"Thai women don’t wear slacks on temple sites,
Not to piss off the pious, or inflame
The appetites of our chaste cenobites,
Or drown our morals-conscious town in shame.
But if a girl forgets, and dares to flaunt
A pair of jeans before our sacred Buddhas,
She’s but to rent a skirt from those who haunt
The doorways, making money as do-gooders.

There’s no such ambiguity in Khartoum,
Where pants in brasseries can be a pain,
The wrong attire can spell a woman’s doom —
The lash for Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein!
If Christ got 39 for freeing man,
What’s one more lash for freedom in Sudan?"

--Somtow Sucharitkul

"Mod-ism....an aphorism for clean living under difficult circumstances." --Peter Meadon, quoted on back of Quadrophenia album cover

"Si bellatorum lucem scrutabor eorum,
Lucerne lator tenebrosus adest gladiator."

'If I examine the light of their warriors, The gladiator is a dark bearer of light.' --John Gower, De Lucis Scrutino, in: The Minor Latin Works (tr R F Yeager, 2005)