This is the new blog...CONFESSION ZERO

A DIFFERENT SET OF RULES




Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech. (
Full article...)



Upon that most infinite light
That rivals all freedoms
And turns the worlds eyes to envy
You’ve whirled our notice;
“A different set of rules”

Bits and pieces of wiry shadow,
Scrapped remnants of expression
Vex the grayed heavens
Standing agape at your scrutiny;
“A different set of rules.”

We’ve always known our tongue,
But your words have puffed it up
So it bulges into a monstrous dread
Now eyeing your languid intent;
“A different set of rules.”

Behind your liar’s mask,
With the sluggish thump
Of a guilt-ridden heart,
Oppression’s craving repeats,
“A different set of rules.”
“A different set of rules.”
“A different set of rules.”
“A different set of rules.”




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

OF THE FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE OF LANGUAGE

READ THE POEM +/-





It’s a Civil War, Stupid

After nearly four years of letting the Bush Administration set the terms of the national debate over Iraq, some major news organizations are finally calling the conflict there what it is: a civil war. The White House is howling in protest.
Here's what Matt Lauer announced on NBC's Today Show this morning: "As you know, for months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war. And for the most part, news organizations, like NBC, have hesitated to characterize it as such. But, after careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted -- that the situation in Iraq, with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterized as civil war." Here's some video of Lauer discussing the decision with retired general Barry McCaffrey.



Is it a "civil war"?





(Minstrel Boy by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Video 2:47)

Caution: Strong images.








Oh, you pitiable, puny little dismal cretins,
digging around desperately for something- anything!
A pack of eyeless and earless canine eager to alleviate your connivance.

You’ve bowed to the man,
traded away integrity,
let slip your soul,
pawned your intellect,
and asphyxiated legitimacy!

Read my lips:
“For over two miserable years now it’s been a Goddamned civil war!”

Do you think this clears you? Your veracity it proves?
Read them once more: “Not on your life!”

O! In the wake of the familiar landscape of language
we’ve now but this;

The scourge-rattled thoroughfare.
The bone-blunted blade.
The terror-stained warfare.
The narrow-minded loyalty.
The red-barreled bludgeoning.
The death-prattled prayer.
The bursting furrowed bradawl.
The blackened scream of mothers.
The hate-mottled father’s glare.
The soldiers’ futile anguish.
The caskets draped in glory.
The liars-shank inside our care.

O! In the wake of the familiar landscape of language
might you need consider your own casualty?




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

What is a Civil War? "Objectively, it must be concluded that the disorders in Iraq do not constitute a civil war but are nearer to a politico-military struggle for power. Such struggles in Muslim countries defy resolution because Islam is irreconcilably divided over the issue of the succession to Muhammad. It might be said that Islam is in a permanent state of civil war (at least where there is a significant minority of the opposing sect) and that authority in Muslim lands can be sustained only by repression if the state takes on a religious cast, since neither Shia nor Sunni communities can concede legitimacy to their opponents."

Whatever it is or turns out to be, civil war or a politico-military struggle for power, it is a situation that the US must exit... and in rather short order!

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

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(Lost Face by Ben heine - Cartoons)

KURTZ: The conventional wisdom is that American troops resent the media's coverage of this war as too negative. But there's a Zogby poll of U.S. forces that say 72 percent think they should leave within the year. What did you find, when you were in Iraq, military people saying about the mission and the media?..

KURTZ: …And did they think the coverage, generally, on balance, was fair or unfair?

ROBERTS: They didn't seem to have too many complaints about the coverage. They appreciated the fact that we were there and anytime you're embedded with U.S. forces, you're going to see the bad along with the good. They were always trying to put a positive spin on things, from a command level — taking us to certain areas to show us certain things they thought would play well. But by and large, I didn't hear any complaints
about the coverage.

~

The claws of the monster
Thrust into all certainty,
Pushing existence down,
It ogles innocent eyes
And honest hearts
Eager to shatter their spirit.

O! Conventional wisdom!
Why must you shirk the truth
In rousing madness from its cave?
She’s as an inferno, is Iraq,
Burning in a distorted world
No one will need her when we’ve finished!

(O! Madness! We’ll not know where you have gone!)


