POETIC JUSTICE: March 2007

PALE SAINTLINESS (Blog Against Theocracy)

O! Deceitfulness!
O! Pale saintliness!
Must you eradicate all sound reason?
Must you tread upon all of the globe
With your loose-lipped godlessness
While the red droplets of heaven
Are collapsing on the meek and tired,
And the empire’s bombs plummet
Upon the offspring of hearts and souls?

What gains have you in this; your delusion?
Surely the path to heaven is not covered
In falsehoods and charlatans handing out flowers.
Your lips smack of devout hypocrisy!
Your reasoning, a blunt object upon the head!
Your god smacking lips quiver in vagueness!
Your words refuse to venture out with humanity,
Instead they lounge upon uncomfortable faith
Cracking hope with the weight of your coffers!

It is immense within mankind.
It is yielding and graceful.
Dampness and the soil congregate there
While we set out to destroy the living;
Words as bullets ripping through
Piercing the downtrodden and weak!

We need take these hateful terms,
This small, narrow-minded language
And rip them all to shreds
Then, with the hand of humanity open,
We must unlearn our gradated wants and needs.
We must unlearn these ugly traditions
Of lies, murder, war, and greed.

We must open our hands.

Blog Agasint Theocracy

A CONVERSATION WITH GODDESS

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

GODDESS: Poetryman, don’t you want to know where all those walking or non-walking wounded are?

TPM: No! I don't wanna know the horrors of my government's complicity! I would much rather get lost in American Idol and imagine that the world's fate rests with the dismissal or eventual crowning of Sanjaya Malakar. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an oven waiting for my head.

GODDESS: Whoah! Before you stick your head in there, answer me this, where have they all gone?

TPM: They signed up for it.

GODDESS: Yes. They signed up for it thinking they’d be taken care of if wounded. Right?

TPM: You go to war with the army you have and you come back to the country you traipsed off to defend.

GODDESS: Whatever… I was thinking as I was driving into work this morning, “Where the hell are they hiding; all the wounded of this war? Does anyone else see them?" Do you?

TPM: O Jesus! Of course I see them, Goddess! They are getting the finest medical care known to man! Anyone with half a brain knows that. They are America's soldiers of fortune. Not their own, but fortunes none the less.

GODDESS: You’re off your meds again aren’t you?

TPM: What? I never was on them!

GODDESS: Then might I suggest you begin and do not swallow them with Koolaid.

TPM: Whatever. And now, Goddess, if you'll excuse me, I have to run out in front of an oncoming train.

GODDESS: Too late.

TPM: Too late for what?

GODDESS: Train’s already run today.

TPM: Oh.

GODDESS: This weekend I’ll be walking for peace, how about you?

TPM: Rather not and say I did.

GODDESS: It’s your prerogative. March or don’t march, just don’t come crying to me when they round you up as an enemy pacifist.

TPM: An enemy pacifist? What the hell does that mean?

GODDESS: I’m not sure, but I’ll be walking for peace this weekend anyway, which reminds me of something Mother Teresa said.

TPM: Now why in hell would that remind you of something Mother Teresa said?

GODDESS: It’s a walk for peace, poetryman.

TPM: Okay?

GODDESS: Mother Teresa said,"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

TPM: Sure. It's a fine little cliché of a quote and all, Goddess, but I’m a wee bit perplexed by it.

GODDESS: How so?

TPM: The “we belong to each other” part… I belong to no one! I pay my taxes, buy gas, eat out at McDonalds, fine-dine at Burger King, buy my groceries at Wal-Mart and have my oil changed there, too. I’d suggest you do the same.

GODDESS: You can’t be serious. Can you?

TPM: You’re damn skippy I’m serious! That protest and marching stuff is so nineteen-sixties! It’s passé. Anarchy went out with the eight-track tape my friend. It’s retired or dead. I’ve heard it’s either living in one of Cher’s wigs or floating face down on Golden Pond. Either way ya stroke it it's a few thumps from oblivion.

GODDESS: No. It lives my friend. Open your eyes and you’d see.

