SHRILL LIGHTNING

-Right Wing Extremists Blaming Latinos for Spreading Swine Flu Across Border
-Another Violent Right-Wing Extremist
-Think About it (Support the Mathew Shepard Act)
-Touché
-Team Sarah on the Attack
-The US and its ”Great” Leadership in Iraq
-It's an Insult to Suggest Veterans are Bias Crime Victims


I’m appalled by all this shrill lightning,
The stench of something reckless
Like an oven broiling millions
Whose only sin was
Their name.

And then the torture and this war
With its odor of deceit
Standing tall like a knife
Stuck in the back of God.

Do we not understand ourselves enough
To see it? We know the bat finds its prey
Sensing its victims echo as it flutters
In the shadow of self.
And, you and I, what do we feel?

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

AN ENDURING TORTURE

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
“…Because they are soft. They are weak people compared to our military service people and they would crack under torture. But al Qaeda, people who have devoted their lives to destroying their enemy, the people are willing to die in their exercises, they were all willing to die on 9-11. Sean Hannity thinks torture is going to work on them because he has never, never known the kind of commitment that those people have and nothing he's done in his life measures that kind of commitment that the American military has or that our enemies have. Our enemies are more committed than Sean Hannity will ever be.” (Read More...)

…The golden-haired children seemed in their own peace filled world as
hungry giants walked heavily and with great anger over the wilderness…

In this tale of time, this poem, there’s not enough room for everyone to sit,
some will have to stand and merrily wait their turn at the gates of anguish.
Soon you will be able to taste what your sons and daughters have swilled-
your aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews; the sufferers.

Above our heads, even in anguish, rises a cry so profound that it must be a dream
of man’s making, a face filled with the delight of our trust, our love, our freedom.
Upon this blue throne we call earth, our collective heart moves freely among us,
yet our hands and feet trace drops of blood over this painting. We turn our
backs on the trees and the rivers and we beat down upon the soil with metal
drums of war. We long to conquer our immense fear of things outside of this air,
so demons claw at our bellies and slash at our throats to get a single breath of air
and a chance to speak with us, to tell us why we are a cheerless lot and to clarify,
explain to us our immeasurable and never-ending sorrow.

There are the screams of the oppressed, the cries of the starving offspring,
the tears of the childless mothers and fathers, and the beating of truth in each
of us. It’s never been outside of our reach. It has always been and will remain
within each of us, gestations of the human stain.

Open your mouth wide and bestow this birth to one another, our lone salvation,
our reckoning with truth and beast and the earth’s nectar. Celebrate kindness,
not its converse aberration, torture.
It is waiting upon our approval, nothing more and nothing less…

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

DEVIANT DREAMING

(Via Ben Heine Art)Too dirty! Too ungodly!
Too iconic, like some unthinkable
Beast leaping out a child’s throat,
Wielding its claws as switchblades
(Or bullets or bombs),
Planting red lips upon the sleeping,
Bringing innocence to its knees.

Too much, God damn it!
Too rich! Too immeasurable
Like a pedophile’s rancid erection
Penetrating a child’s flaccid faith
Etched within youth’s center;
They’ll choose not to speak of it-
A secret... censored between fleshes.

A voice hollowed out,
Suppressed like a fearless work of art.
Too dirty! Too ungodly! Too iconic!
Who needs such art, such temptation?
(Flesh without cover)
Can’t have the commoners thinking such
Rigid ideas, might cause a mutiny…

Let us have cockle shells
And other silent dreamings;
Not essentials like art and reflection.
No! Too difficult! Too insurmountable;
A child’s dream or a mother’s breast.
Best keep such things under wraps,
Hidden where they belong.

Too filthy! Too profane!
Too iconic like some naughty child
Jumping out the belly of a beast,
Wielding his mind as a paintbrush
(Or a pen or a dance),
Moving his thoughts over the nobility
Bringing them to their knees.




© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Please visit Ben and show him your support.

DEPRAVITY

Fas•cism (noun) [fa’ shizzem]
Authoritarian political ideology where all individual and societal interests are inferior to the needs of the state.



Come!
O ghosts of misery!
Louder than the whole of God,
more wordless than humiliation
breathing hard upon our backs!

Bring forth your most depraved army
over the present carnage of man;
red tongued and in the making!

Come quick under the roaring sky
and lock away hope
in your manifest gulag
of scraggly goddamned vultures!

Thrash all pleasure and goodness
over attentive hearts of dust!

Split the flesh and soul with your shadows!

Program our youth
to cleave all life of what’s left
as hordes of black-shirted assassins!

Keep watch over them
like steely eyed wolves
and stay their dissent with mild anecdote!
In time they’ll be content
to simply live another day
with wet tongue
and fearful consumption...

I detest with all my being that this pillaging horde of scoundrels (which includes Glenn Beck) has twisted the world into a sightless giant of shrieking hell!



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

FREEDOM...

U.S. captain held by pirates rescued

Pakistan militants attack NATO supply trailers

U.S. general says Iraq attacks no reason to panic

Protesters Swarm Thai Capital

Saudi judge upholds marriage of 8-year-old

The freedom that he wanted couldn’t bring itself through the gates
So he imagined it pressing its paws to the soil beyond the walls,
That he heard it weeping plaintively just outside his tiny room.
Said he could smell it in the breath of every passing spring,
Spoke of its splendid dance waiting with shoes for his feet.
He said he'd heard its velvet voice flecking upon his ears
And that he tasted it in the warm water gracing his lips,
Yet the long shadows that stirred beneath his door
Startled him with their quick and brutal motions
And consoled him with torturous laughter.
They never once had spoken of freedom,
Made no mention of its demise.