go for shopping
So we need ample shops. In shops we need products.

We need make shops and we need make products.
but we also need people to run them.
So some people will make paper and some ink.

Some other will work in mints and banks.
Some will work in shops and making products.
Rest all the people will only happily buy things.

Thinking up to here my thought jumbled.

People needed money so they worked.
If money was available for doing no work
Then why should there be anyone to work?

If no one works then where from comes paper and ink?
Where from comes money, banksand ATMs?
Where from then comes products?

Without products how could then we live and enjoy?

So we need products and for products we need to work,
to get people into the works we need money.
So it was that money could not be made free.

I thought 'People have already thought it before me.'

poem by Palas kumar Ray
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Lisbeth and the Artist

Lisbeth stands watching
The artist as he prepares
To sketch. Her elder sisters
Stand in shadows whispering.
Her younger sister plays
With her doll on the floor.
Their father said to do as
The artist instructed and
Don't misbehave or be rude.
The artist stares hard his
Dark eyes searching their
Every move and expression
And body gesture. The elder
Girls mutter in shadows
Their hands over their mouths
Their blue eyes like shallow
Pools. Ready? The artist
Asks putting charcoal to
Paper his fingers blackening.
Lisbeth says just as we are?
The artist nods. His grim
Features express do not disturb.
The youngest sister plays
Ignoring the artist her eyes set
On the game at hand. The girls
In shadow turn their profiles
Set to mystery their hands on
Their abdomens like guardians
Of virtue. Lisbeth wonders as
She watches the artist's stiff
Moustache and beard the slow
Movement of his mouth as he
Mouths words and stares hard.
The last artist employed some
Year before younger and less
Brutal in expression and manner
Had drawn them each in private
Rooms and set them down on couch
Or bed and kept their images inside
His head. He was dismissed and the
Drawings destroyed and nothing said.
Lisbeth had thought it just a game
Something done as lover might in
Private corners or lonely spots on
Quiet nights. The artist sketches.
His blackened fingers move and
Made their mark. Their images
Captured. The scene set. One sister
In the shadows yawns the other
Stares in still contempt. Lisbeth

[...] Read more

poem by Terry Collett
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Contemporary Freedom

I am who I am
Because of what I am

I ask for freedom from love
I ask for freedom from slavery
I ask for freedom from hunger
I ask for freedom from desire

You know and I know
That not all seeds you sow
Will eventually grow

This is contemporary poem
Seeking for freedom with my pen

I read there was an old man
Who bade farewell to his only son
At the hands of his own gun
Where his actions contemporary?
Was his anger or concern temporary?

This is contemporary poem
Seeking for freedom with my pen

Vivid imagination leads to frustration
It could trigger a chain-reaction
Hence the concept of mass-killing
Is born out of an over-reacted feeling
There is no cure or process of healing
Once death is the meal we are dealing

This is contemporary poem
Seeking for freedom with my pen

We drink with intention to forget
We drink but later on regret
And the people are walking
And the people are talking

Talking about freedom, freedom
Talking about a heavenly kingdom
Talking about their great grandfathers and their moms
Talking about freedom in any shape or form

This is contemporary poem
Seeking for freedom with my pen

And it does not make any sense
Why we always speak first in defense
And it does not make any sense

[...] Read more

poem by Sylvia Chidi
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Not To Fake To Give

People want to have,
Their...
Lives wrapped up in gladness.
People want to know,
What it's like to have a harmony.
And people want to see,
Their futures bright in the Sun...
Lighting up their faces.
Acknowledging their products of love.

People want to find,
Perfection here on Earth.
But...
People ought to know,
They can't get it freely.
And...
Only those with open hearts.
Also know they're here...
Not to fake to give.

People want to have,
Their...
Lives wrapped up in gladness.
People want to know,
What it's like to have a harmony.
And people want to see,
Their futures bright in the Sun...
Lighting up their faces.
Acknowledging their products of love.
And...
Not to fake to give.

And people want to see,
Their futures bright in the Sun...
Lighting up their faces.
Acknowledging their products of love,
And...
Not to fake to give.

