POETIC JUSTICE: February 2009

WE, THE DEAD

"To the missiles chattering beam!" we bow.
“O! To bombs dropping from heaven!” we bend.
Such folly brings laughter and joyful eruptions
From the winking throng of toadies (and the dead).

“To green and surrendering grace!” we groan.
“O! To these foolish breasts adhere!” we drone.
We begin to assemble loyal cities from under the rubble
And erect love and honor of smoldering metal and bone.

“To our savior’s craft, give worship!” we entreat.
“O! To metal-souls, children's breath!” we shriek.
We carefully situate fingers and toes for bridges and roads
Leaving the best of the human frame for soaring metaphors.

“To leaders of machinery, give praise!” we beg.
“O! To brazen chops, living’s wonderment!” we grant.
We heave tanks and jets to fly over enemies of existence
And, weeping, we shed the masks that veil our disgrace.

LAY THE WAR DOWN

(A Poetryman Video)

O lay the war down
Set it beneath the ground
Do not pick it up again
Lay the war down

Lay the war down
To it’s gravelly trough
Left low forevermore
Lay the war down

Lay the war down
Bury it under heavy clay
And beneath massive rock
O lay the war down

Lay the war down
Suffocate its panting rage
Cut off its bloody head
Leave it evermore

Lay the war down
Forever without sound
Silent of its horrid screech
Leave it underground

O lay the war down…

Hat tip to my dear friends over at Adgita diaries and their post American Ash Wenesday

HOLD THE EUOLOGIES

(A Poetryman Video production)
Music-Pink Floyd's "Money"

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

O!
The pigheaded door has been slung wide
on America and her poor beneath the sun.
People have begun to listen, awaken to these oafish brutes!
There is hope in this. There is hope in this.

Years have seen another and another and another
of rigid, bias-stained cloak slung over the hideous gash!
The hordes of misery howl on the shores of freedom,
on these, our milky plains, as the brutes stand idly by.

But today there is risen hope! A plea’s been uttered,
angels again peruse our golden crop in the valley of our fortune!
May the sloping howl of mercy drown the screech of plenty
And restrain these beasts so that hope might live…

________________________________________________

Hold the euologies, Ted Kennedy says

'I don't really plan to go away soon,' he says in interview

After the president of Harvard hailed him as a “national leader but a local servant,” after the pastor read the “Let us now praise famous men” passage from the Bible and after the cellist Yo-Yo Ma honored him by performing a Gershwin prelude, Senator Edward M. Kennedy lumbered across the antique stage.

“I have lived a blessed time,” Mr. Kennedy told the audience at a special honorary degree convocation at Harvard in December. His voice started shaky, but gained strength. “Now, with you, I look forward to a new time of high aspiration for our nation and the world.” (More...)

HOLD THE EUOLOGIES

With new dawn and her penned in sleep
Held behind razor-lines of days gone by
In this troubled land of waggle and flash
Charges the lion to set us upright.
To light the path of strength alone
And offer guidance within the gloom.

Loose hands and fall back, we seem to say.
Turn out and let go-
Head down into the shadows of collapse-
Into the whole… fall together, we seem to say.

Then rises his blast of the hellhole down of roaring,
And “I’m not gone!”
“Still alive!”
“Breathing and strong!”
“Now into the bright sun we journey to fight!”
Comes howling...

Mr. Obama, please...

Taking personal action is a poem in and of itself...

TREMBLING LOAM

Another poem culled from the past (with updated links)...

O spindling reason, close thy soiled and gruesome jaw’s
Surging rationale like a thimble of water to thirst;
We’ve no blood left to drip our cheerless dreams!

Dreadful is our cresting obsession with greed,
Horrible is our pale service to the lords of death
And monstrous our empire’s approaching fury!

The waters flow with the slake of our wickedness
And these vile works speed the thunderous fortunes
Of the sacred beasts come to change what we would not...

O why can’t we see that our indifference to rigid awe
Has the world’s doorways strangled with skeletons
And unearthed the creatures quivering wings?

Like a mother in the shadow of night we can, if we choose,

Erect a grand temple from out of our bosomed courage
And quell this; our trembling loam of mounting death!

THE WRIT

A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a prisoner be brought before the court for determination of whether that person is serving a lawful sentence and/or whether he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

And it is that Habeas corpus can also mean
That an imprisoning authority of an alleged murderer
‘Should have the body'! Yes! Should have the body
To prove there’s been any such murder at all!

You should have the bodies stacked up high,
Above your neck the fallen amassed and towering
Toward the gray-thrown sky where their faces
Look alive once more with the sobbing of battle.

