RKS British Literature: Jojo the Scottish Lady (John Fowles)

I saw a round cheeked face, no make-up. A fringe of brown hair pigtailed at the back, thick eyebrows, very dirty fingernails holding a fag-end. When the lights went on and we waited for the next feature she tried, with a really pitiable amateurishness to pick me up. She was dressed in jeans, a grubby grey polo necked sweater, a very ancient man’s duffel coat; but she had three queer asexual charms – a face splitting grin, a hoarse Scots accent, and an air of such solitary sloppiness that I saw in her at once both a kindred spirit and somebody worthy of a modern Mayhew.

John Fowles, “The Magus”, 1977.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “One of the many”

One of the many

Being a Party member is a responsibility

We serve the people with our utmost ability

So to say we obtain the privileges of an aristocrat nobility

Is sheer and scheming capitalistic negatively

We serve our mighty land and people

Merely a gunshot away as Beria would say

We labour day and night in offices located anywhere including Georgia

The wonderful Land of Comrade Stalin,

To the cold little town of Aldan

Just because we have a five-room flat off the square

Shows how much the people for me do care

My Zil with a chauffeur

Is provided precisely because I am no loafer

After all transportation is required to meet with foreign ministers like Iranian minister Soffer

I’m nothing but a hard-working man

So why the comments about my Black Sea tan

And that expensive Swiss made electric fan

My suits from France are needed for an occasional diplomatic prance

Not for my own personal prestige to enhance

Being so terribly busy we have our own stores

Not because of corrupt mores

That some of you suggest makes us rotten to the cores

We are still members of the proletarian kind

And your accusations are but a fragment of a duped mind

To say to bourgeoise lifestyles we have fell

I respectfully say you can go to hell

Ask any of our folk

Suggest to them we have special privileges they’ll take it as an ill joke

And perhaps issue you a warning poke

We are no different than them

Our happy citizens would heartily agree

If not do you think I’d expel them to the cold Siberian degree

It’s this Solzhenitsyn chap causing so much flap

With his groundless crap

But our censors were on the rap

So he was liquidated from our map

Every citizen is free like me

Oh why can’t you see through all this propaganda of the CIA

And for once agree with me

All we do is administer

And the skilled like me become a Politburo minister

What in the hell is so sinister!

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds); “The Visit”

The visit (at an LTC Facility)

A Mercedes parks just off the main entrance

A sleek and well-heeled man emerges from within

Treading along feeling so fine with his charitable act

He visits once a year

 At the “welcome desk” he is advised his father is not yet Prepared

And would he kindly wait a minute

He sits in a masqueraded urine occupied air

Poor soaked creatures he muses

Crouched in drugged stupors

Like dangerous animals

But Old Pop was in much better shape

But he had once been so busy in the textile mill

Inherited by the son

Too busy to worry excessively about dear old Dad

A Nurse gestures, it is time to see him

Into Dad’s room they venture

Blankly to stare at a living vegetable

With the killing weeds a creeping

Astonished at dear Dad’s decline he laughs

Couldn’t they insert a tube or something

After all he’s shelling out 6 Grand a month

And little Ronnie wants a Corvette

Dad senses his concerned son and motions him to approach

Whispers in his ear, SELFISH BASTARD and expires

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “It’s Mainly Because of the Meat”

It’s Mainly Because of the Meat (a day at the hospital)

Defying fate

The numbered pieces of meat are kept tender by the singing of the dart laden

Nightingales

They lie glistening

Some in cellophane wrap

Fresh and clean

For the greedy fate regulators and their machines

White clad techno princes

Who sound the charge armed with reams of slaughtered trees

And sticks that relentlessly scratch

Knives or forks?

Needles or threads?

Charting with the sage chants the ringmasters of pain

Whip the remnants of human dignity

For the hungry audience of apprentices

Gawking at the wisdom of the teacher

All believing

Who perhaps

One day will know the power of their

Pharisees

Robert K. Stephen

RKS INTERNATIONAL FILM: “House of the Wind”: The Answer My Friend is Blowing in the Wind

Josette (Josette Kwanya) is an elderly widow living in the Cameroonian capital city of Yaoundé. She inhabits a large, deserted house as all her five children have left for Europe. The radio and television we hear the background comments on this exodus noting there are no opportunities for young Cameroonians causing them to emigrate to Europe where one announcer remarks they are misled into thinking everything is perfect. This mass exodus from one impoverished country into ones of land of milk and honey is immemorial.

Her children communicate with Josette through video calls replete with excuses how they’re going to visit her “soon”. One son, Benoît, has Josette supervising the construction of his house he plans to live in when he returns to Cameroon. Instead of a planned return strangers appear at Josette’s door asking for the keys of their rented house (Benoît’s house) such renting not disclosed to Josette.  A taste of being swindled here!