Soon after you’ve creased her dreams
And she sees what the lens didn’t show
You’re treachery will shudder
Giving you cause to slither away and lie dormant.

Silent awhile, you'll soon crawl up again
And blast into our breathing homes...
Only this time, we’ll know.


Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


C&L’s Chaos in Iraq

FRESHLY WHIPPED DOGS

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(New Genocides by Ben Heine - Cartoons)

The re-emergence of Iraq Study Group voices such as Baker, Gates and Alan Simpson—all longtime friends of Bush Senior—is not unlike the entrance of Fortinbras at the conclusion of "Hamlet." These are 41's men, and the removal of Rumsfeld—an ancient rival of Bush Senior's from the Ford days—is a move toward the broad middle. The apparent triumph of pragmatism over ideology on Iraq was welcome news, at least to the public. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 67 percent favor Bush Senior's internationalist approach to foreign policy over his son's more unilateral course.


~
Fortinbras:
“Where is this sight?”


ThePoetryMan:
This; thy group of men, hungry to achieve legacies,
Stands no chance of correcting Iraq or a son’s failings,
But hell! We must have them stand in as illusion!

Horatio:
“What is it ye would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.”


TPM:
Standing there! As freshly whipped dogs; hopeful, pleading,
They bark and huff pretending they’re not burying the truth,
But blast it! They must have us witness their delusions!

Fortinbras:
“This quarry cries on havoc. –Oh proud death!
What feast is toward thine eternal cell,
That thou has so many princes at a shot
So bloodily has struck?”


TPM:
Their combined heads have before mucked up the state,
Delivering feet dripped in the blood of forging empire,
They damn well know it is an oil-slicked pipe dream!

Fortinbras:
…Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience,
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune...

TPM:
Why are these two-bit cons coming to the rescue at this instant?
Why not long before the stench of death reared its cloddy head?
They’re two bit swindlers because they get away with murder!

Fortinbras:
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.


TPM:
We’re not so starved that they might force-feed us daydreams,
Nor are we so blind to ignore the convenient roster set to this task.
No! Goddamnit! Their moral compasses have been botched!

Horatio:
Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from those mouths whose voice will draw no more.


TPM:
They’ll put a Band-Aid on the country’s cavernous wound.
They need return to their CEO thrones and ranches and lies!
Damn them! They know why they’ve reared their bloody skulls!

Horatio: But let this same be presently perform’d
Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance,
On plots and errors, happen.


TPM:
It’ll take a hell of a lot more brilliance than exists in the group!
They will try and sell us the sky for a measly barrel of oil!
To hell with them; greased wheels set to come off all around!

Fortinbras:
Let four captains
Bear Iraq, like a soldier, to the stage;
For she was likely, had she been put on,
To have prov’d most royally: and for her passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war,
Speak loudly for her.


TPM:
Death’s stench is everywhere and now they come to rescue
A world growing lightheaded from such enormous loss of blood!
End their Goddamned trickery that’s set to come `round again!

Fortinbras:
Take up the bodies: -such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Now It's Iraq for Mr. Fix-It of the G.O.P.


Hamlet - Act 5 Scene 2

PALE SAINTLINESS




I have a problem with loose-lipped preachers, especially regarding homosexuality. They pretend to know the causes; the devil, sin, weakness, godlessness, society (of which they are a part) bad parenting, abuse, etc. They say their viewpoint is “factual”, yet "highly controversial"!

Few, if any, will admit there is a genetic factor that outweighs all their religious mumbo-jumbo regarding homosexuality. Dr. James Dobson and all the ignorant godsmacking lips should just keep their lying mouths shut.
(Larry King interviews Reverend Dobson.)

DOBSON: I said that on your program one time and both of us got a lot of mail for it. I don't blame homosexuals for being angry when people say they've made a choice to be gay because they don't.
It usually comes out of very, very early childhood, and this is very controversial, but this is what I believe and many other people believe, that is has to do with an identity crisis that occurs to early to remember it, where a boy is born with an attachment to his mother and she is everything to him for about 18 months, and between 18 months and five years, he needs to detach from her and to reattach to his father.
It's a very important developmental task and if his dad is gone or abusive or disinterested or maybe there's just not a good fit there. What's he going to do? He remains bonded to his mother and…

KING: Is that clinically true or is that theory?