You should have the tortured hands and backs
Bear them to the cavern of your limbless,
Eyeless scourge as the conqueror’s honor;
The due reverence to your lifeless carnival.

You should have the trembling youth’s red echo
Of anguish knocking against your ear in sleep;
A mud-spattered lullaby, and have the beautiful,
Trodden and gashed bodies of the children dancing.

And, as you writhe, you twist the writ to sunders
And pledge no support for our grown-dim reality
While shadowy plans are pinched for a fresh war
Lying eastward of quagmires steeped in freedom!

Downward, downward, missiles bury the blameless
And stoke the soil with a lover’s enthusiasm
Like murderers and thieves leaving their mark
Upon every body gasping beneath the enemy.

U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 9

THE SHATTERING OF WAR'S CHILD

Small brown rodents scurry across the shell of the span.
A broken and weeping child lies upon the makeshift bed,
And at the shattered window next to the door, the slumped
Tears of a torn fabric drop in the wind.
Soon the door to that other noisy time will thrash and split
And the barrels of the sun will enter without knocking
And demand of them a fresh, uncluttered room.
(Surely the wave of fabric will startle them.)
After a rather lengthy and determined conversation,
The barrels will find reverie in their clatter
And breathe a sigh of relief at their escape.
Across the alleyway a woman seizes her bread and her child
And runs frightened into the abandoned street.
Looking up toward her sister’s shattered casement,
She calls out to her.

The sky rolls in its troops and the moon calls forth its howl.
A new landscape moves in as the rodents groom their nails
And hone their teeth for a grand feast upon the streets.
Tonight will be no different than the last; the dark queen
Will issue her edict to the fangs of night and forth they shall come,
armed and invisible.
With precision they’ll carve the brief respite of silence like a sword
And yet another shattered child will consume the fabric.

HANDS

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Michelle,
I sought a peace and a grace as bright as this world's beginning, as astounding as nature’s
might.
I sought a truth hidden away and stayed for it to kiss my ready mouth.

I sought the lover’s song with its pursed and famished lips; I wandered the earth for her
lair
Like an angel in search of brilliant wings to pin upon a lungful of air.

I looked where I thought angels dwelled, hoping to glimpse their hands opening up the
sky,
I even peered into those spaces where I knew an angel would never fly.

I heard their enchanting music; bells ringing ever so quietly in that dimness of another
world
Where I imagined us soaring forever in a multicolored sky of birds.

I sought a love and a soul as bright as imagination, as astounding as the world’s red
Dawn.
I sought a veiled truth and lingered there for it to kiss my ready jaws.

I wandered down the streets and the alleys in search of the key to unchain forever’s
door
Like some weary worn god scouring universes to find his evermore.

I sought all of these things as if I lived in a fairytale of magical creatures that couldn’t
be,
then you, with wing-draped hands, reached down and rescued me.

With true love,
Mark

GORGE

(Another poem from the archives (2006) originally titled "Dull Spark". I found it to be somewhat relative to our countries situation today...Maybe it's just me...?)

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.

NO MORE WAR

It needn’t conquer the world
to breathe in us,
wept the paint.

It needn’t strike the stiff and crafty strum
of a tyrant’s impatience,
mourned the brush.

It must turn its very foundation; humanity,
to free its fettered soul,
wailed the easel.

It first must conquer the self to invent an escape
above war’s red casualty,
moaned the canvas.

Peace will never be created through war's shrapnel
upon the scorching sand,
shrieked the art!

No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...

TORTURED GARDEN

(metaflower by Ben Heine)

Too ashen! Too hidden!
Like some plodding prayer
Mouthed under sultry breath,
Lobbed skyward beneath
The demoralizing weight of gravity
Reluctant of its dulled and hollowed plea.

The shoddy wilt, the red droop
Of oppressions scope, maudlin loyalty.
Who the hell needs an optimism
Carrying a loaded M21 Horizon,
Or a prayer with the weight of a tank?
“It’s too massive!”, cried the saint.

The gates of life swing wide
For caskets draped in flags!
Who the hell needs this hope
So weighted down with loss?
Prayers with the dead weight of children?
“It’s too distressing!”, cried the angels...

The tortured garden! Insatiable craving
Of the hideous instruments of ruin
Planting young seeds too early
In the loud, bone-dry ground
Cultivating, not life, but odium.
“It’s too thunderous!” cried God.

Too ashen! Too hidden!
Like some plodding prayer
Mouthed under sultry breath,
Lobbed skyward beneath
The demoralizing weight of gravity,
Reluctant of its dulled and hollowed caress.