Lighting up their faces.
Acknowledging their products of love,
And...
Not to fake to give.

Lighting up their faces.
Acknowledging their products of love,
And...
Not to fake to give.

Acknowledging that their products of love,

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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100 STD's 10,000 MTD's

There are STD's, sexually transmitted diseases.
and then there are MTD's, meat transmitted diseases.

The latter take a lot more lives.

*********

In Animal Flesh: Blood Sweat Tears as well as Carcinogens Cholesterol Colon Bacteria

Animal products kill more people annually in the US than
tobacco, alcohol, traffic accidents, war, domestic violence,
guns, and drugs combined. USAMRID wrote that consumption of pig flesh caused the world's most lethal pandemic in WW1,
euphemistically called flu. Anthrax
used to be called wool sorters'
disease. Smallpox used to be called
cow pox or kine pox because of
its origin in animal flesh.
.

WHAT'S IN A BURGER? BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS (AS WELL AS BIOTERRORISM)

POISONS IN ANIMAL AND FISH FLESH... A PARTIAL LIST

a partial list in alphabetical order

acidification diseases
addiction (to trioxypurines)
adrenalin (secreted by terrorized
animals before and during slaughter)

ANTIBIOTICS (too many to list) (crowded factory farm animals standing in their own feces are often infected)

BACTERIA
creiophilic bacteria survive
the freezing of animal flesh
thermophilic bacteria survive
the baking boiling and roasting

bacteriophages (viruses FDA allows to
be injected)
blood
colon bacteria.. euphemistically
called ecoli animals defecate
all over themselves in terror
John Harvey Kellogg MD studied
the exponential rate into the billions

BSE DISEASES, PRIONS IN SPECIES FROM GELATIN (JELLO ETC)
Mad Chicken

[...] Read more

poem by O. Anna Niemus
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Ode to the Great Unknown

'O breathe not his name!'
—Moore.

I

Thou Great Unknown!
I do not mean Eternity, nor Death,
That vast incog!
For I suppose thou hast a living breath,
Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown,
Thou man of fog!
Parent of many children—child of none!
Nobody's son!
Nobody's daughter—but a parent still!
Still but an ostrich parent of a batch
Of orphan eggs,—left to the world to hatch
Superlative Nil!
A vox and nothing more,—yet not Vauxhall;
A head in papers, yet without a curl!
Not the Invisible Girl!
No hand—but a handwriting on a wall—
A popular nonentity,
Still call'd the same,—without identity!
A lark, heard out of sight,—
A nothing shin'd upon,—invisibly bright,
'Dark with excess of light!'
Constable's literary John-a-nokes—
The real Scottish wizard—and not which,
Nobody—in a niche;
Every one's hoax!
Maybe Sir Walter Scott—
Perhaps not!
Why dost thou so conceal and puzzle curious folks?

II

Thou,—whom the second-sighted never saw,
The Master Fiction of fictitious history!
Chief Nong-tong-paw!
No mister in the world—and yet all mystery!
The 'tricksy spirit' of a Scotch Cock Lane—
A novel Junius puzzling the world's brain—
A man of Magic—yet no talisman!
A man of clair obscure—not he o' the moon!
A star—at noon.
A non-descriptus in a caravan,
A private—of no corps—a northern light
In a dark lantern,—Bogie in a crape—
A figure—but no shape;

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Hood
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The Impact Of Poverty On Education

THE IMPACT OF POVERTY ON EDUCATION.

INTRODUCTION

There are so many different tools that have been thought relevant in people’s developmental projects both at individual and societal levels. Education is one of such practical tools. Importantly to note, there are also various meanings that denote the broad term ‘education’. In this essay, however, we are mainly interested in defining formal education since our discussion will dwell much on it. According to Nwomonoh (1998) , formal education is the process of gaining knowledge, attitudes, information and skills during the course of life especially at school.

Though education is said to be so instrumental in human development but also in the revamping of world economies, it is very unfortunate that education systems, world wide, are being held to ransom all because of poverty at both governmental and household levels. According to Thibault (2009) , poverty means the shortage of common things such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, all of which determine our quality of life. It may also include lack of access to opportunities like education and employment which aid the escape of poverty.