DOBSON: No, it's clinically true, but it's controversial. What homosexual activists, especially, would like everybody to believe is that it is genetic, that they don't have any choice. If it were genetic, Larry — and before we went on this show, you and I were talking about twin studies — if it were genetic, identical twins would all have it. Identical twins, if you have a homosexuality in one twin, it would be there in the other.

KING: Right.

DOBSON: So, it can't be simply genetic. I do believe that there are temperaments that individuals are born with that make them more vulnerable and maybe more likely to move in that direction, but it usually is related to a sexual identity crisis.

KING: My guest, Dr. James Dobson, always great to have him with us. By the way, his book came out last year, "Family Man: The Biography of Dr. James Dobson," still available anywhere books are sold. (
Read more of the interview)


PALE SAINTLINESS


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.



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman



THE GLORY MEADOW

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A glory is an optical phenomenon produced by light backscattered (a combination of diffraction, reflection and refraction) towards its source by a cloud of a uniformly-sized water droplets.




Hatred by Ben heine - Cartoons



THE GLORY MEADOW

The warrior tilted her face
In the groan of fine bravery;
A ferocious battle well fought
Leaving such empty pleasure.

There were no such dignities.
Rain slanted its gleaming lances
Upon the backscattered skies
In refractions glory meadow.

Reflecting upon the dulled luster
The warrior’s fingers grew damp
And, in apprehensive assembling,
Did discharge her bludgeoning.

O! Divine glory! Phenomenon!
Transport their gaze to wonder’s face!
Call out to them! Reaffirm “peace”!
Shift them nearer to beauty's grace!

Upon the backscattered sky we lean.
Of the bludgeoned warrior we howl.
Upon the divinity we beseech,
“Bring their spirits home!”





Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Inspired by Quasar9 !


US Soldier Kills Herself After Objections Were Ignored

TWISTED SENSE

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
Christians have struggled with the issue of war for centuries. Before Jesus arrived on the scene, all good people wrestled with war and the existence of evil. Thankfully, the Bible is not silent on the subject...
...One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of
God suffers.


The above portion of a religious commentary is flawed in its logic. I have highlighted what I felt to be a few glaring examples.


Guns steadied,
Sky’s sapphire,
Shooter shaken,
Under firmament.

Twisted sense…

If, in the beginning,
We’d have only sent more death-
If, in the beginning,
We’d have only sent more to die-
If, in the beginning,
We’d have simply and entirely strafed-
If only we’d have merely flattened them,
All of their lives…

Twisted sense…

Tell me, O mighty war,
That they did not suffer!
Tell me, O potent combat,
That they didn't needlessly die
For your mantle and plot!
O! Imposing fortitude! Reckless courage!
Noxious warfare! Collateral death!

Twisted sense…

Tell me all the victims
(Guns steadied)
Of our sleet and storm
Suffer less now for it.
That our hands floating
(Under firmament)
Over the distant water have not
Fetched agony and terror
More than before…





Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

God is pro-war Warning! Extreme Falwell Commentary!

GUILLOTINE

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Let us sense the grace to be humane
with our souls and hearts
over the taste of power.

The country we knew and have known
is the same, thrusting her obdurate head high,
holding flag and pride,
pretending accord to God’s side.

The time is nigh of our humbled cessation.
Our splendor crushed in the axis of history
as awful and divine as shrapnel
piercing the soul of a peacekeeper
whose heart beats death’s drum
and whose head stretches its neck out upon the stone.



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman



Ben Heine - Cartoons

RESET COORDINATES TO ZERO HOUR

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RESET COORDINATES (Friday, March 17, 2006) TO ZERO HOUR:

The birds have thus gone silent in the gray sky,
Nothing flies between this life and this death;
Solid ground and space and breathing flesh;
Naught hovers now but the murderous device.

Latitude 33 modify to latitude 35.
20 minutes north alter to 45.

Horror fails even our most tested imagination,
Thus we’ll not sense our own fluttering demise
Caught then, perched, set to firmly plunge
The feet, landing unhappily, upon the blade.

