POETIC JUSTICE: August 2006

THE ANIMAL WE WANT

When the animal we wanted to be
Hasn't come forth,
Couldn't climb into this world
Through spaces vast window,
And we hear a distant hum,
As if it is weeping a million miles away
At not having the courage to even try,
And we feel its loss inside of us
And we conjure what might have been,
Perhaps we should simply rise up
And not sit so far away from life
And stop this, our incessant dreaming
Of new ways to conquer and destroy.

When the animal we wanted to be
Hasn’t reared its beautiful head,
Perhaps it is afraid it might be the uglier
Or fearful it will fail us
And we’d drop our bombs
And blast a hole clean through imagination...
Or, perhaps it has no desire to draw closer;
It hears our weeping a million miles away,
And heeds our mournful whimper
At not having the courage to end
Our warring and wholesale butchery,
And it feels our loss deep inside
And sees what it might have been.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

DULL SPARK

READ THE POEM +/-

We only think we have a different story to tell,
but they're all the same;
just old blasted, worn-to-the-nub tales;
(Even a genius can think he's God.)

Our minds needn’t lead us through to our history’s end;
It is our hearts, the bloody, wildly beating, throbbing heart!
Not the brain with its monotonous weak-kneed glimmer.
It is the heart that must lead, take our hand
and guide us out the valley of our own shadow.

The heart, not our intolerantly pricked ear or roving eye
Or arching want against the smack of unholy greed,
and most certainly not our capricious and foul-fickled-soul
Stumbling for deities like some inebriated son-of-a-bitch!

We need our hearts to direct us safely `round this gorge.
The heart knows the outside of its host;
it knows we’re not fit to strike a goddamned match,
That we’re empty outside of it.

The heart knows that war may signal our end
and that collateral damage is a coward’s phrase.

It is our hearts, not our minds;
Our rotted head makes sport of death
and our lean souls tease the dwindling wit,
pokes, jabs at our churning gut
beckoning it come sit heavy upon our will.

Our hands, feet, arms and legs
Are only told to move in rage
when the heart’s gone missing.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

THEY WERE GENTLE

READ THE POEM +/-

They tiptoed into my sleep
Wearing dusty clothes and no shoes.
They tried to not let me hear them
But the little girl put forth a giggle
And the boy laughed, too.

Soon the whole room
Teetered in merriment.

A while passed and a hush fell around us;
A silent prayer,
Save for the short breaths of the children;
Petite puffs in search of a throat.

There were nearly twenty in the group.
They had been searching for years
But were always met with sideways glances,
And oftentimes violence.

They smelled like sand.

They were gentle.

I sensed they’d come for my help,
But knew not what I could do.

The looks on their faces;
The pain. The anguish... The truth...

The little boy now began to cry,
Followed soon after by the little girl.
Then, like rain, we all began to weep.

Our crying grew into an unexpected howl;
A sorrowful choir of wingless angels...
And a great wall of water crashed down upon us
Dropping from the shattered roof of heaven...

THE DRUNKING HAND

READ THE POEM +/-

Shhhteady your drunking hand Hitchens,
You dishhhturbed and inebriated curmudgeon!
Crowding the sun to let shhhlip your blather
Your stupendoushhhly-shhhlurred tongue on Iran;
A safe bet! A sure thing! An easy plunder!
No matter how much you shhhlur`n drumble,
No matter how hypocritically you totter
You go and shhhqueeze one off `bout Mahmoud
Drabbling on `bout know-nothing “bupkishhh”
“Who want’s a-”! “Satanic”! “Lies”! “Messhhhiah”!
Swilling on `bout World War Three bullshishhht!

Who, Mr. Hitchens, is looking for a war here?
You! You! You belligerent useshhhless mishhhfit!
You, Mr. Hitchens, are looking for a shhhkirmish!
A bump! A shot! A lift of your red-cheeked eshhhteem!
You blathering-ego-maniacal-vacillating-shhhlurring-twit!

You miserably, and idiotically, launched a saucy war!
You fired your toxshhhic close-range dirty-bomb finger
In hopes the children would just shut up and lishhhten!
Abshhhorb your shhhlurrr-filled drivel of Armageddon!
In hopes that the weak-kneed would shriek in terror
And shhhtand agape at your schhhtupified shhhtumbling!
(World War Three comes and you’ll need your sauce
To lick wobbling pejorative upon the ignorant schhhlups
Waiting in droves to hear your shhhilly shhhlurred schtick!)
You're a shhhtumbling, shhhlurring, schhhnockered clown!
Do usshh all a favor and just shhhut the "middle-finger" up!