Problems in our society are interconnected in one way or the other, just like poverty and personal family problems affect a student’s capability to learn. Improving education entails improving the living conditions of students. Having in mind that education is basically responsible for the development of many countries including Malawi, as the back ground suggests, we cannot afford to bypass such a vital element without a mention. Considering also the fact that poverty is one of the forces that come in the way; blocking the success of education, we feel it rational to look at how the two realities, education and poverty, affect each other both positively and negatively. That is also why we are convinced that this topic is worth studying. Our awareness of this source, poverty, and its impact on education will enable us devise some proper measures of intervention with the hope of minimizing the negative impact of poverty on education. This point, in short, explains the purpose of our investigation and why we are so passionate in getting into this research. During the whole discussion we are being guided by two questions thus, ‘does poverty really affect education? And if it does, what points do we have on the positive and negative impacts of poverty on education? ’

METHODOLOGY

The study was basically qualitative in approach because of the nature of the issue that was being addressed. This was the case because the issue of how poverty affects education, both positively and negatively is particularly very difficult to predict the conclusions without penetrating into the core of the issue. For instance, one may unreasonably rush into concluding that poverty affects education negatively only and we cannot even dare to speak of poverty affecting education positively. The study was conducted in three schools namely; Mulunguzi, Masongola and Chirunga Private Secondary schools in Zomba district between 24th April and 3rd May. In this research we used both government and private funded schools to have a more balanced result on how poverty affects formal education in these different institutions. The information required for the study was collected through group interviews of form three students and individual interviews with teachers using semi-structured interview schedules. We opted to use these interviews in the first place because we felt books are more theoretical whereas a field research is practical and it involves real life experiences. Nevertheless, we still used desk research as a supplementary source of information and for clarity in some areas.

RESULTS

Positive impacts of poverty on education
To begin with, poverty encourages one to get educated and of course work hard in class. This is because the problems faced due to poverty are very serious and therefore students who are from poverty stricken families strive to end the problems and one of the best solutions is through education. That is to say, if a person, for instance, due to poverty, is taking just a meal in a day instead of three meals, and again if he/she is sometimes sleeping on an empty stomach, he/she will resort to education bearing in mind that if he/she gets educated they will secure formal employment and eventually be able to make ends meet for themselves as well as fending for their families.

Not only does poverty encourage one to get educated, but also it helped in the introduction of free primary education. In Malawi, for instance, when Bakili Muluzi became president, he introduced free primary education and he had eliminated the requirements for school uniform forthwith (Kadzamira & Rose,2001) . This had increased the access to education dramatically as those pupils who were coming from less privileged families were also given access to this free primary education. It should also be noted that the free primary education system was not only implemented to fulfill an electoral pledge but also bearing in mind that some families were not able to send their children to school due to poverty. Free primary education was there to deal with illiteracy by reducing families’ direct costs of education. Again due to the influx in the number of pupils in primary schools; there was a lack of teachers. Sonani (2002) , testifies that the Ministry of Education re-employed all retired teachers below the age of 65. This also meant that the once retired teachers got back to their source of income which helped them support their families as well as hauling the economy of the country. The implementation of free primary education system in Malawi forced the government to provide infrastructures so as to accommodate the large number of pupils in these schools. Simply put, poverty had led to the introduction of free primary education which means that more children are going to school, and again more teachers are being trained and getting employed and finally the construction of school blocks culminating into infrastructural development, all these branching from poverty.

We may also look at poverty from a positive angle bearing in mind that when a country is poor more funds and donations come into it. These funds and donations are also given to the education sector to build new infrastructures and in the maintenance of already existing ones in the sector. These privileged countries also provide learning materials to schools that are poor as a result students in these less privileged schools perform well in accordance with the amount and quality of the learning materials that they have been provided with. For instance, a United States based non governmental organization known as “Water for People” handed over 44 water toilets they built to Chimwankhunda primary school. The school toilet facilities had been vandalized 11 years ago but because of poverty the school could not renovate them (Gausi,2007) .