Longitude 44 change to 51.
24 minutes east to 45.

Only in catastrophe does hush go unnoticed,
As the smallest gasp of the smallest possible breath,
Only in the inescapable horror-show do they enter
Exhaling through our dreadful sinking exactness.

Lock and load! Goddamnit! Now drop that shell!
Let’s bang some brown flesh to everlasting hell!
Over a billion barrels of bobbing death await
Silent in the gray sky, zero hour knell!






Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Plans For Iran

Coordinates Friday, March 17, 2006

THE WAR IS OVER

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Poetic Justice Anti-war video... Song by David Rovics...








OUR WAR IS OVER by thepoetryman

We’re tending our graves
Trimming back flowers
While saying goodbye
Praying our seeds
Give `way and rise
Hands grasping in rage
Scraping at heaven
Scratching at clouds
Stomping in fury
Over a world at war
Tossing out cradles
Singing sad odes
Over the wounded and dead
As we tread red hatred
Down forsaken roads
The dying no sound
When war’s been tended
And flowers grow down
As courage is stirred
Deep underground
Our war is over
It’s said and done
Our battle’s complete
It’s time to finish it
To check this one off
And scrape for peace




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


War is a Racket - by Smedley Butler ...

HUNKERED DOWN IN MESOPOTAMIA

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~Quick guide: Violence in Iraq
It is hard to calculate reliable figures for the dead and wounded because of the chaotic state of Iraq's institutions.
An estimate by US scientists in October 2006 suggested that about 655,000 civilians had been killed since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Western human rights campaigners give much lower figures - between 42,000 and 47,000 civilians - but point out many deaths probably go unreported.
About 3,000 coalition troops - more than 2,800 of them Americans - have died in Iraq in the same period.

~
Top Iraqi Police Officers Arrested in Mass Abduction.

~
Many killed in US raid on Ramadi.
A Reuters reporter saw the bodies of several men in a street, some being put in coffins by relatives, and a number of body parts. One small structure was burnt-out.
Residents, who declined to be named, said US tanks had fired into and that those who died were not fighting.
They criticised the US forces and the Shia-led Iraqi government. Several said men who had gathered to play a traditional street game had been attacked.

~
Iraq: What Iran and Syria want

~
Talking tough from a weak position- *Blair & **Bush

The so-called opening to Iran and Syria is going to be a difficult enterprise.
A close reading of the *British Prime Minister Tony Blair's speech on Monday evening shows that the conditions for engagement would amount to a wholesale change of direction by Iran and its President Ahmadinejad in particular.

**Bush's comments
As for President Bush, he was even more forthright.
On Syria: "We expect the Syrians to be, one, out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese democracy can exist; two, not harbouring extremists that create - that empower these radicals to stop the advance of democracies; three, to help this young democracy in Iraq succeed. And the Syrian president knows my position."


On Iran: "If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward, and that is for them to verify - verifiably suspend their enrichment activities."
There doesn't appear to be much diplomatic room there for engagement over Iraq or anything else. The message is: you have to change, not us. It is an offer Iran and Syria might refuse.



~HUNKERED DOWN IN MESOPOTAMIA~


Why do we stay?
Why do we stay hunkered down in
Mesopotamia
With moonlight staining our guns in vaporous blaze
While screams and blasts slice open the palm trees
Lining the fertile land along the banks of the rivers
Within the arid deserts and cloudless summers?

Why do we skulk the oily nights like lewd bandits
Beating pathways along the Euphrates and Tigris?
It’s said that empire has penetrated the crimson flesh
As talons through eagle’s prey
And slippery fluid spews high this kingdom’s grief.

Why do we carry on as marauding itinerants
Satiated upon the already dying quarry
Leaving blood-etched outlines flanked by
The great Zagros range and Syrian desert
Binding the war-fouled Cradle of Civilization?
Why do we linger there in the darkness?

Our hunting has floated up empty and dead
Blurred numbers of sought after rotting
Bludgeoned seeds, wisps, pieces, flesh, bone
Graying stories of a limbless, lifeless heroism
That shakes out pity inside our homes.
Can't we see that we're now the hunted?