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

TERROR'S HAND

READ THE POEM +/-

The Real Terrorism Plot
By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Jazeerah, August 24, 2006

And yet another menacing terror plot was thwarted 10 August, with the arrest of 24 suspects, all British Muslims. It was an ominous conspiracy aimed at committing "mass murder" on an "unimaginable" scale, British authorities quickly concluded. US authorities hastily joined the action, too claiming a decisive victory over the plotters, thanks in part to the quick thinking of and awesome coordination between US security and intelligence branches. Britain congratulated the US; the US thanked Britain; both saluted Pakistan and its ever-loyal leadership, itself conducting a brutal war against undefined, shadowy groups that emerge and vanish, all too conveniently, and too neatly.
Moments after the shocking announcement, as security threat levels reached their peak in the US and Britain, the debate commenced and it relentlessly continues: Why would a British Muslim choose such a destructive path while living in a democratic society, where change, at least theoretically, is possible through peaceful means?
The media also sprung into action. Ready-to-serve answers were deftly provided by all the usual experts, instantly infusing more conventional wisdom upon a vulnerable public. Attempts to contextualise terrorism within a political milieu were decidedly torpedoed. Despite years of war that seem to have achieved nothing but "mass murder" on an "unimaginable" scale, no one should dare explain the true roots of terrorism; one may explain why poor neighbourhoods in America yield greater crime rates than others, or why abused children become abusers themselves, or even why US soldiers in Iraq often "snap" and massacre entire families, but terrorism that involves Muslims should not in any way be discussed outside its useful parameters of a misguided generation with a radical interpretation of religion: the Islam that produces "Muslim fascists" as President George W Bush termed it. (More…)

Terror’s immense unbent machine rumbles
From end to end of the blast-crested streets
Of civilized man like a freshly-filed talon to flesh;
And the screeching recoils against the red sky
And the plagued ocean smolders.
Terror’s depth is roused
By lies and the spineless realm
Of authority
Pointing eastward with a westward hand.

We, insensible spectator, stand open-mouthed
To the eagle’s rasp upon our human face;
And the snap of the shudder, too slow,
Find terror rooted shoulder to shoulder,
Glossy eyed, draped in ruin,
Panting to soar heavenward
And spatter the face of God.
.....We can no more this
.....Than return to the womb.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

DEW

Our empathy now sits
like the dew on a rose.
Slumped of a coursing rage
and trembling in grief
we pawn our conscience for coal.
The spirit's executioner
came `round in our gloom.
Before eternal slumber
we need wet our lips
upon the dawn...

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

The Peace Train

WROUGHT TO YOU BY

READ THE POEM +/-

Bush: Leaving Iraq now would be disaster

By TERENCE HUNT,
AP White House Correspondent Mon Aug 21, 7:52 PM ET
President Bush said Monday the Iraq war is "straining the psyche of our country" but leaving now would be a disaster.

Bush served notice at a news conference that he would not change course or flinch from debate about the unpopular war as he campaigns for Republicans in the fall congressional elections. In fact, he suggested that national security and the economy should be the top political issues, and criticized the Democrats' approach on both.

Many Democrats want to leave Iraq "before the job is done," (what effing job is what i want to know? what exactly IS our job in Iraq? why DID we invade Iraq? i don't understand. i need someone to 'splain that to Lucy) the president said. "I can't tell you exactly when it's going to be done," he said, but "if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned."
(Freedom? FREEDOM? King George has NO idea what the hell freedom IS)! (More...)