In addition, these funds and donations help more people to get educated. This is so because people can use funds as school fees, pocket money and buy stationery. The donations may include library books, chairs and writing materials. These can make a conducive environment for one to learn since there will be enough facilities at the school. For instance, with funding from the “United States Agency for International Development” (USAID) ,3,300 needy Malawian primary school girls are being funded. They are being provided with food, clothing, school supplies and hygienic products like soap and body lotion (Muhaliwa,2005) . Likewise,500 pupils at Katoto primary school in Mzuzu no longer sit on the floors during lessons courtesy of Southern Bottlers Limited and Lions Club of Limbe. Before these funds and donations, pupils used to sit on the floor due to scarcity of desks. These donations improved the pupils’ school attendance in such a way that pupils have started going to school regularly.

In the same line, a needy student can be given a scholarship to go further with his/her education. In this case the scholarship is given to the person just because he/she cannot manage to pay school fees on her own. This in turn benefits the needy person and the community at large. In this situation poverty has assisted in the development of education in an area by beckoning funds and donations from rich countries and organisations.

Further more; in most cases poverty facilitates one’s ambitions to attain formal education. It becomes easier for a poor child to put much of his concentration on education as compared to a rich child. This is because a poverty stricken student will have less destructive materials for entertainment. He/she will also have less or no money to indulge him/herself in activities that require spending a lot of money for instance, drinking beer. Sometimes even if the child can find money he/she can buy basic needs and not just spending it anyhow. Contrast to this a rich child may obtain things like ipods, mp3s, games for entertainment. These things in most cases destruct the concentration of students in their studies. As a result, one’s class performance is negatively affected since most of his/her time is being spent on entertainment.

Negative impacts of poverty on education

Just as a coin has got two sides, a head and a tail, poverty also, apart from having positive impacts on education, it does have negative impacts on the same. We have talked much about the positive face of poverty on education. We shall surely do ourselves injustice if we do not look at the negative part. In spite of the fact that poverty has an impact on education that is worth complimenting, we cannot afford in this discussion to overlook the point that so many students have been forced to leave the corridors of learning institutions due to the same poverty. One of the reasons that force some students leave the learning institutions prematurely is pregnancy, which in most cases, come because of poverty. It is almost common knowledge that a good number of students who come from poor families wish they could be sailing in the same boat with those who come from well to do families as far as luxurious life is concerned. The poor students constantly feel that there is something missing at the core psychologically. With this feeling in their minds, they tend to regard themselves as incomplete and not accepted socially. Consequently, they envy the rich students and squarely want to posses the things that are associated with the rich students. Very unfortunate that the poor students’ parents cannot afford to fulfill their children’s desires like what the rich parents would provide. Because the pull towards recognition is too strong for the poor students to resist, they end up in indulging themselves into prostitution in their search for money. Pity indeed that instead of recreating, as anticipated, their promiscuous behavior sees most of them getting pregnant and for some very unfortunate ones get even HIV and other STIs. From this discussion, commonsense convinces us that this school dropp out due to pregnancy is one of the negative impacts of poverty on education.

Adding more flesh to this discussion, we can also appreciate that hunger has been so instrumental in bringing down the standards of education world wide, in general, and Malawi, in particular. Frankly speaking, there are very few students if not none, who concentrate on their studies on empty stomachs. Food is one of the basic needs that every person is obliged to have if he/she is to survive. It is not surprising, therefore, to see some students performing miserably in class simply because they have not taken enough food or they have taken none altogether. The question of hunger finds its way into the education system because the government has failed to provide adequate food in most of its boarding schools. This is poverty at governmental level. There are also some students who are not boarders but still endure the hostile reality of hunger right in their homes. This is due to poverty at household level. It is sad that poverty, both at governmental and household level, has helped in engineering the deteriorating of education standards in Malawi.