Pininfarina Dardo (The Premier Dardo Blogger Award)

Renegade Eye has honored me with an award that has, to be rather honest, many bloggers who received it before me rather stymied. Some have no idea what it means at all. Some think it has to do with a dart and they would be correct...but I believe it, or at least its inspiration, has more to do with the finely crafted car above named Pininfarina Dardo. Dardo, the Italian word for Dart. (The Dardo is Alfa Romeo's interpretation of form and theme.) I mean I'd rather receive an award for a finely crafted automobile than for the dart one throws. Either way, Renegade, thank you for the honor.EXPAND POST +/-

The Premier Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

Let me just say that I am humbled and follow that by saying that I'm not so good at the award thing, receiving or giving. Receiving one makes me feel as if I've done something extraordinary, when in truth, my own truth, I have not. I know many talented bloggers and blogging artists, etc, who so easily, perhaps unbeknownst to them, make me feel inadequate with their knowledge, outstanding abilities and the many with their finely crafted artistry that seems to leap off the electronic page and personally speak to my conscience. My dear friend and associate, Ben Heine, certainly comes to mind. There are some blogs that I visit for the first time and think I've found the one in an arch memory, then the next day or so I'll come upon another and think, "No. This is the one for my puzzled mind."

Sometimes I feel that by offering a blogger award, let's say to Adgita Diaries or to say a group of respectable negroes, that I'm somehow being dishonest. I, as of late, do not visit even the blogs I find worthy in my ignited identity more than once or twice a month and I feel that they could, in all honesty, not give a care what I think of their work, not because they're concieted or anything of that nature, but because I do not frequent their blog to give them a sense of who I am and why I find their blog worthy of an award. These are probably just my personal insecurities manifested here, but there was a time that I didn't even accept "blogger awards" as I felt they were silly. Don't get me wrong, this award doesn't seem to be nonsensical or a backslapping tribute brought upon by a need for acceptance due to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of blogs on the net, but I find the "award concept" to be the same as Oscar night, full of blathering windbags and egomaniacs being fawned upon for their chosen work so that they too can fawn upon those they find worthy or that speak to their particular set of values or what have you and then the next and the next. I'd rather worship the work of mothers and fathers and grandparents and the working class and those not seeking anything other than to make ends meet, those who give everything of themselves while struggling to make sense of this award-addicted society we call the USofA. Don't get me wrong. I am grateful when I am honored by those I consider my friends on the net and I am ultimately introduced to bloggers whom I would otherwise probably not find, but I'd rather produce work and let it touch those willing to read my blog(s) and join in on the atmosphere of kinsmanship and let that be enough. Then I feel as if I'm being rude or too uptight about the whole thing and I do not like those feelings so I choose (chose) to not participate.

You're probably asking yourself, why, if he's choosing to accept the award, is he writing what ammounts to a damned concession speech? I can't tell you. I do not know. My muse is with me and she's making me do it and she wouldn't tell you even if my life depended on it! If you've a problem with it, might I suggest you take it up with her?

Anyway, I'm rambling and you could probably care less. So, with that, let me again thank Renegade Eye, a longtime "virtual" friend on the blogospere, for honoring my work.

Let's talk about The Pininfarina Dardo, shall we? It may indeed not have been the inspiration for the blogger award and if it is not, then I join the horde that is lost as to its meaning, but I do love the look of the car, which I would never have heard of if it had not been for this award, so why not let you know all that I know about it, right?

~

The car was inspired by the Alfa Romeo 156, the new saloon from Alfa voted 1998 Car of the Year...

The Dardo's realization is born out of a Pininfarina initiative in the spirit of the long tradition of co-operation with Alfa Romeo, which began in the early 1930s with the construction of one-off models for individual customers and continued through the years, extending to all the most important aspects of Pininfarina's activities: from advanced stylistic research (18 prototypes and research studies developed since the 1960s) to the design of mass produced models destined for manufacturing by Alfa Romeo (one example will suffice, the Alfa Romeo 164 of 1987), and the design and production by Pininfarina of what are now known as niche models (considering the most meaningful productions, over 160,000 units of the Giulietta Spider and Duetto were built)...

...Dardo. The Italian word for a dart, a slender shaft of wood or metal with a sharp point, a swift, aerodynamic object whose strongest element is the triangular, pointed front end.
In Pininfarina's intentions the name "Dardo" is well suited to the form study, presented at the 67th Turin Motor Show, which is an innovative interpretation of the theme of the two seater open car, whether it be called a "spider", a "barchetta" or a "roadster". (More)