This lie of all the horrid lies
Nearing three thousand unkind
And a land soaked in Arab blood
The Tigris is tinted crimson
If you look close enough

Chests cracked open like eggs
In a fury upon their vibrant shells
Stacked as high as a Shire's neck
Untamed-red-eyed-stamping
Drinking heavily at the river’s edge

This tale is of grave importance
No less than the origin of humanity
No more than the birth of God
What men have done to them all

This lie of all the horrid lies
Unearthed it comes unfamiliar
Stacks in the fresh pain of death
Upon the stench of the world’s loss
Bending of its significant weight

The most agonizing of all
Is the Shire’s maddening thirst
For it holds within its temper
What could well be our end

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Inspired by Ravings of a Semi-Sane Madwoman

QUINTILIS BOUND

READ THE POEM +/-

It begins:

A statue falls upon tyranny
with great noise!
Its echo swaggers,
“mission accomplished”…
1
a leader’s sons killed,
a vision most stark,
creating, again,
a most thickset brilliance;
freedom’s clang!
2
Clang went the bell
across the world's relief;
a government installed
and democracy
does bind its roots
`round a palm tree.
3
Iraqi born rebellion
stares back in disbelief
at its darkened final throe.
4
Another leader slain,
collateral blue sky leapt,
a world wheezing,
alive, stunned in death.
5
Road-side bombs doubled,
slash, rip, bang!
Numbers unfathomable,
America’s in trouble.
6
Insurgency rage shrieks
strung `round detonation,
it’s coming asunder,
slash, rip, thunder!
Civil war's been rolling
a year or more,
a rough translation.
7
Quintilis bursting in
thirty-five hundred!
Caesar Augustus!
Clang, tolled the bell
across the world
as a statue fell
upon tyranny...

It ends.

A CELTIC FIRE

Libertarian Communism is the true communist movement. It is quite different from the Marxist-Leninist "communist" movement which did not initiate communism in the USSR and China but actually a form of state capitalism, where the government, not the working people, controlled all property and production.
Libertarian communists are also called anarchists. Anarchists are opposed to capitalism and the state, and they believe the working class must organize to overthrow capitalism and replace it with an egalitarian, libertarian system where each person's autonomy and individuality is fully realized and allowed to flourish, and human community and solidarity is fully realized. Three similar movements are known as council communism, autonomism (autonomist marxism) and the Situationist International. All of these movements advocate the self-emancepation of the working class, and are opposed to using the electoral process to gain political power, preferring revolution.
Libertarian communism is not a new idea... it is a term that has been used at least as far back as the first decades of the 1900's.
New movements like the Libertarian Party and so-called anarcho-capitalism represent right-wingers who wish to steal the basic words and ideas of anarchists and make them stand for capitalism and a government of bosses and corporations. These people claim to be for a "free market", but this simply means corporate domination of all areas of life, a weak labor movement, and environmental destruction all over the planet. Only an organized anarchist and libertarian communist movement will defeat them.
Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist movements try to steal the ideas of socialism from anarchists and working class people and turn them against them, creating a hierarchical, authoritarian state that is communist in name only. Again, only an organized anarchist and libertarian communist movement will ensure victory against these advancing "red fascists".

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
-- Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British Author)

A CELTIC FIRE
Through a revolution’s teeth gleaming
astride the bottlenecked off-ramp;
an engine revs against the steady tread
of a shallow-visioned status quo.

(Godwin!)

The engine up against the fast-food-mumbling,
half-caf-drumbling of Mocha-Ice-Frapacino,
A stirring perfection of Chomsky’s shadow,
Zapata’s full-honed-revolutionary-razor,
Goldman’s tall-froth over corporatism
spattering down upon injustice,
Berneri cuffing the rageful-Hummer’s-hood
rejecting the child-sized-Happy-Meal of freedom
Comes blazing the ember of a Celtic Fire!

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

IWW.ORG

Celtic Fire

IRAQ'S CIVIL DISCOURSE

READ THE POEM +/-

The bombing near the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf on Thursday ignited fresh sectarian passions that lingered over sermons in Shiite and Sunni mosques. Some Muslim clerics wondered if Iraq has slipped too far, becoming a nation where the sounds of weeping mothers and praying imams are lost in the din of kidnappings, explosions and slaughter.
"We lost all our feelings. We are saying goodbye to our sons everyday," said Khaled Hassnawi, a Sunni imam, in his sermon at the Sheik Abdul Kadir mosque in Baghdad. "Wherever you go you see the blood of Muslims being shed. When will this time pass? When will those playing with this fate be satisfied?"
Speaking at the largest Shiite mosque here, Imam Sayed Nail Musawi said: "These adversities that you are seeing everyday are like training for us. God is testing our patience ... The incident in Najaf, who was killed? Poor people in the market. More than 30 were martyred. Najaf's sacredness was violated by this attack."
But even on a day of prayer, violence continued across the country. The bodies of six blindfolded and tortured men were found west and east of Baghdad. A roadside bomb near of northern city of Kirkuk exploded near an Iraqi police convoy, killing two policemen and injuring three.
17 Iraqis Killed in Fighting, Attacks on the Green Zone.
--21 Killed in Series of Baghdad Bombings

When death, anon, grows teeth
And the sun hovers in certainty
And deceit’s all barren, shattered,
And quarrelling gun’s their clatter,
Splendid homes gone flat of bomb
And explosions prized over blood,
Might it then be deemed civil?