TPM: Yada yada yada… Oh! I almost forgot to set the timer on the recorder! Can't miss tonight’s American Idol. …Yip. Me and the wife and the child are going to see the latest greatest that our fine American Cinema has to offer! We’ve watched our personal collection of movies so much that the picture's are all squiggly. Some don't play at all. Hell! Our favorite, Top Gun, is barely discernable!

GODDESS: Top Gun?

TPM: You’re damn skippy! It is one of the finest cinematic achievements in modern memory!

GODDESS: You really need to medicate yourself before you hurt somebody.

TPM: Whatever. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Goddess, I have to put a bullet in my gun.

GODDESS: Don’t let me stop you.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

I'm Sorry World

PERFECT MONSTER

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Tony Snow's Cancer Spreads to Liver
"His attitide is one that he is not going to let this whip him," Mr. Bush said.
"My attitude is that we need to pray for him."

Yes. No person deserves cancer.
Cancer does not discriminate.
My hope and good wishes go out to Mr. Snow and his family in their time of need.
Cancer took my uncle.
Cancer took my moms best friend.
Cancer has always taken. It never gives.
Best wishes, Tony Snow.
I hope, like my father did three times, you are able to again defeat it.

The Perfect Monster Kills Quietly
June 19, 2006
"I have never seen... double and triple cancers in one patient... My wife has nine members of her family with cancer"-- Iraqi doctor.

When anyone makes nuclear energy or nuclear weapons, a massive amount of radioactive waste is created. In the U.S., Depleted Uranium is harnessed by the government as a component for bombs, shells and automatic weapons bullets.
Nuclear waste remains radioactive for billions of years, contaminating ground, water and air, causing cancer, birth defects and death, although DU is allegedly "safe" for humans, according to Pentagon scientists (irony being the weapons are still meant to kill).
D.U. is now everywhere in Iraq: (and much of Afghanistan) bullets made with uranium lay in the residential streets, neighborhoods in Baghdad and Fallujah have been bombed with uranium weapons... and doctors in Iraq have taken notice.

It brings no comfort; Conquest.

Carries no good over the blazing ground.
Or has mind to think.
(The thinking’s been done.)

Pause.
Now metastasize.

The piercing downburst of steel.
Escaping from the burning center.
The stench of might.
Eyeless armed forces marching past.
Turmoil in the suffocating shamal.

Pause.
Metastasize again.

Shrapnel punctures the gaping eye.

Living splinters like imploding shells.

(Thin casings cannot hold such weight.)

Pause.
Metastasize again.

The vortex of dust settles into us.
The human shield bends.
Will our hope shatter?
Will freedom?
Can all men be liberated?

Pause.
Metastasize again.

The pulse of war thrums.
The embattled echo in turn.
This is war, America.
(Over there so we don’t see.)

Pause.
Metastasize again.

Perhaps the light will expand.
The warmth open.
Light extend over and envelop.
Humanity clamber up and cleanse.
Empire turn and pass away.
The strength of peace find its legs.
A small child to live another day.
The wish of every one heaved against loss.
Might this be;
Joy over the yoke of obscurity?

Pause.
Metastasize again.

Little energy is expended in love.
Only fools find love oppressive.
Love drudges not our fear.
Loving is free.
Love may lift the hate from all.
Love isn’t war. Love isn’t peace.
It is free
(Perhaps the only thing that is.)

Pause.
Metastasize again.

We need remove the shards of our own terror,
The one we inflict, not the one we dread.
Joy will soar and love caress.
It is the greatest power we have.
Not knives and guns and bombs.
Not gas and tanks and planes.
Not armies marching in victorious formations.

And metastasize again.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

IN THE SCRUM

The DOJ Scandal Meets The Press

MR. RUSSERT: Knowing what you know today, do you have confidence in the leadership and the integrity of the attorney general?
MR. IGLESIAS: Right now I’ve got serious doubts. I really do.
MR. RUSSERT: Is he—does he have the standing to continue in that position?
MR. IGLESIAS: That’s a great question, and I think that’s something that has to be figured out in the scrum between the Justice Department, the White House and Capitol Hill.