Bearing in mind that it is only the eagle that can tell us the real whisper of a cloud, we visited Masongola Secondary school with the hope of getting first hand information from the students and their teachers since they are the ones who mostly benefit or get destructed by poverty. The Masongola secondary school students and their teacher, Mr. Enock Abraham, testified to us during an interview that government’s inability to provide extra food, apart from the usual beans that the institution offers, has seen many students developing ulcers. It would sound bizarre to reason that one can attend classes whilst he/she is on a hospital bed battling with ulcers. The Masongola students further testified that most poor students who have ulcers just bow down out of the race of learning because they cannot afford to buy extra food whenever the institution is serving the students beans.

This pitiful development goes beyond the boundaries of Masongola secondary school. Mulunguzi secondary school as Mr……the head teacher at the institution testifies, has not been spared from the scourge of school dropp outs simply because the school has not been able to provide extra or adequate food to students who cannot take what their friends take on health grounds. Needless to say this leaves the education standards in Malawi vacillating. It is a pity that though we have wrestled with this question of poverty a dozen times, we have not been successful in the battle. At one point in time, the government attempted to minimize the chances of school dropout in primary schools through its provision of porridge to pupils in the junior section. This attempt was in itself a good gesture but the government has failed to implement the initiative further in other schools that up to now have not benefited from the program.

It may not sound an exaggeration if we may say poverty has also forced a good number of students to give up their hopes of getting educated simply because they find it so difficult traveling to and from their respective schools. Lack of transport means, in short, has pushed them well towards the blink of despair as far as attaining formal education is concerned. This point speaks for itself how poverty can sometimes work on the education’s disadvantage.

As we go further with this discussion, we also appreciate the fact that the problem that mostly hinders a student’s success is inadequate resources that include; few teachers and learning materials. It must be highlighted that these problems are not only in developing countries but they may also find their way in reasonably developed countries like South Africa. In a developing country like Malawi, the education system encounters these problems because of the government’s failure to look into problems of infrastructure, capacity and availability of teaching and learning materials (Nkawike,2005) . The Muluzi government did a little if any; in as far as infrastructure is concerned. Lack of school blocks facilitated by a large number of pupils due to the introduction of the free primary education in 1994, forced pupils to have lessons under trees. In 2003, for example, lack of school blocks resulted in a tragedy at Nkomachi in Lilongwe when a tree fell onto an outdoor class, resulting in injury and deaths of pupils (Mvula & Chanika,2004) . This problem of learning materials continues till date, in all levels of the education system. According to Abraham (2009) , the school has always had shortage of learning blocks to an extent that the Physical Science and Biology laboratories are used as classrooms. There is also great shortage of books in all departments, and some departments like the technical department needs new equipment and current books which are very expensive. With this unfortunate situation we cannot anticipate good performance from Masongola secondary school.

In order to deal with these issues, the Muluzi government thought it wise to disregard the provision of learning materials in schools. Instead the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) pass mark was reduced to ensure the success of students in their examinations. Even the director of Basic Education, Nelson Kaperemera admitted that funds intended for learning materials were servicing the debts of government at the expense of improving quality education. Instead of reducing the pass mark, the government and other stake holders should strive to improve quality of education, improve teacher salaries, and provide adequate materials and train teachers properly (Malawi News,2006) .