The mouth in this does now smirk,
Grins in approval of his madness.
Even as lips prepare to burst and
Limbs congregate to blow apart
The king in this sips of conceit
To the mourning’s raised blade
Far from the rough-edged street.

Tipped in the brush of confusion
Painting now in red, pink and bone;
O great Cradle of Civilization
Budding in narrations account,
Guns and bombs pierce the history
Of your ancient and joyful land,
Let not this madness be her end.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

S.T.I.T.P.

17 Iraqis Killed in Fighting- Attacks on the Green Zone

21 Killed in Series of Baghdad Bombings

Clerics in Iraq decry sectarian violence

WHY DOTH... SO SLOWLY

READ THE POEM +/-

"Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?"

This is us upon boiling backdrop;
Lands dry, steeped in sorrow,
Children licking empty bowl,
Feet jutting out cardboard home.

Women battered on savage streets
Spreading limbs in painful masquerade.

Boys beautiful lips bleeding in alleyway,
Girls heeled and bare to a reluctant ache,
Powerful men grunting over them
Piercing green souls in undone rage.

Shattered lands against blackened horizon,
Terror-stamped freedom fighters
Gored, mutilated, tortured and bombed.

Godless gods dropping god awful weight
Over helpless, fleeing, shrieking shapes.

Unimaginable sun torching the sky
Melting mammoth ice and burning tree
Dying beasts scourged by machinery.

Humankind upon scorching canvas;
...The future doesn’t need us.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Karena's blog- Result of Democracy Being Thrust Upon You

RESCINDING PROMISE

READ THE POEM +/-

If you read the... ...quotations from the Bible, which include all the verses that deal with the "Promise Land," you will realize that God has promised the Holy Land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). The promise was literally given to their descendants, not to the followers of any specific religion. These descendants, today, are the Muslims, Christians, or Jews who have been associated with the Holly Land for thousands of years. Most Eastern European and Russian Jews, for example, are descendants of people who converted to Judaism starting from the eighth century. Therefore, the promise does not apply to them because they are not descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, the promise applies to descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who followed Jesus Christ and became the Christians of the Holly Land. The promise also applies to those Christians who, later, followed the message of Islam and became Muslims of the Holly Land. Thus, God's promise is for Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the Holly Land, not for other followers of these three great religions.

O! The Promised Land should never have been,
Never been pledged in the rescinding script of man.
These honorable descendants;
Isaac, Jacob and Abraham,
Do you know them?

All we can imagine is the depth of they're pain,
The pain of having been held in promissary note
That so many have died for
While pledged to a land
That should never have been.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Watching Lebanon

Two Fox News Journalists Kidnapped in Gaza

NOW NO OTHER DREAM

READ THE POEM +/-

There is now no other dream,
No other dream like the star wandering on high,
Floating like a fog on the surging ocean face;
A light that has already passed in far-flung memory.
Our forefather’s, too, stared within their grace,
The eyes of our mothers and fathers; a world
Of our tumbling through infinite space
Gazed upon them with a fearless spirit
Sculpted upon the meadows of their dreams.

We see them now not as dreams,
Not as dreams, but as our most waning hope;
Tumbling not of ideals, but of bleak daggers.
Have we not them a decent wish as they close?
Have we no more than the dark folly of man?
Might we seek it out with eyes of wisdom;
Familial visionaries in quest of peace
Standing tall above the crag of tyranny
Speckled in the light of floating wonder?

There is now no other dream,
No other dream more vital wandering on high,
Floating like a beacon through our darkness;
Radiance yet to come upon harmony inside our sleep.

Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Thank you Arch.Memory

Israel Pounds Lebanon Hours Before UN Truce

ANTHRAX- STALKING OF AMERICA

READ THE POEM +/-

It was called Anthrax. And Bush still hasn't caught the killer. So next time Bush/Cheney claim we haven't been hit again, ask them what happened to the Anthrax killer.

Bacillus Acute, political malady
This, our land bursts with anthracic disease
Flesh-dead center eating fast away
enveloped in rhetoric
Chained in spit
Black-necrotic
...Political death
Bring it `round, bring it `round
Our frail intellect
Political beast to the letter
Infect us, see death detected
Bacillus Acute, political malady
Our land bursts in anthracic disease
...Political death
We need a people-freed
Filtrate vaccine to bring Democracy
Flesh-dead-center eating `way our breath
Enveloped in rhetoric
Chained in spit
Black-necrotic
...Political-death

Copyright 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

ANTHRAX

Anthrax Suspect(s) are Likely in the US Government

AMERICAblog

PROFIT MIRROR

READ THE POEM +/-

Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean
The bombing of Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East Mediterranean coastline.
In this context, the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked , through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:
"[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)
Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Mighty man is a lie
Wrapped in mighty wars
With mighty blasting guns
Unafraid to have die
His god-jawed deed
Smothered in oily terror.

O! Petulant living!

Even my blind grasp
Of these words
Is no more than
A churning obituary
Held up
To fading mirror...

Man screams peace
While horrified from war,
Then dreams up wars
To profit oil’s raven.

Have we no more than ugliness
To bend our bodies back upon us;
Our war complete, our hunger fed,
Thirst’s tin cup filled with stones?

The man that says,
“War is the road to peace”
Is a fool and a coward.
Warring man is a liar
Wrapped in God’s breath,
Brandishing the mighty book
With oily, bloodstained hands.

Let us witness serenity approach,
Put our fingers inside her desperation
Falling from God’s deafening lips.
Grasping peace we can outlive war
And its dark pestilent dirge.
In peace we might cling tightly of love
Bending nearer of one another.

Copyright 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Guerrilla News

Scheherazade Sings

I'd like to introduce you to the poet named Scheherazade... Scheherazade or Shahrazad (Persian: شهرزاد Shahrzad) is the (fictional) storyteller of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
The tale goes that every day Shahryar (Persian: شهريار or "king") would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed three thousand virgins by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade.
Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dunyazad, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe to Scheherazade's first story and asked for another, but Scheherazade said there wasn't time as dawn was breaking, and regretfully so, as the next story was even more exciting.
And so the King kept Scheherazade alive as he eagerly anticipated each new story, until, one thousand and one adventurous nights, and three sons later, the King had not only been entertained but wisely educated in morality and kindness by Scheherazade who became his Queen.
The nucleus of these stories is formed by an old Persian book called Hezar-afsana or the "Thousand Myths" (Persian: هزارافسانه).
The earliest forms of Scheherazade's name include Šīrāzād (شیرازد) in Masudi and Šahrāzād (شهرازاد) in Ibn al-Nadim, the latter meaning "she whose realm or dominion (شهر šahr) is noble (ازاد āzād)".
Scheherezade was identified, confused with, or partly derived from the legendary queen Homāy, daughter of Bahman, who has the epithet Čehrzād or Čehrāzād (چهرازاد) "she whose appearance is noble". Harun al-Rashid's mother, Al-Khayzuran, is also said to have influenced the character of Scheherazade.
Well, the poet, Scheherazade, lives in Chicago. She's certainly a peculiar girl with four eyes, three degrees, two languages, and one life lesson stolen from Lawrence: "And learn, learn, learn the one and only lesson worth learning at last. Learn to walk in the sweetness of the possession of your own soul." However, it was the theme song to an American sitcom that taught her to "turn the world on with a smile." And Sesame Street to sing out loud and strong. Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing. Sing a song.

Here are two of Scheherazade's songs. Enjoy.

DO PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN OR WHEN NEW SHOES WON'T
(An Ode to Colonizing Liberals in the Dominican Republic)

Oh, the likes of them,
the likes of them.
Both
southern-bred and
Ivy-fed.
That they'd wed
is no suprise.
And what better gift for the newly-jewelly weds than their very own
Louisiana Purchase-- due East of Key West.