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

THIS VESSEL

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Via one of the deep...ah, "thinkers" at The American Thinker (never has there been such a wildly inaccurate name in the entire history of the bleedin' universe), we learn that John Conyers is a traitor. So sez Investor's Business Daily, which helpfully assembles the terrifying evidence for us:
The likely new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says he’s just fighting bigotry in leading a Democrat jihad to deny law enforcement key terror-fighting tools. But he is in the pocket of Islamists. (
More at Once Upon a Time…)

Democrats Push for Iraq withdrawal

Democrats Push for Troop Cuts Within Months



O! This vessel!
It wants! O! It requests
Bravery within it! As a child
In a storm.

We know terror.
It kills, and it drives our minds
To heart-thrusted vengeance
Of an incident, a day, a moment
Replayed over and over.

Ominous! War is ominous!

O! War! War
Abhors hope! Hates it
Like a field of dancing flowers
And children clad in dreams
Upon their delight.

But peace.

O! Peace is the ship of our existence
Floating upon the waters of our desire.

O! Peace brings laughter upon humankind
And makes an ally of terror and war
And the warmongers into utter fools.
For peace has the dancing flowers
Growing upon its fields
As the child its enchantment.

O! This vessel!
It must be wanted.
This ship needs sailing,
Guided bravely through!

This peace is full of living things;

Laughter and children’s unbridled glee
Holding not revenge in their hearts
Or weapons in their hands.



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Call It Treason

SPIRITS ON THE ICY TERRAIN

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Individual interests over the truth;
For this reason the autocratic ruler
Must be removed... and the shattered
Spirits on the icy terrain of these events
Again comforted and made whole.
Humanity must once more connect,
Breathe the peaceful essence
Of which the blossoms inhale.

The hour of this resurrection is now...
If not then it will surely surrender.

O! Sovereign of the stars and the wild
Bring forth your trumpet! Call to them!
And `neath our sheltered skies
And within the sacred wilderness
Let us now follow as great oceans
Carried by the wind into the truth,
Let the proud birds carry the frail
And drape their walking upon the air.

The hour of this resurrection is now...
If not then it will surely surrender.

Let us move `neath the skies offering
And remember who and what we are;
Not the mad dash of men, but hope!
A brilliant possibility; a searchlight
Beckoning from these distant shores
Calling out to humanity with hope.
We are the great lions whose claws
Are touching upon the deep waters...

Let us not surrender…




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

TIME SLIP

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(Time Slip by Ben Heine - Cartoons)


TIME SLIP

To achieve what war cannot;
Dislodge the facts.
Usher in hope.
Create breath.

To create what the warrior cannot;
Yielding dreams.
Lasting peace.
Earnest love.

To carry the lode that liars cannot.
Words of wisdom.
Grains of trust.
The truth.

It is not an issue of one knowing the truth of war;
But rather the ability of one not to wage it.




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman






BLOGGERS AND VISITORS DO YOU NEED SOME COMPANY?
Don't let another moment slip by...visit these voices now!

Ben Heine - Cartoons
FOR MORE VOICES SIDLE ON OVER TO THE SIDEBAR...

TAKING UP SERPENTS

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Woman Fatally Bitten by Snake in Church

LONDON, Ky. (AP) -- A woman who was bitten by a snake at a church that neighbors say practices serpent handling died of her wounds hours later, a newspaper reported.
Linda Long, 48, was bitten Sunday at East London Holiness Church, where neighbors said the reptiles are handled as part of religious services, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported Tuesday.
Long died at University of Kentucky Medical Center about four hours after being bitten, authorities told the newspaper.
"She said she was bitten by a snake at her church," said Lt. Ed Sizemore of the Laurel County Sheriff's Office.
Handling reptiles as part of religious services is illegal in Kentucky. Snake handling is a misdemeanor and punishable by a $50 to $100 fine.
Police said they had not received any reports of snake handling at the church.
Snake handling is based on a passage in the Bible that says a sign of a true believer is the power to "take up serpents" without being harmed.
Church officials could not be
reached for comment.