The lie says it never sees the truth
Until it has it floating face down,
Says it only glances back
Through the glitter of hoary water
Where it gazes upon its victim.

The lie declares it does not hear truth
Until the hammer’s heavy finish,
Says it sees a stream of blood
Through the mist of unsettling rage
And then perceives the thundered echo.

In the scrum it is a death for knowledge,
And another for treachery.
Victim and murderer both;
One bobbing breathless,
The other caught unaware
Looking back with pride.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

TYRANNY

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Nothing at present is foreseen.
Everything now is looming.

Within this; our heartrending time,
the stars crawl on hands and knees
from end to end,
inching toward the sun of man.
This arrangement of emptiness mouths
silent consonants in search of vowels
to fill empty words the size of the ocean.

The angels scour the floor of our living,
touching their wings against the waters,
their silence louder than tyranny.

It will be at the liquid birth of God
that the reverberations spring forth,
seeping across a new humanity.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

AT THE PLEASURE OF THE PRESIDENT

It is easy enough to kill a mouse
Even to wound or maim or squish;
Crush with a shoe. I have seen it done. I have seen this,

The outcome; petite legs broadened,
Turned awkwardly outward

Like some unsuspecting possum on the road,
Like a newly wet canvas of an enraged serial killer,

And how afterward the sole of the shoe seems different,
As if invincible, carrying now the influence of death.

Yes. It is easy enough to kill a mouse,
Even to wound or maim or squish,
Crush with a shoe. I have seen it done. I have seen this.

It is not, I suppose, like crushing a child.
It is not, I suppose, like flattening the human frame,

Unless you’re a monster marching through the village
Stomping the least of the insignificant clutching at giants.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

"MOVE ALONG"

Is It For Freedom? Sara Thomsen (3:45)

(After watching this video I was inspired to write my own song.)

WHO PAYS THE PRICE

As you and I sit idly by
And watch America
Eating from the trough,

As you and I sit idly by
And watch America
Drinking her indifference,

As you and I sit idly by
And watch America,
A pill of greed upon her tongue,
While children starve outside our homes
And others drown inside their own
While people of the world are bombed,

Will we close our eyes
And swallow the pill
When we're told "we don't belong"?

Who then pays the cost
Who pays the cost
For America’s freedom land?
Who then pays the cost
Of our eating from the trough
While all the bombs
Are falling from our hands?

Who pays the cost for apathy?
Who pays the heavy price?
Who pays when we close our eyes
And we're told to "just make nice"?

Who pays the cost for that?
Who pays the price
When our planes have bombed their last?
Who pays the heavy cost
When we buy a tank of gas?
Who pays a price as we devour
While so much more is lost?

As you and I sit idly by
And watch America
Eating from the trough,
While children starve outside our homes
And others drown inside their own,
While people of the world are bombed
Will we close our eyes and swallow the pill
When we’re told to "move along"?

Will we close our eyes and swallow the pill
When we’re told to "move along"?

Will we close our eyes and swallow the pill
When we’re told to "move along"?

Thanks to Elowehi25 for the video

Previous Post - RAWA

IT MATTERS WHAT WE DO...

(Ben Heine - Cartoons)

It matters what we do.
The liberation possesses us
Like death owns our bones.
While we beam a maw of daggers
The freeway writhes next to us
Like a pit of angry snakes.
A liberty bell protests pointlessly in the harbor,
Some ashen patriot, or adolescent, must be torturing it…

Let’s not conjure this painting further.
Forget about the relentless racket.
Forget about freedom for a moment.
Think only of the terror stuffed deep down
Like a wellhead pawing the ocean floor,
Think only of ourselves and our callous skin,
An opportunity to taste such bitterness;
How acerbic and most foul to live without conscience…

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Thanks to C&L

Inspired in part by Ben Heine's Disasterous Occupation

COURSING UPWARD

READ THE POEM +/-

(Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Think Progress – Iraq Debate on Meet the Press
At one point, DeLay claimed that places like Bahrain and Qatar wouldn’t accept U.S. troops who had redeployed out of Iraq. Sestak put his hand on DeLay’s arm and informed him that the U.S. military already has bases in those countries.
Later, Perle made the incredible statement that “‘Redeploy’ is a euphemism for cut-and-run.” Note to Perle: redeployment is an official military term (see this entry in the Pentagon’s Dictionary of Military Terms). “Cut and run” is the euphemism, and a tired and false one at that.