In developing countries like Malawi, the schools are understaffed (teaching personnel) and they tend to be handling a large number of students for long hours. Furthermore, the teachers are subjected to meager salaries, which are even made late. The government does not seem to have the welfare of teachers at heart, for instance the education Manager for Phalombe, Enoch Ali says the district is facing a dire shortage of teachers, a situation that is contributing to low education standards. The teacher pupil ratio in Phalombe is 1: 120, whilst the recommended ratio is 1: 60 (The Nation,2006) . Due to low pay teachers resort to organizing part time classes, which demand an extra amount of money on top of the normal fees. These changes clearly affect those students who come from very poor families, as they do not receive adequate studies because of lack of money.
This does not only occur in secondary schools, but it also happens in universities. As the academic staff of the Universities go on strike because of the government’s reluctance to increase their salaries. One considers how this is supposed to retain staff in the University. As a result lecturers spend more time doing consultancies; instead of preparing lectures and doing University mandated research. If we are serious about fighting poverty, formal education is the hub of ideas to fight these problems by improving its standards (Kapasula,2008) .
Child labour is one of the major problems that contribute to school dropp out. The majority of child labour victims are children who are living in poverty. This is so because they lack basic needs, for this reason they are forced even against their will to do any kind of work in order to gain financial wealth. This, therefore, affects school attendance. Evidence of school dropp out due to child labour is found in central region where most children are being employed in estates. This region has high tobacco production. Since this crop demands a lot of work, children are at high demand because they do not claim high wages compared to adults. Research, therefore, showed that the percentage of children attending schools is lower compared to that of northern and southern region (Nyirongo,2004) . We have the case of two brothers aged between 12 and 15 who were forced to work at a tobacco farm at Mpherembe in Kasungu district, where they were receiving 150 kwacha a day due to poverty (Namangale,2005) . We can see that child labour has a great impact on education because through it, a lot of children are being deprived of their right to education as they spend most of their time working.

In addition to that, Chirwa (2003) found out that child labour is also taking place in people’s houses. In this case children are forced to dropp out of school either by parents or on their own, to work in neighbouring homes. Here one of the victims is a 12 year old girl Elizabeth Chalimba, who left school when she was in standard six to work as a nanny in order to support her siblings. Children from low income families are at risk because though school is their only hope for a better future, they dropp out because their parents are failing to provide them with basic needs. Apart from child labour, psychological problems due to poverty is also another cause of school dropp outs. Research shows that the impact of poverty is greater on children as opposed to adults. Firstly, the problem arises due to the environment in which these children are raised. These environments being impoverished, they are intellectually unstimulating, and lack of stimulation results in impaired intellectual development of a child. This in turn contributes to failure in class which can later on lead to school dropp out.

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poem by Innocent Masina Nkhonyo
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Manifesto Of Contemporary Poetry(2012)

Contemporary poetry is a junction zone of distilled sky and earth of
(1) .psychology
(2) .philosophy
(3) .ethics
(4) .new aesthetics
(5) .contemporary socio-cultural-economic-moral-political-technolog ical issues reflecting power and knowledge
(6) .initiated knowledeg and creative wisdom of contemporaneity6.moment-to-moment decision making process
(7) .Alchemy between existing contemporary literary theory and working definitions of a practising and operational poet after modernist's literature and poetry
(8) .the end of literary genre concept
(9) .the concept of the continuum-chance, change, revisiting and reconceptualization
and
(10) .Contemplating on quotidian mental and physical experiences.

POET NYEIN WAY
1: 25 pm February 21,2012

poem by Nyein Way
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Hellfire & Reuben Rose

A hundred and thirty years has passed
Since Reuben strode our turf,
A Hell-fire Methodist Preacher
Cursing souls with every breath,
He claimed an exclusive license, sanctioned
By our gracious Lord,
To dispense both sulphur and brimstone
To the sinners of the world.

At Moonta, in the mining days,
When copper ruled as king,
A fluctuation in the price
Soon ruined everything.
Families left in droves; for jobs
Were harder then to find,
The congregations withered,
They were the few that stayed behind.

There wasn't enough to pay the fund
To keep their minister,
So he took off to Castlemaine
To save Victoria,
And when the Primitive Methodists
Declined to send another,
All Hell broke loose at the altar then,
Set brother against brother.

Enraged at the Executive
For showing them such contempt,
Half of the congregation said:
'We'll fix their argument!
We'll just secede from the Primitives
And run our own affairs.'
But Reuben Rose was a Primitive,
Who had his own ideas.

'Who owns the Church, ' he sagely said,
'The age-old Primitives! '
'Not so, ' declared the rebels, then,
'We paid for it with our tithes! '
But neither side would give an inch,
They claimed it, theirs alone,
Two armies of the Lord lined up
To seize the good lord's throne.