Rumsfeld Quits; Bush Taps Gates for Post
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After years of defending his secretary of defense, President Bush on Wednesday announced Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation within hours of the Democrats' triumph in congressional elections. Bush reached back to his father's administration to tap a former CIA director to run the Pentagon.
The Iraq war was the central issue of Rumsfeld's nearly six-year tenure, and unhappiness with the war was a major element of voter dissatisfaction Tuesday - and the main impetus for his departure. Even some GOP lawmakers became critical of the war's management, and growing numbers of politicians were urging Bush to
replace Rumsfeld.



TAKING UP SERPENTS

O! Your pungent veins refused to dream! They sent away the spirit
and deceived the supple skin. Your serpent swims coldly past
in the daylight of our minds revealing such a grandiose silhouette;
your murderous, clumsy tenure; goddamned metaphor of terror!

Finished, yet not soon forgotten, your ragged breath’s gone cold.
Barren and witless, you observe your own sightless prostration!

Is this the reality, that you should come to this; such venom
displayed in the rising tally of `no confidence’? What of truth?

Have you left it, not to a free people, but to evaporated sins,
to stepping down as mere warmonger bowed upon retirement?

O! Sir! It shall not be so happy an account that you’ve laid down,
Leaving so many in harms way, bloodied, writhing on the ground!

You stand now at the alter of your own twisted, external reality;
The fear ridden episodic drumbeating to aspirations of tyranny!

You leave a bent and broken man with expressions of gloom
Only befitting one who claimed deaths makeshift throne!

You’ve been bitten by the venomous truth swimming near you!
It swam not in you, but outside of you as ill-fated liar’s bait
Which you did greedily consume with worthless deception
Sacrificing charitable patriots instead of yourself!

March, sir! Stride past! Be done with it! You’ve wasted life!
You’re a leper! A scud felled silent! The sacrificial lamb
Laid down in the midst of discord; oils fraudulent folly,
And you shall not again this way come. Amen…




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

THE STALE VESSEL



O! If we triumph what does it mean?
Shall we remedy the affliction of the people
Or masquerade it about in some tawdry dance?
(The bleak reflection, the tepid, the shallow, the lesser of…)

Before we fill the house with glee...
Let us see to it that it is clean,
That the writhing spineless beasts
Can no more devour our very streets
With their dismal recipe of white hunger.

Let us regard each of them alone,
Not for their shade or for the ground they prowl
Where the filthy paws stir the stale vessel
With the infected hunger of money and war,
But for what they bring to peace.

O! Victory shall only come when we are free!
Not in power’s worship, but the love of people
Triumphant in the acquaintance and joy of liberty,
When every liar and thief is bent upon their soiled knees...
Before we fill the house with glee.





Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

MIDTERM ELEGY

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We’ve a readymade art chattering in our teeth,
Arranging a dainty battle hymn to chant and howl
Like beasts in a cave.

We must manage to seize our exhausted throats
And find the pale cord that binds our hand
To tyranny’s slave.

We must slice away tender flesh to free ourselves
Of this creature of our most casual weakness;
Safety before liberty.

We’ve but little time to right this maddening plunge
Else the noise next we will hear shall be that of
The country’s elegy.

THRUSTING AMERICA'S LOVE OUTWARD (Election eve)

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Back by popular demand the day before election! Enjoy!


(Erotic Lust and Thrust, a collage of Poetic Justice and Ben Heine - Cartoons)



I compel you to love your country.

To draw her into your arms ever so tenderly,
To embrace her softly, dearly to your heart,
To huddle close, near together her masses,
And sense her least sustained yearning.

I compel you to love your country.

A nation that lifted the breast of humanity
Caressing it tenderly toward equality’s rapture
With gentle fingers of selfless, searing desire
Exploring over her ever toward paradise.

I compel you to love your country.

Freedom lovers damp in stiff-limbed writhing
Stumbling kisses upon red-barreled bravery,
Softly probing her robust and supple liberty,
Heed now her cries of woeful sovereignty!

I compel you to love your country.

Between her Trail of Tears and Mount Misery
She still waits upon the coupled plains of affection
Ready for our design and mastery of this worlds love
Panting heavy expectation upon her shape.

I compel you to love your country.

Perched upon the shore of Rolles Creek she waits
With Mount Pleasant in reach of her willing fingers.
With expectant sounds of closure now within her folds
She lunges forth with an expectant mouth!