"Tired and false"… Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to this; why are we in Iraq again? Where was the jumping off point? Was it 9-11? The world did not change that day...but the US foreign and domestic policy certainly did which in turn is changing the world at a very rapid rate with the US leading an effort to control all interests in the so called "war on terror".

I am no conspiracy theorist, yet I have long thought, "Nothing about 9-11 makes much sense at all."

I agree:
“Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty."
George W. Bush at the United Nations, November 11, 2001.

And I agree that:
"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny."
Robert A. Heinlein American writer

And I agree that:
"It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping of what is now called 'a conspiracy theory of history.' For a search for 'conspiracies,' as misguided as the results often are, means a search for motives, and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites. If, however, any tyranny or venality, or aggressive war imposed by the State was brought about not by particular State rulers but by mysterious and arcane 'social forces,' or by the imperfect state of the world -- or if, in some way, everyone was guilty -- then there is no point in anyone's becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, a discrediting of 'conspiracy theories' will make the subjects more likely to believe the 'general welfare' reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern State for engaging in aggressive actions."
Murray N. Rothbard Dean of the Austrian School of Economics

Coursing Upward

This country needs the truth to be spoken.
Have a reunion with an unwavering light
To chart, ride, and calculate deceptions heavy barbs,
Sustenance weighed for worth and certainty.

We need pledge our suspicion on the breath of man
Prepared to open his lips and cough up
America’s latest shadowy, myth-soiled account.
We need pale all the ears of our streets with hesitation,

With exactness snatched between the rational mind and fear.
Power seeks out the holes in our doubt
And patches them with dread
So good men shiver at their own shadow.

I’m not afraid to pen my doubt upon the screen,
The virtual pages of our present language,
Of man’s bowed and busted logic
Coursing upward, seeking the flesh of truth.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

PNAC

Previous Post - FURIOUS EVENT

FURIOUS EVENT

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(Ben Heine - Cartoons)

His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.
The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."

US soldier guilty of Iraq deaths

Iraq Attacks Show Insurgent Resilience

From hope to despair in Baghdad

Death on the way to Basra

-Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War on Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +

-Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq 3,218

-Cost of America's War in Iraq
$409,364,138,199To see more details, click here.

Furious Event

So let's return again to treachery
And begin where we left off, with astounding loss,

Or confer with the quagmire
Next to the potent stream of scarlet on the eager soil,

Always there to remind us
With the next furious event…

Its face hanging like posthumous honors
Upon the lowering of a hero in harms way

Or, now that failure is indeed in front of us,
Both eyes wide-open as if we’d stumbled into this nightmare.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Previous Post - IN NO TIME

RENDER UNTO...

READ THE POEM +/-

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Previous Post - FLAGS FOR ACHILLES

FLAGS FOR ACHILLES

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~The very first two lines of the Iliad read:

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκεν,

Rage—sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles, the son of Peleus,
the destructive rage that brought countless griefs upon the Achaeans...

Achilles is the only mortal to experience consuming rage (menis). His anger is, at times wavering, at others, absolute. The humanization of Achilles by the events of the war is an important theme of the story. ~

O! Handsome warrior!
Great fleeting Achilles!
Your death, where water touched you not,
resounds in this; our flag-flooded globe.

Who can fly their banner higher?
March in more an eloquent step?
Harmonize more superbly
the sacrosanct song?

O! Thetis!
Had you but anointed your child
in a sea of flags
and not the river Styx...

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

The Funny Side of Troy

Previous Post - AT NIGHT

SHOCK AND AWE -march on the pentagon- (2:00)

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SHOCK AND AWE (march on the pentagon)

The blackbirds congregate in the trees
Cackling in avian verse;
A call to action!
We’d just as soon forget about them,
Ignore their brazen cry to move ever onward,
Heed not their shrill caveat.
We’ve better things to do than bother with trifling matters.
The traffic’s noise is enough, the unfolding day
That plummets like an avalanche of dream
Cascading behind our sleep.
We’ve no room for more racket parading past our white doors;
Marching by, hands in the air, waving at our mountain of bills,
Our sick child, our dying joy.
Besides, the architects of battle know better than we
The feel and smell and taste of war...