And so it was that, Sunday noon,
The rebels got there first,
They sang a lot of Sankey's hymns
To scorn the Primitive's verse,
They raised their voices mightily

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Torquing Torus

It very rare for Richard Serra
man of steel, to sculpt in error.
The shapes that he creates evoke
dunes, canyons and ravines. Baroque
the influence of all these curves.
Perhaps Borromini deserves
some credit for the inspiration
for their expressive undulation,
although, ingratiating, lavish,
his expertise inclines to ravish
as, torquing torus with inversion,
with parasexual perversion
it transforms alchemistically steel
into raw spaces where you feel
the presence of a dying numen
within the crevasse of the lumen
where people walk and need not climb
to sense a terror that’s sublime.

Michael Kimmelman reviews a retrospective exhibition of Richard Serra of sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, “Man of Steel, ” NYT, June 1,2007) :
That second floor at the Modern, by the way, is the show’s tour de force. A high, huge and like so much of this museum, totally unlovable space, it was conceived for housing Mr. Serra’s sculptures. Kirk Varnedoe, the Modern curator, came up with this idea, and the museum saw his plan through after his death. The resulting space is antiseptic, unfortunately, and too much of a barn for showing anything else, but it looks fantastic now. At one end is “Band, ” a 70-foot-long steel undulation, absent an inside or outside, forming four cavities. On the other end is “Sequence, ” which links two immense spirals. In between is “Torqued Torus Inversion, ” a pair of mirrored enclosures whose forms Mr. Serra has said may partly relate to his fondness for curvy Chinese bronzes…
These shapes and experiences are new. That’s about the best, and the rarest, compliment you can give to any artist. Mr. Serra’s “Torqued Ellipses” and “Torqued Toruses” and other recent works like “Band” and “Sequence” have their origins in work he did 40 years ago in rubber and lead, as this retrospective handsomely affirms, but these are nonetheless unprecedented variations on the theme of dumbfounding spirals and loops. The public’s perception of Mr. Serra’s work has also obviously changed from the bad days of “Tilted Arc, ” a quarter-century or so ago. That same vocabulary of curved, giant metal walls, once vilified as art-world arrogance, is now better understood and broadly admired. This is how radical art operates. In Mr. Serra’s case you can also call it democratic art because it sticks to pure form that requires no previous expertise to grasp. There’s no coy narrative, no insider joke or historical allusion or meta-art theme. There’s none of what Mr. Serra disdainfully calls, in the show’s catalog, “post-Pop Surrealism, ” by which he lumps together all contemporary art that leans for a crutch on language and Duchamp. In that catalog interview he was talking with Kynaston McShine, one of the show’s two curators. (The other is Lynne Cooke.) Mr. Serra famously looked at Borromini churches in Rome before he started torquing steel, but his work is not “about” Baroque architecture any more than it’s about Jackson Pollock or Barnett Newman or Donald Judd, whom he also looked at and learned from early on. The art is about the basic stuff of sculpture, isolated and recast: mass, weight, volume, material. What matters in the end are your own reactions while moving through the sculptures, at a given moment, the works being Rorschachs of indeterminate meaning….
A filmmaker I met in Bilbao, Spain, wandering through Mr. Serra’s sculptures there, likened the experience to movies. He thought the paths Mr. Serra devised within the works, between curving walls of steel, which suddenly jog, then arrive, unexpectedly, at cavities or enclosures, were like plot twists with surprise endings. Except there are no beginnings or endings in the sculptures. A novelist who has written about the Holocaust said the high, curving steel walls leaned over him threateningly, leading him until he became disoriented and lost, into what he felt were penned-in spaces, bringing to mind a concentration camp. The art scared him, he said, but he also loved it. Kant called this feeling “the terrifying sublime, ” which is “accompanied by a certain dread or melancholy.” Awe and fear mingle with pleasure. The concept was applied to mountain climbing, and Mr. Serra’s new works on the museum’s second floor, perhaps not coincidentally, evoke canyons, dunes, crevasses and ravines. The industrial steel walls, in uncalculated rusty orange and velvety brown, evoke natural terrains; the spaces through which the sculptures move people are akin to spaces in nature.

