BETMO sent me an email I thought I'd share... The inspired poem follows...
"Let's all shop at Sears!!! I assume you have all seen the reports about how Sears is treating its reservist employees who are called up?
By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up reservist employees for up to two years. I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution. Suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement ! it well deserves. Pass it on.
So I, decided to check it out before I sent it forward. I sent the following email to the Sears Customer Service Department: I received this email and I would like to know if it is true. If it is, the Internet may have just become one very good source of advertisement for your store. I know I would go out of my way to buy products from Sears instead of another store for a like item even if it was cheaper at the other store. Here is their answer to my email......................
Dear Customer: Thank you for contacting Sears. The information is factual. We appreciate your positive feedback. Sears regards service to our country as one of greatest sacrifices our young men and women can make. We are happy to do our part to lessen the burden they bear at this time."
THE DISTORTION OF EVE
Upon the homeward rumble of unkind supremacy;
The breathtaking leap of winter, and black sky…
Our marching lions return from their stalking submission,
Arriving champions, thrashing and pining for quiet
To pull open drooping eyes against the use of this globe.
When the warrior sleeps, and the higher peace consumes
And wraps around their grip, freeing the feel of the trigger,
And they know the bird’s touching down upon home
The screech of gears jostles them out of their sleep;
The vision of the children’s scattered brown skin
Surges now their scope like some distortion of Eve.
The planes tires have the shattering cries of the fallen
Breathing their last and now the ears pierce with humming;
They think, better to be home, than pleading in the shadows,
Than pulling the action and cutting strangers in two
Or seeing their own legs lying next to them…
Home! Home at last!
No more angry fingers clutching at roadsides.
No more the rigid fists of quagmire their reaping.
No more exploding flesh. No more! No more!
Let the harvest stray in the sand of that land!
Now stepping off to the touch of home,
To a streaming banner of never again.
To flag draped visions rising up chanting `hero’.
To faces stumbling among the fleshy fragments
Looking surprised, uttering unintelligible dread.
And the lion scans the gathering, piercing past the flesh
To walk through, to feel the defeated fingers of home.
Now the air broken with music blasting the newfound peace
And the mob of tears and applause consume the humming
As families look for one another to hold close this discord.
The music faded, photo snapped, banner down, they march home,
And, as the lions drift easily off to the first quiet sleep,
The rumble turns into the voice of a dark pleading,
Asking, “To what end?” “Where were you going?”
“This cloth we use to mop up the oil, wipe shame across the sand?”
The use of this realm, these three-colored banners,
Is all better washed than flown, burned or buried,
Than waved down the broken streets of home.
Even the lions now to their busy, restless lives;
Complacent and lockstep with the re-fragmenting horde.
"No! No! No! Goddmanit! We’ve yet to heal!
We’ve only managed to cover our wound and our wounding!
There’s been no aroma of peace wafting here!
Cease your goddamned marching! Cease!"
Upon the whistling street tosses the signs of conformity,
The smiling empty faces of greed and blindness.
The horrific film loop of deceitfulness.
The casting agents are auditioning our children
As extras in war movies that bow to beasts.
Will we now sleep through the harvest?
March down Old Glory Street?
Oh! Lion…
Step off your plane to the hush of peace...........
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