The murder will soon move on;
We want them to quiet, the noise fade,
And have tomorrow arrive like an unexpected friend
For today holds us hostage in the cry of birds.

“Common Ground has served more than half a million people without getting any government support. At the same time, billions of dollars have been spent on a needless war in Iraq, that has drained our country's resources that could be meeting people's needs. We'll be paying for this war for the next 50 years. That's why I'll be marching on the Pentagon on March 17.”- Malik Rahim, Founder, Common Ground Collective, New Orleans

“I will be marching on the Pentagon on March 17, 2007 with thousands of other Americans. On this the 4th anniversary of the Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq and forty years after the historic 1967 March on the Pentagon, We the People, will be insisting on the immediate end to the war against Iraq. Bring your friends, neighbors and loved ones and join us in the March on the Pentagon.”- Ramsey Clark, Fmr. U.S. Attorney General

"The Pentagon is the embodiment of the U.S. war machine. We are marching because this machine is killing hundreds of thousands of people and spending limitless resources in a quest for Empire. The Iraq war is one of the great crimes of the modern era. We must act now to end it. If we unite, the power is in the people.” - Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Partnership for Civil Justice, co-founder

“I thought that the worst had happened when my step son was killed in Iraq, and my husband set himself on fire in his grief. Yet every single death in Iraq, and every single parent's tears are still like pins in my heart. Why in the name of money? For those who have money and want more? The values I learned as a patriot of the United States no longer exist. I can't get my step son back, but I can get my country back. Join Carlos and me on March 17th at the Pentagon.”- "Carlos" & Melida Arredondo, Gold Star parents whose son and step-son, Alex, died in Iraq in 2004, co-founders of peopleunitedforpeace.org.

“I will be marching on the Pentagon on March 17, 2007 for all of the innocent victims yet to die in this war. I will be marching for all of the fathers of those victims and their mothers and loved ones who will grieve them. I will be marching to end the racist, classist war before it takes the life of your loved one.” - Michael Berg, Father of Nicholas Berg, killed in Iraq

“This National Security State is driving the U.S. to a permanently dangerous, aggressive, open-ended "Long War." It is turning the Arab and Islamic World into a killing field in the service of an illusionary goal of building a dominating Empire. At the expense of American blood and treasury, the war profiteers are cashing in on the Bush policies of military intervention abroad and surveillance at home.”- Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chair, National Council of Arab Americans

“I'll be marching March 17th, with my wife, with friends, to express our solidarity with all those people, all over the country, who demand that the United States bring our troops back from Iraq. We need to make clear to the Democrats in Congress that we expect bold action from them to stop the war, to save the lives of Americans and Iraqis, and use the enormous sums wasted on war to serve the needs of the people.”- Howard Zinn, Author and historian

“It's not about U.S. troop reduction. We want an end to U.S. occupation of Iraq. The White House nor Congress will end the war. They didn't end the war in Vietnam. The American people did, and it is we the people who must end this war. The coward will ask is it safe?...Vanity is it politically expedient or popular? But conscience will always ask, is it right? STOP THE WAR.”- Mahdi Bray, Exec. Dir., Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation

“Young people, and especially young women, have always played a major role in the struggle for social justice and in opposition to war. It is our duty to help make this new anti-war movement a powerful and effective force. That's why we are mobilizing young people from Washington Heights in New York City to march on the Pentagon on March 17th.”- Claudia de la Cruz, Director, Dominican Women’s Youth Development Center

“Students are organizing from the East Coast, Midwest and South to come to the Pentagon on March 17. From high schools and college campuses, the message is going out. We must act. The war and occupation of Iraq costs $279 million each day. We are marching to demand funds for jobs and education, not for a rich man’s war. We need a war against racism right here at home.”- Karina Garcia, Columbia University anti-Minutemen organizer

1,500+ endorsers of the March on the Pentagon - March 17, 2007
More about The March On The Pentagon!