6/1/07

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Most Of The So Called Literary Experts

Most of the so called literary experts are dismissive of rhyme
They say 'tis the poetry of a long gone time
Yet the poets that they laud the poems they do write
Cannot be put to music and are hard to read and recite
The rhymer of today is not looked on as a poet
Or is not seen as one worthy of literary note
By the so called literary experts with literary degrees
Though their judgement on what is or is not poetry not everyone does please
They never will convince the old style rhyme buff
To him or her well written rhyme is not throw away stuff
In well written rhyme are the words to a song
And good rhyming poetry to music belong
Yet the degreed literary experts who on poetry like to have their say
Dismiss rhyming poets and their poetry as of yesterday.

poem by Francis Duggan
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Fifth Book

AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope
To speak my poems in mysterious tune
With man and nature,–with the lava-lymph
That trickles from successive galaxies
Still drop by drop adown the finger of God,
In still new worlds?–with summer-days in this,
That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?–
With spring's delicious trouble in the ground
Tormented by the quickened blood of roots.
And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves
In token of the harvest-time of flowers?–
With winters and with autumns,–and beyond,
With the human heart's large seasons,–when it hopes
And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?–with all that strain
Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh
In a sacrament of souls? with mother's breasts,
Which, round the new made creatures hanging there,
Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?–
With multitudinous life, and finally
With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,
Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,
Their radiant faces upward, burn away
This dark of the body, issuing on a world
Beyond our mortal?–can I speak my verse
So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,
That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,
As having the same warrant over them
To hold and move them, if they will or no,
Alike imperious as the primal rhythm
Of that theurgic nature? I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man,–and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,–
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,
Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is;
We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.
We strain our natures at doing something great,
Far less because it's something great to do,
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves
As being not small, and more appreciable
To some one friend. We must have mediators

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poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues (I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago)

J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues,
Dont Phoebus se plaisait à dorer les statues.
Alors l'homme et la femme en leur agilité
Jouissaient sans mensonge et sans anxiété,
Et, le ciel amoureux leur caressant l'échine,
Exerçaient la santé de leur noble machine.
Cybèle alors, fertile en produits généreux,
Ne trouvait point ses fils un poids trop onéreux,
Mais, louve au coeur gonflé de tendresses communes
Abreuvait l'univers à ses tétines brunes.
L'homme, élégant, robuste et fort, avait le droit
D'être fier des beautés qui le nommaient leur roi;
Fruits purs de tout outrage et vierges de gerçures,
Dont la chair lisse et ferme appelait les morsures!

Le Poète aujourd'hui, quand il veut concevoir
Ces natives grandeurs, aux lieux où se font voir
La nudité de l'homme et celle de la femme,
Sent un froid ténébreux envelopper son âme
Devant ce noir tableau plein d'épouvantement.
Ô monstruosités pleurant leur vêtement!
Ô ridicules troncs! torses dignes des masques!
Ô pauvres corps tordus, maigres, ventrus ou flasques,
Que le dieu de l'Utile, implacable et serein,
Enfants, emmaillota dans ses langes d'airain!
Et vous, femmes, hélas! pâles comme des cierges,
Que ronge et que nourrit la débauche, et vous, vierges,
Du vice maternel traînant l'hérédité
Et toutes les hideurs de la fécondité!

Nous avons, il est vrai, nations corrompues,
Aux peuples anciens des beautés inconnues:
Des visages rongés par les chancres du coeur,
Et comme qui dirait des beautés de langueur;
Mais ces inventions de nos muses tardives
N'empêcheront jamais les races maladives
De rendre à la jeunesse un hommage profond,
— À la sainte jeunesse, à l'air simple, au doux front,
À l'oeil limpide et clair ainsi qu'une eau courante,
Et qui va répandant sur tout, insouciante
Comme l'azur du ciel, les oiseaux et les fleurs,
Ses parfums, ses chansons et ses douces chaleurs!

I Love to Think of Those Naked Epochs

I love to think of those naked epochs
Whose statues Phoebus liked to tinge with gold.
At that time men and women, lithe and strong,
Tasted the thrill of love free from care and prudery,

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poem by Charles Baudelaire
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