Their intentions are not
completely "avaricious."
So Moby says
(but he also sunk--perhaps too soon,
and too easily--one million dollars
into this venture).
Oh say can you survey?
What does a white liberal call the colonizing and subversive
nation-building of a third-world country?
Why, an "artists colony," of course.
Complete with beach-front bungalows
(only 250 available though;
and absolutely not
to be Meired in white
according to Celerie).

Going, going, gone!
For the low low price of $50,000.
That is, if you are of keen intellect, and socially conscious and
selectively, if not prolifically, published and and and "cash poor."
But, as Boykin says, you must be
most importantly
"clubbable."

Be advised to do as Boykin does
which is:
Do not drink the water,
Do not speak the language (Spanish is a devilish tongue and pidgin
isn't even a "real" language, so why bother?), Do not empower the
native peoples as partners, but keep them subservient as ornaments,
and drunk on the free-flowing kettle drum rum and the vapors of
aspiration.

And when the parent scolds the child for littering, as parents tend to
do Let the children respond with a hearty, if drunken, "fuck you."

Oh Missus Celerie Ma'am,
why bother to "slit the throat"
of this terra firma mistress
When you've already cut out
her heart?

BITING TONGUES
(A Sonnet for the First Amendment)

To speak of dark and wet and secret things, gives rise to petered
peckers and tapped phones.
Whether entwining limbs or skewering kings, rough words must not be
ground dull under stone.
Well-aimed barbs pierce the breast and bleed crimson truths that pinch
the loins and rend hearts.
The fool for love of country we dire need not to whisper but to roar
the hard parts.
To soak dry linen from an unstoppered flask, let freedoms surface
beneath still moist sheets.
Between the tickles, bites and who licks last love and liberty reign
when minds, not heads meet.
Salute the jester with middle finger extended, and grasp the unknown
as was first intended.

Stop by and say hello to Scheherazade at her house- Schadenfraulines!

UNdone

READ THE POEM +/-

We are warned by the fixed pulse of the din
Booming above the famished howl of the wind.

Our wounds seem to crest with each new sun
The bridled sting of truth too great to mount.

Our toppling has begun,
Our marriage with war,
Our alliance
With oil-drumming terror.

With a rat-a-tat-tat
Boom, boom, tum!
Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat!
Boom that drum!

The leaf wafts to this; our solemn ground;
The tree might know its time’s come `round
Yet sees, hears not our noisy murder,
Bleeds sap, cries not for our failure.

We are warned by the fixed pulse of our war
Booming aloft the famished howl of blunder
In our oil-drumming terror

With a rat-a-tat-tat!
Boom, boom, tum!
Rat-a-tat!
Rat-a-tat!
Boom that drum!

Again thank Ashraf for the link!

PUT THIS WAR AWAY!

READ THE POEM +/-

Poetic Justice

He who controls the present controls the past,
and he who controls the past controls the future. George Orwell, 1984

Orwellian Overture

By any rational reckoning, we have lost the war in Iraq, unless there is some plan to escalate it to World War Three, mobilizing the US economy and returning to the draft. How could we be at such a low point without there having been a vigorous national debate about our deeply flawed war goals, war plans and war results?

In April of 2003, we saw Saddam Hussein's statue fall in Baghdad. On Mayday, 2003 we read "Mission Accomplished" as Bush praised his Shock-and-Awe war from the USS Abraham Lincoln. By the summer of 2003, though, we heard the word insurgency for the first time, and within a year we were hearing words like Sunni Triangle, militias and civil war -- and we've been hearing them ever since.

In 1984 Orwell pointed out that Big Brother, through its Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), never admitted failure in reporting war, and neither have those who were supposed to be reporting our Iraq fiasco. We haven't had any Congressional oversight, media scrutiny or military correction for the worst war results in American history. In Orwellian terms, the Bush League is a Big Brother imitation, and our current corporate-run US media is a rental Minitrue.

If journalistic ethics -- or regard for truth -- could influence them, the media wouldn't continue to tell us, through pages, cameras and microphones, that there is any kind of success -- or prospect of success -- in the disastrous Quicksand War. They swore to be an embedded asset for the Bush League, though, and they've kept their devil's pact by finding new ways to shade, hedge and omit the facts. They have told us every lie necessary to bring us to the Middle East in the first place, and now telling us every lie necessary to keep us there.

O! Put this war away! Put it away!
Stash it in the annals of Vietnam,
Put the hideous, blood-spattered mongrel down!
Plant it beneath the loudly muted ground!