BROKEN BY WAR

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

War concludes, piercing the proof of silence;
Influence spent, the station of splendor set,
Undressed in stillness; an ambush on our union.

But let’s not paint the words; let us just say it-
War, for the warrior, never ends.
War, for the dead, lives on without them.
War outlives our marriage to grief.

Grief, then, outlasts the lover’s ceremony.
It beats it back,
Rupturing it with devoted impatience,
Drowning it under earth’s damp ground,
Like a monstrous wave unleashed by frail levee.

We sense the dark curve of evermore run screaming
Along the edge.

Not many could keep on in this perilous wave,
No love, no devotion, no vigor, no union,
None, save for war…

Effects of Iraq War on American Citizens

Progressive.org - Broken by This War

Veterans Help Network

The Illustrated Daily Scribble

Previous Post - WARRIORS

TESTIFY

READ THE POEM +/-

Now the witnesses leave the murky plot.
The inflamed and the righteous quieted,
Their minds, dripping like oily rags.
These tools of empire thrash the soiled stripes.

In oily soldiers of self
Hope writhes unfilled.
The wail of these bludgeoners and
Scowling whores to money’s den
Are bent toward our end.

The world spins `round the hastened, scarlet flood,
Manacles clank `gainst the gruesome stones;
This is the spectacle
of our making.

And it is the rudder turned toward loss, and hunger
And terror, and this throbbing
Shaped by we the people
To the failure of our will, our freedom, our earth…

The inflamed and righteous are hushed,
Witnesses of their own dreadful spirit-
O! Let us mend this at once!
America must redeem herself;
Conquer nothing, torture not, and murder no one.
She must, before hatred holds mirror up to her ashen face,
Make a beautiful noise away from her doom.

Let us be witness to the Kingdom’s dream,
Let us not allow the final sound to be
The cloven-hoofed echo…

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

U.S. Attorneys Testify About Their Firings

Inside Bush’s Prosecutors Purge

Air America Radio

SUFFERING BACKDROP

READ THE POEM +/-

Former Cheney aide found guilty

Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty
of four counts of lying, perjury and obstructing justice
during an investigation tied to the Iraq war.
Investigators were trying to determine
who leaked the identity of a CIA analyst in 2003.

Suicide Bombers
Kill 93 in Iraq
White House official
Libby guilty
Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case
Diary of the Leak Trial
Iraq's 'Excess' Death Diary
Libby Verdict in:
Guilty on 4 out of 5 counts
Sad day when top official in Veep's office
obstructs justice and lies;
Scores of Iraqi pilgrims die
Marginalized
and despised

In this backdrop we all suffer,
a shard of something drives deep under
a trembling wing
that flails in the curvature
of this time,
some passageway of awareness
smashes down upon us;
a requiem;
one long, unending swathe
tries to conceal our soiled union,
instead it daubs its crimson
wall to wall;
one, two, three, four;
an impenetrable encasement.

In this backdrop we suffer,
a shard of something drives deep under
a trembling wing
flailing in the curvature of oppression.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Previous Post - DEPRESSION

THE COLOSSEUM

(Ben Heine - Cartoons)

The gentle brush of leaves awakens me
Startles me out of my amber vision
A recurring dream

Hooded men with rusty swords
Wrapped to the knees in crepidas
Tramp solidly over The Colosseum floor
Thickly marching -click click click click-
Oven timers set to broil

Surrounded by a pride of green faced lions
Proud men and women and children
Gleaming with a brilliant, crisp air
The kind of air that comes from victory
Or the expectation of it

We stand in the center
Debris rains down around our feet
The horde growing uneasy
Licking their chops ready to grimly applaud
And point collective thumbs down

Our flesh vibrates with the rumbling ground
We wait
We breathe
Perhaps for the last time
The emperor waves his yellow hands

There is an ear-splitting silence

The hooded men like canyon walls lean forward
Click
We do not flinch
Click
We do not flinch
Click
We do not flinch

We raise our steadied weapons
And begin to paint