I compel you to love your country.

O! Gentle sleep now beckons to her languid pink flesh
As the rogues tongue laps at her ebbing shores of joy
And beckons her let go of her valuable love’s embrace
Lunging forth behind her eager lips!

She counters not… for she is the boiling hunger we seek.

What a devoted worship we’ve had with the motherland.
Many a great poet has written their songs upon her flesh;
Their bright and shimmering waters lapping her shores
In ardent freedom’s want of hopes howling, dripping heat.

I compel you to love the world!

On this day of days let us remember her youthful glow,
Her ripe fruit of wonder, her drowsy ache of emancipation,
Her most alluring burnish upon our exploring of her skin.
(The burden of immense throbbing now falls upon her heart!)

I compel you to love the world!

America, carry your waves to all shores. Hope, not savagery,
In your goodness, not in impudent desire to control destiny.
Leave not the naked child, but your desire alone on the road.
Shelter not your intentions, but those most needful and hungry.

I compel you to love the world!

We have been witness to our dove, crippled and flailing in terror!
We’ve been onlookers to our expectations emerging fruitless.
Watching unmoved while our oily desire bleeds into the waters
And the cold white eyes of death tread progressively before us.

I compel you to love the world!

Come now, peace. Come now, warriors, lay down your guns
To witness the beauty at your hands as she lays down your sword
And with dripping red lips envelops your craving to possess her.
Do you not hear the night voices calling you with an angels whisper?

I compel you to love the world!

To open the door and step out into the bright sun, desire can wait.
Take notice of the many tender, breathing, soul-caked living.
Gaze upon the world’s most unbendable faith in humanity.
Gently touch her skin, delicately massage her furious soil.

I compel you to love the world!

Enter her sculpting space and weave a covering made of lifeless war.
Paint upon her face a gentle art made of your temples sweat.
Scribe a love song upon her back with the eagle’s most willing blood.
Erect in her a tower of light for all to see that they might weep.

I compel you to love the world!

The masses of age lie here and we should not be so ready to die
Like confused animal’s hooved in selfishness, deficient and artless.
The world is full of freedom lovers damp in stiff-limbed writhing
Stumbling kisses upon red-barreled bravery, tenderly probing liberty.

I compel you to love the world!

Amid her supple lands and majestic mountains she waits our affection,
Ready for our desire and design embracing her most ready warmth
Needing our hot hope upon her shape, wanton as wide-eyed first love.
(Heed now the world’s hot desire for freedom pulling us in.)

With hopeful whisper's within her waters, she leans forth, expectant.





Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Original "Thrusting" Post


Ben Heine - Cartoons

AN EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE

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(Declining Democracy by Ben Heine - Cartoons)



In the gleaming of our time together in freedom
We watch the hand choose its own new beginning.
It is strange that only now, as the world hemorrhages,
Do we sense a resurgent vigor of our treasured being.
Our neighbors are holding hopeful that we proceed
And that our hearts can quell the rumbling earth.

Anon comes our most extraordinary occurrence
Which we, with wild modesty of our grand estate,
Do pray angels might hover within our strain
Stuffing the dreary look with the consult of truth
And burst forth with a great cry of liberty
That she shall, within our hands, forever remain.




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman



Ben Heine - Cartoons

DRAWN, HAGGARD and FATIGUED

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Evangelical sex scandal on Good Morning America-




"Haggard was listed by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America last year, and this is one of a handful of religious leaders with immediate access to the Bush White House. Harper's recently wrote, "No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted."

O! Haggard! We’ve no use for you now!
You’ve drawn this land into your mystery,
Deep in silky words of shadowy deceit,
Slumping across the fatigued stillness
You’ve traipsed around in doublespeak
Across our acumen, atop our sacrament.

Now your deficiency cuts away deception
And your shaming secrets roundly plunge
And soundly expose the misconception
Of your false smirk through empty tongue;
A slithering serpent pinching away holy myths
Forming an odd two-faced grinning holiness.

You’ve spent your last soul, spun the finish,
We’ve not much left to give but your penance.
Now what you’ve preached as sin for coffers
Does scoff at you in return for dishonor
And has come around in this fall from grace;
Using the shroud of God to cover your face.