Sensing more swindles (on my part) Josette at the bank is confused rummaging in her purse for her identification card which she has lost. A senior with a weakened mind and easily manipulated?

Then there appears Sarah (Moudjeu Pouadeu) a street purveyor of traditional medicines who swindles bank tellers by claiming they have shortchanged her whilst she skillfully sticks a few notes together to appear as one banknote! Sarah, being bashed about by her father for her intent to marry a white Frenchman Adrien, pleads to stay with Josette for two days which turns into two weeks and more until Adrien, her fiancé arrives. Is this Adrien in on an ageist swindle?

Sarah takes out Josette for the first time she has been to a bar and they dance together. Is she getting the old bird plastered to knock her over the head and steal the contents of the house? Red herring in my imagination?

If loneliness is the central theme of director Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu it fails. Josette may be abandoned as so many Cameroonian parents are, but lonely with the arrival of Sarah…no way. She has been reconnected to life.

Sarah is no angel tricking bank tellers, asking Josette to “play” her mother and failing to reveal to Adrien she has been married “in the traditional way” but she has been battered around by her father and her “traditional” husband so some sympathy might be accorded to her.

Josette is no saint as well.

What is the suitcase scene with various powders being packed into a suitcase? Drug smuggling. And the shots of a big airy living room looking like a mini-Versailles? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

My favourite scene is the children having constructed an Air France airplane out of cardboard outside of Josette’s house. Ready to fly the coup to France, the land of milk and honey. A colonial power France, now repaying its debts to Cameroon. Powerful symbolism.

The performances of Pouadeau as a con/angel/victim and Kwanya are compelling and worth the watch alone.

Cameroon/France/Belgium/Benin/Saudi Arabia/Qatar (2026)

RKS International Film Rating 64/100.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Paganistic Birthday Party”

Paganistic Birthday Party

Assembled about the synthetic evergreen altar

Are the little dazed children

Stunned as if pondering the words of the wisemen

They murmur their pagan chants

Materialistic hymns of candy, games and toys

Greedy gleaming eyes of the little fry thought to be cute

Wish they could have more than they sere

The evening feast

A ritualistic ceremony of orgiastic delight

Bloated bellies and upset stomachs

Oh Christ

They’ve forgotten you and it’s not funny

Seems you are used for the money

Hedonistic decay

Displayed in such an overly degenerate way

A Satanic surrealistic day

Of electric shavers and racing car sets

Chocolate mangers, plastic Christs and neon bulbs

Bright colours

Euphoristic delights

Santa Claus Satan’s false pretender

Laughs quietly

His work well done

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Wine”

Wine

Light-headedness is a sign

Of unbridled optimism

Deceiver of situations

Joyous roguish red nectar

Roaring through the veins

Like a tropical river teaming with mystery you

Softly laid me to the floor

But I Still wanted more

And you

Like some deceiving whore caressed my lips

Until I slowly entered into insensibility

Robert K. Stephen

RKS British Literature: London the City of Drab Dead (John Fowles)

If Rome, a city of vulgar living, had been depressing after Greece, London, a city of the drab dead, was fifty times worse. I had forgotten the innumerability of the place. Its ugliness. Its termite density after the sparsities of the Aegean. It was like mud after diamonds, dank undergrowth after sunlit marble; and as the airline bus crawled on its way through the endless suburb that lies between Northolt and Kensington I wondered why anyone should, or could, ever return of his own free will to such a landscape, to such a society, such a climate.

John Fowles, “The Magus”, 1977.

RKS British Literature: The Nakedness and Humanity of Greece (John Fowles)

In my mind Greece lay weeks, not the real hours, behind. The sun shone as certainly, the people were far more elegant, the architecture and the art much richer, but it was as if the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, wore a great mask of luxury, a cosmetic of the over indulged senses, between the light, the truth and their real selves. I couldn’t strand the loss of the beautiful nakedness, the humanity of Greece, and so I couldn’t stand the sight of the opulent, animal Romans; as sometimes one can’t stand one’s own face in the mirror.

John Fowles, “The Magus”, 1977.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Emperor Bokassa murders 153 schoolchildren”

Emperor Bokassa murders 153 schoolchildren

Nice little baby

Come here little sweetheart

Want a big kiss from mummy

Little chicken tidbits for a delicate sweetie

Daddy poo wants to take you for a walk

No big doggie will molest our little baby

And when you return home a cookie

Oh you are such a wonderful darling

Where would we be without you

You loveable pooch

Come to mommy and daddy

Robert K. Stephen