Lay our best and worst under, wrapped in flags,
Let the encircling earth hold it there, unspoken.
How many lives must we waste in shock and awe;
Scores of murder and rape to slither past?

Put this war away! O! God, end it if we will not!
Our hearts have wings for more than this!
Our souls more light than darkness here!
Lift light our spirit in freedom! Crush our tyranny!

Innocents shall not be raped for sport in awkward rage!
Bullets to head in terror’s Goddamned surrender!
Children slaughtered for oil! Families shattered of days!
A country devoured in empire’s repulsive teeth!

O! Put this war away! Put it away!
Snuff its proud lion beneath the plummeting shells
And send it prowling downward…
Let it lie, sprawled with the phosphorous bones.

Put this war away! Put it away!
We’ve had enough of blood; its use drained...
Bring our murder home. Ravage its molten metal frame
`til it cries out in its own reluctant wretched death!

If it is to be, let it come crashing!

Troops Took Turns Raping Iraqi Girl

SOUR BREEZE

READ THE POEM +/-

The world's tending to its headstones
Amid the scorching noise of collapse
Rasping at the rustling of brittle grass
Tears instead of rain lamenting dryly
At the door of the world's mausoleums.
No sigh of relief from nature's swoon

As I sit outside, eager, longing for a breeze.
Far-away lands tend to their grumbling wound
And the silhouette of a naked woman
Lances the boil through,
Yet young men with fire in their belly
Lie dormant, unmoved.
Now a young Adonis waltzes past,
Tapping on the sacred ground
Yet Aphrodite cannot stir the women,
Hearts still wafting, to writhe in dance,
The children with the blazing rasp of hope
Lay static `neath the glum ground.

As I write these words, this ode,
Feeling the weight of things I cannot move
The sour breeze easily bends the trees
Or the trees curve the wind
Lurching forward to taste.
I can only write of hope
Yearning for the redbird freshly calling
Instead of the raven's warble low.
I cannot really know,
Just that the frail grass `neath my feet
Is being dampened by my ache.

WAR HAT

READ THE POEM +/-

This is my war hat, said the smirking man
To the searing concrete.
I’m a war president!
A war president!
War’s all I know!
All I know!

There is something in the stale braying
Of the man who hangs
Words `bout in dread
Who barks and yelps,
War War War War
Eternal…

This is the inane bray of an oafish bully
A pseudo-tyrant’s howl
A full on liar’s groan
I’m a war president!
A war president!
War’s all I know!

For all those countermand to peace
They’ve a king in him.

32 Lebanese and 4 Israelis Killed Friday

Thousands of Iraqis Chant Death to Israel- Death to America!

ENGAGE...NOT RAGE!

I was reading through some sites this morning and came upon this at Al Jazeerah.info…

Our world is blessed with some truly world-class intellects. We must engage them to engage with us simple folk. We have brain power at our disposal and we need them dearly. Like say, Dr. James Zogby and Professor Juan Cole. We need you to teach and lead us. Engage with us and give us a hand. The politicians like say the Republicans and the Democrats and whomever can please excuse themselves right now. You’re not helping. As an example, how about Bare-ax Oh-bomb-uh and his wanton desire to blow the bejesus out of Iran. How does that help senator?
We need to engage with Hamas and Hizbullah and Syria and Iran and oh mercy, won’t that upset the creases in Karl Rove’s pajamas. George Bush is still to this very day trying dearly to figure out what exactly is a “Hizbullah.” Oh it’s true alright. Given that the deathly “al-Qaeda” is a CIA invention, do we continue on with a status quo or engage with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri? Yeah, there’s death and horror on all sides of this current terrorist mess. The United States and Israel are as much “terrorist” as is the H, H, and al-Q axis of whatever. We must engage on all sides or fronts or what the hell ever. The current quagmire of comprehensive slaughter cannot continue. Jeez George, knock that killing crap off right now. You’re not helping. You’re hurting a lot of innocent folk and it’s no longer acceptable. That applies equally to Ehud Olmert. What is wrong with you? Jeez Hud, if you don’t want to talk with Hamas or Hizbullah, sit down and shut up. Let someone else give it a try. Professor Kwiatkowski? Paging Professor Kwiatkowski. America is waiting on you. Raimondo? Rivero? Jones? Sharpton? Dr. Dean, you need to sit down and be quiet. Anti-Semitic? You maudlin dope. What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Finally to that nice Saudi photographer lady, I’m still waiting for that call. We’ve a revolution to get started. Engage with me and let’s change the world. Scott...Ritter, where you at son? Don’t give up now. There’s work to do and our world needs your expertise. Richard Thielman? Where you at son? Come on we need you. Engage and that will be the hard part. For certain! (More...)