Haggard,
Godless afflicted,
Meth addicted,
Apocalyptic,
Hypocritic,
Systemic...




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


METH Confessions by Haggard


Root of All Evil...A MUST SEE. (9 MIN 48 SEC)


WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

Remains of Three More Sept. 11 Victims Identified

Remains recovered years ago of three victims from the Sept. 11 attacks have been identified through new DNA testing. Two were passengers on American Airlines Flight 11; the third victim's identity was withheld at the family's request. Identities of about 40 percent of the 2,749 victims have never been confirmed.


Where have you been?

In the space flanked by breathing
in the sky's soul
resting `neath the globe?

We’ve been waiting
under the moon for you,
waiting on your bones to say,
“Living may resume”.

Where are the others?



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

OUR TORTURED GARDEN

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"You're obliged to pretend respect for people & institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral & social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas & desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that tolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound
of the civilized world."
The Torture Garden--Octave Mirbeau



All Things Considered
, November 1, 2006 · The term "war on terror" is ubiquitous, but the meaning of the word "war" has evolved.
For most of the last 2,000 years, war has meant something very conventional and traditional. The current war on terror, however, is a completely unconventional, non-traditional type of conflict.
Georgetown University historian Bruce Hoffman says unlike traditional wars, the war on terror does not have a clear beginning and an end.
"[War] ends with the vanquishing of an opponent, with some form or armistice or truce -- some kind of surrender instrument or document," Hoffman says.
But in the war on terror, there's no specific battlefield and the enemy isn't an army.
"It's a war without boundaries," Hoffman says. "It's a war directed against multiple enemies, not just one adversary
."

(metaflower by Ben Heine - Cartoons)




OUR TORTURED GARDEN

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.




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman




Inspired via Frederick MCCS1977

TAP-TAP-TAPESTRY or MISE EN ABYME

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(mise en abyme by Ben Heine - Cartoons)

Prosperity is like a sewing needle. The same point that draws the thread through the fabric strengthening it can pick the stitch apart, thus weakening it. The prosperity of the masses strengthens the social fabric; the prosperity of the few weakens it and makes it more receptive to manipulation.

If beads of sweat fall on barren soil, then the link between effort and reward is broken, and the masses turn for reassurance to your puerile vision of strength through childish swaggering. Scores of John Wayne movies have convinced them that the drawl of a simpleton is a sign of leadership. (
More...)



TAP-TAP-TAPESTRY


The needle enters the thin skin
In its tap-tap-tapestry of stitch,
And we, the patient, wince.
Flinch at every drawn thread,
Recoil from the truths pinch
Tap-tap-tapping out infantile dread.

The eye, pulling our fiber through-
It’s a horrified thing, this heave,
This hard and cold exactitude,
It takes bravery to finish it…

Closing up the wide open wound
Laying flat upon our dim streets
Where loss flaunts his maddened
Feet, tap-tap-tapping out his beat,
Awash in blood, he smiles and grins
Wrapping his cackle `round our sins
As foolish love weeps for the fallen.
Howls!

The needle hasn’t love or weeping.

Tap tap tap…




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Mise en abyme has several meanings in the realms of creative arts and literary theory. The term is originally from the French and means, "placing into infinity" or "placing into the abyss".
In
Western art "mise en abyme" is a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, the sequence appearing to recur infinitely. The term originated in heraldry, describing a coat of arms which appears as a small shield in the center of a larger one. See Droste effect.
In
film, the meaning of "mise en abyme" is similar to the artistic definition but also includes the idea of a "dream within a dream". For example, a character awakens from a dream and later discovers that they are still dreaming. Activities which are similar to dreaming, such as unconsciousness and virtual reality, are also described as "mise en abyme". This is seen in the film eXistenZ where the two protagonists never truly know whether they are out of the game or not.
In
literary criticism, "mise en abyme" is a type of frame story, in which the main narrative can be used to sum up or encapsulate some aspect of the framing story. The term is used in deconstruction and deconstructive literary criticism as a paradigm of the intertextual nature of language, the way language never quite reaches the foundation of reality because it refers in a frame-in-frame way to other language, which refers to other language, etc.




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