Flags again are sensed in our empty gesture,
Tied to so many unimaginable transport,
Stabbed in America’s brittle lawns,
Impaled deep in the freshly wet green of wealth,
Staggered and airless in the crying fields,
Flapped against pickup truck and Humvee;
Nationalism etched in freshly waxed exterior
To twisted frame of the fallen and dead ideals.

We are lifting broken families into the air
Aloft in the explosion of mourning
Without comprehending our rage.
The dead, suspended in bomb's brown sky.
Children are odes instead of laughter,
Funerals instead of schools,
As fear invades their ambitious eyes
Draped in the shadow of war.

We are lifting children up to casualty
While our flags they must be flying!
Hymns of righteousness must be sung,
Anthems exploded… void of comprehension.
Flags fan the air where shrapnel pierces,
Penetrates the steel shell of our lust,
Pitching compassion into the oily cloud
Racking torturous battles upon the world.

There is no national anthem or flag or war
That can lift the soil from off the innocent.
There is not a god with the claws of gravity
To raise this; our soulless murdering.
There is but one mercy for our violent flow;
We must erect a statue as high as the heavens
Made of all of our guns and tanks and bombs
And watch as, one by one, God molds them into stars...

Copyright © 2006 mrp thepoetryman

Engage Not Rage!

WE CANNOT LIVE TO SEE IT ALL

TUTU: It’s an extraordinary idea and, it fills one with a great deal of excitement and exhilaration, and it sounds crazy, but then I think it was crazy when Gandhi said we’re going to work so that eventually India is free. It must have been crazy when Martin Luther King Jr. also said we’re going to make civil rights a real issue in the United States, and maybe when Nelson Mandela and others said one day apartheid will be no more, that we need those like yourselves who dream dreams and say, “It is possible. It is possible for people to know that war is not natural.”
...People have been able to live peacefully together, but if they live peacefully together after war, why should they have war first before they can realize that it is a great deal better. War is not nice to children, it’s not nice to people, it’s not nice to the environment.
...And so I say go for it. This is marvellous. Go for it and really be crazy and say, one day we’ll ask, “Why were we so stupid for so long because of something so obvious?” Saying let us put our massive investment that we are putting right now in instruments of death and destruction, let us put them into something that is creative, that is life-enhancing teaching kids that there are ways of resolving differences that don’t need to be violent. You can sit down and ultimately say, “You know, actually, an enemy is a friend waiting to be made.”

Someone once said “we cannot live to see it all”.
There is no relief in that merry knowledge,
Witnessing the vacant waving of flags
And apple polisher’s parade toward destruction.

Is it an eternal conscience, our tumbledown end?
Might we by careening with our fate suffer less?
Along the way may we not beckon of resistance?

We, in this, be not alone, but one with humanity.
Is it not then hopeful?
Is it not then merry
Our seeking to ebb the world’s headlong calamity?

If it be so, then cease your foolish exaggeration,
End all of your fanatical cries of evil and terror!
Err on the side of our freshly burning world,
And unite in the hunt for harmony’s gate.

O! Not the shrill and hasty clout of national anthems!
We shall soon enough have cause for none;
Instead we should, we must, parade as one.
Let us live to see it all prepared for our children.

Copyright © 2006 mrp

The Peace Alliance

Peace Kids

gOD

First bloom
Bomb
IED
Sacrament
Deity
Folded pain
Given thee
…A plea
…A grasp
…A hope
…A bomb
…An IED
…An unfurrowed pain
…An offering to thee
Bloom
Bomb
IED
Children
Ache
Forfeit
Thee
…Take this tree, gOD
…Take this flower
…Crush this stone
…This father
…This mother
…Arid land
…Emptiness
We are
In your image
Beautiful
Furious
Loving
Failing

Copyright © 2006 mrp

A woman is carried across rubble in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail.