This is the new blog...CONFESSION ZERO
Showing posts with label iraq war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq war. Show all posts

BROKEN



U.S. contractors held in Green Zone killing
Iraq suicide attack kills man, hurts police chief


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…




© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman



Effects of Iraq War on American Citizens

Progressive.org - Broken by This War



Between...


Between the century and the shoe
came the war, the torture,

the injustice and the blood,
the rage and the sorrow
and the tapping and the flood.

Between the eleventh and the crash
came the shock, the awe,
the anguished and the dreaded,
the widowed and the scourged,
the bombed and beheaded.

Between the reign and the snow
came the child’s vacant stare,
the grief and the wrath,
the tears and the scowl,
the starving and the flag.

Between the heaven and the hell
came the lies and the spin,
the tanks and the guns,
the free and imprisoned,
mankind and his sun.

There were no angels….


© 2008 mrp/tpm


Craig Welch takes viewers inside a surreal, meticulously crafted world to meet a mysterious protagonist and his otherworldly visitor.

In this surreal exposition, we meet a man, obsessed with control. His intricate gadgets manipulate yet insulate, as his science dissects and reduces. How exactly are wings attached to the back of angels? In this invented world drained of emotion, where everything goes through the motions, he is brushed by indefinite longings. Whether he can transcend his obsessions and fears is the heart of the matter. A film without words.

Directed by : Craig Welch. Produced in 1996...








-How Wings are Attached to the Backs of Angels-

GEORGE'S "GULF" HANDICAP

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

President Bush says he gave up golf to be in “solidarity” with the fallen troops...

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

My muse saw this yesterday and brought it to my attention by clanging two metal trashcan lids together very close to my ears. She did this until the hair on the back of my head stood up on its own. If your short on hair gel or mousse, might I suggest this as a stand-by lifter. Its hell on the ears, but, even after shampooing it three times since, the hair on the back of my head, between my bleeding ears, remains at full attention!

After my muse was going for her third clang I said,

‘YOU KNOW THAT AFTER THE FIRST TWO TIMES ANY FURTHER ‘CYMBAL’ CRASHING IS RATHER POINTLESS. I’M DEAF IN BOTH EARS, SO WHATEVER IT IS YOU WANT FROM ME YOU’LL HAVE TO WRITE IT DOWN IN YOUR NOTEPAD AND PUT IN FRONT OF MY FACE.’

To which she countered with somewhere around thirty further "cymbal" crashes! It could have been more. I mean I can’t really be sure since I had gone deaf in both ears already. I’m still a bit disoriented, like I’m in a deep well.

The following is what my muse wrote on a piece of paper and violently shoved in front of my face-

GEORGE BUSH, FUCK YOU! YOU ELITIST AND EVIL BASTARD! YOU ABSOLUTE INCOMPETENT, NO GOOD, IGNORANT, GODDAMNED RICH, LOWLIFE, SILVER SPOON-FED FOOL! FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE! GO STRAIGHT TO HELL YOU PATHETIC, WORTHLESS, ILL-MANNERED, WARMONGERING SWINE! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! AND FUCK YOU!

I said, ‘I understand you’re angry, my dear, but I expected better from you. I did. I thought you’d have channeled your anger into a heartrending, earth-shattering, piercing poem or something like that...'

She furiously grabbed the notepad and began to write like she was possessed.

I stood aside and patiently waited. I passed the time by dabbing at the blood that trickled from my ears and marveling at my newly rendered coif.

It wasn’t long before she again shoved the notepad in front of my face-


-a poem titled "George's Gulf Handicap"-

GEORGE BUSH,
FUCK YOU!
YOU ELITIST AND EVIL BASTARD!
YOU ABSOLUTE BASSACKWARD,
NO GOOD, IGNORANT, GODDAMNED RICH,
LOWLIFE, SILVER SPOON-FED SONOFABITCH!

FUCK YOU, YOU FETID, ASS EATING WHORE!
GO STRAIGHT TO HELL
YOU PATHETIC, WORTHLESS TO THE CORE,
ILL-MANNERED, WARMONGERING SWINE!
FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!
FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!
AND FUCK YOU UNTIL THE END OF TIME!

She then began to cry uncontrollably.


© 2008 mrp/tpm



3,2,1, 0... WAR ANIMALS (1 million dead Blogswarm)




'3' Civil War (March 19th, 2006)


I have traveled to the edge of Iraq
And peered over.

She panted treacherously.

It is not strange coming out of
The stifled mouth of national war.
It is not easily uttered, these
Words of internal detonations.
It is not compliant, this laceration
Of autonomy `gainst thy neighbor.

She beseeched the air.

I have traveled to the edge of Iraq
And peered over.

Lunged of war.

~

'2' Your Escape of it (March 19th, 2006)

The nattering jaws are a hearse of warring wits
And within their dry swamp thunders denial
They’re dropping the bombs!
They’re lobbing grenades!
They’re devouring in sneering laughter
And consuming with their cynical smiles

These, our leaders, and their most pestilent flesh
Now harvesting souls for kingdoms sport
They’re dropping the bombs!
They’re lobbing grenades!
They’re exterminating in sinister heart
And demolishing the spirit’s sweet core

We the listless are ingesting trepidation in this
And within our quagmire torment subsists
They’re encasing the bombs!
They’re staining our waters!
They’re transporting terror of a false god
And detesting our darling independence

The feint Iraqi peoples, an urn of absorbed ash
And within the ferried grief crashes internal war
You’re dropping the bombs!
You’re lobbing death’s den!
You’re lancing our prospects in tyranny
And you shall escape us ahead of our end

~

'1' Coursing Upward (March 19th, 2007)

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.

~

'0' War Animals (March 19th, 2008)

Would I hold my hand thus if I were such a murderous beast?
Asked the wolf…
Would I be thought a monster like you if I howled in horror?
Asked the sheep…
I howl for pleasure, little sheep! I consume to nourish my sorrow!
Scolded the wolf…
I do not mean to offend your howling or persuade your hunger, sir.
Prayed the sheep….
See my opposing thumb and how it can bring me such pleasure?
Inquired the wolf…
See my shivering hooves and how they frustrate me significantly?
Echoed the sheep…

The wind now wails its bitter speech as the wolf skulks nearer.

Come! Let us sit next to one another and we shall drink a toast.
Said the wolf…
I shouldn’t. It’s not right to do so while so many continue to perish.
Replied the sheep…
Thou art afraid of me, dam? Me? A creature with such manners?
Crooned the wolf…
No. I- I- I just don’t think it appropriate to toast on this- of all days.
Answered the sheep…
But this is a day of triumph! Today’s the best day to drink to victory!
Howled the wolf…
There you go again with the howling? I told you my lambs are sleeping.
Whispered the sheep…

The wind abruptly strengthens with the crow of murderous night.

Yes. Please forgive me, sheep…. …Your lambkins are precious to you?
Posed the wolf…
All babies are precious, wolf. Are yours not precious to you?
Raised the sheep…
Of course they’re precious! I would, without a doubt, kill for them!
Charged the wolf…
Of that I’m sure. But haven’t I asked you to keep your voice down?
Sighed the sheep…
Yes. But aren’t you sufficiently fearful of offending me, little ewe?
Urged the wolf…
I have not offended you, wolf. It is you that will not do as I’ve asked.
Rejoined the sheep…

The wolf now howls with a beast’s bloody bravado!

I do not believe this- Before me is a sheep that’s utterly lacking in fear?
Marveled the wolf…
I’ve fear enough. It is your opposing thumbs that are rigid with terror.
Said the sheep.

The wind stops its screeching and the sheep suckles her babies.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Economy Distracts Americans on Iraq War Anniversary?





Rolling along "N"...

Neo-Resistance - Neural Gourmet - New World Order Reports - Night Bird's Fountain - No Accuser - No Cure For That - No-More-Ignorance - Not In My Name - Not Much, But All Mine - Not My Tribe - Nothing Aside - Nutopian




THE FLIP OF A COIN




(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)(Click to enlarge)

No Country for Old Men revisits themes Ethan and Joel Coen have used in Blood Simple and Fargo. The novel's motifs of chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the Coens, who presented similar threads and tapestries of "fate [and] circumstance" in those earlier works. Numerous critics cited the importance of chance to both the novel and the film, focusing on Chigurh's fate-deciding coin flipping, but noted that the nature of the film medium made it difficult to include the "self-reflective qualities of McCarthy’s novel."

In The Village Voice, Scott Foundas writes that "Like McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge the characters forward... In the end, everyone in No Country for Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered species trying to forestall their extinction."

New York Times critic A.O. Scott points out that Chigurh, Moss, and Bell each "occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined."

Variety critic Todd McCarthy describes Chigurh's modus operandi:
Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he goes, unless he decides otherwise ... if everything you've done in your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be victims, your time might just have come. 'You don't have to do this,' the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous code dictates otherwise. Occasionally, however, he will allow someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor...

~

ROLLING STONE...Not since Robert Altman merged with the short stories of Raymond Carver in Short Cuts have filmmakers and author fused with such devastating impact as the Coens and McCarthy. Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved. Recent movies about Iraq have pushed hard to show the growing dehumanization infecting our world. No Country doesn't have to preach or wave a flag — it carries in its bones the virus of what we've become. The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense, but only to force us to look into an abyss of our own making. (Peter Travers)

~

THE FLIP OF A COIN
a poem by thepoetryman


-We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind
in the history of the world - or to make it the last. __JFK



Hidden under our disguises,
Like the sunken path used to avoid our fate,
Are the hollow eyes of man staring at a heap of ruin.

When we cease to bow to arrogance,
When we feel the burnish of mortality
And at last grasp man’s relation
Only then can we see our true face
Standing agape in the midst of shame.

It is not nearly as valuable to discover “who” the thieves are
As it is to recognize “what” it is that smothers our sight.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman


Rolling along "D"...

Dandelion Salad

Darvish

Declarations of Pride

Depresident.Blog

Docudharma

Doonesbury-The Sandbox-Military Blog


ANGER AND INDIGNATION

The idea for the poem below the incredibly powerful video (first 4 and a half minutes), ANGER AND IN-DIG-NATION by Dr. Ryman, began with a comment I read on The Existentialist Cowboy's post about Petraeus' testimony before congress. The words, by Diane B The Gemini Scrolls, are quoted below:

"You are right Len, these characters that are running our government, have committed so many horrendous crimes, and need to be in prison if not worse. It appears this is not going to happen with this Congress, will it ever, who knows?"

I highlighted the four simple words, only four, sometimes my muse prefers more, but I latched on to those four and could not wipe them from my mind. This fact is not to take away from Diane's full comment which certainly has some teeth. I suppose my muse is to blame for the most part since things usually don't stay in my head for more than a few minutes.


The four words called out to me and stayed with me and I do hope that this poem and video call out and stay with you. I hope they call to you, cry out to you, reverberate in you, highlighting your anger toward such crimes and in some way allows you to filter the rage and turn your indignation into much needed, coherent action...

Sincerely,
Mark (thepoetryman)




War delivers something significant
Overlooked in our hurry;
Blindness of its reach
Leading demons to our bed.

Our minds see too late the sacrificed
In its jaws or upon its talons
With “This war, this lie will echo,”
Stomping inside our heads.

There’s not room for much else,
Shrapnel has invited itself in
And eats our guilt with a shovel,
Burrowing to our center.

Another soldier, a child,
Who believes himself impenetrable
Is taken to soil for our charade,
Cold and ashen now.

Where is the anger
For having been wed to this legion,
For standing motionless
As deceit commits so many?

Where’s the indignation?
What have we sacrificed to the ground?
Do we believe we’ve ducked its swipe
And come out unsoiled on the other side?


Now, after we’ve learned, will we
Snuggle up to precious war
And kiss its beneficiaries,
Too afraid to die?


War bends for no one, save for utter defeat.
These are the days of our significance,
These we live, so grab the warring shovel
And bury it of its damnable use!


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman


HONOR AND CRAFT

EXPAND THE POST +/-
(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
Kristol: "It's a ridiculous political calculation as well as a dishonorable one by those Republicans who are thinking of jumping ship. I think they can be beaten back with a strong campaign of explaining what's really happening on the ground in Iraq, and a real explanation of what the consequences of defeat would be. But I- you know, the Democrats are behaving terribly, but the Republicans are behaving foolishly - some of them. (chuckle)" (More...)


Dishonor is your amusement as you naked lie
In your quest for power’s reach; supremacy.
In attendance with the things of flesh and bone
Entertaining themselves about you, you gab
Incessantly about the oily future’s bounding craft.
O the lackluster smirk of connivance!
The prattle of foolish analysis by a crafty fool
Honoring himself and his ravenous ambition
To usurp the throne of ungodly liar!
Honor, you’ve none. Craft, you’ve plenty.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman




MISSION ACCOMPLI

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)This story originally appeared on TomDispatch.com.


It had taken much thought and planning that wartime May Day four years ago when George W. Bush co-piloted an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, had "embedded" himself on that aircraft carrier days before the President landed. Along with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and lighting specialist, and Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer, he had planned out every detail of the President's arrival -- as Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times put it then -- "even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the ‘Mission Accomplished' banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call ‘magic hour light,' which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush." (More...)


The sea tilts in its mournful ballet
Waiting upon your puffed utterance to strike
An awkward chord over the rapturous.

Pirouetting jauntily you make your way front
Captured in the sun’s golden swagger.

They wait. Fearing what death may come upon
Their course. What long faces tip of this gloom;
Furrows patterned of your barefaced malice.

You’ve no more magic hour light to snuff or bend.
All that you have crawls over innocence.

A tomb howls in the mist. It beckons,
Etched with your name.

La mission a accompli.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman


Read Progressive Daily Beacon's Bush's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

fait accompli

AWAITING

The student who shot dead at least 30 people at Virginia Tech sent a package to the US TV network NBC News on the day of the shootings, police said.
The package contained "disturbing" photographs, video and writings, NBC said, posted from the college campus between the two rounds of killings.
Cho Seung-hui is shown pointing guns at the camera, and ranting angrily.
A total of 33 people, including the gunman himself, died in shootings at two locations on Monday.
"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," the 23-year-old gunman said angrily, in an excerpt shown on NBC Nightly News. (
More...)

4 bombs kill 178 in Iraq
By Sinan Salaheddin The Associated Press

Baghdad - Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad today, killing at least 178 people and wounding scores - the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the bombings "horrifying" and accused al-Qaida of being behind them.
In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 122 people and wounding 148, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.


When sorrows come,
they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
-W. Shakespeare

They are scattered all around us
Smeared on windshields and sidewalks.
Look now upon your hands and feet;
The ashes of this unfortunate world.
Up and down the streets they blow
From church to church and home to home
Awaiting the repeat of solemn gunfire
To devour the bodies down in yearning.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.
-W. Shakespeare

Coursing ever so steady comes our bewilderment
Leading us into much that is relief
For their names may well have been our own
Crouched upon the merciless floor.
It moves inside of us like some dead thing

Giving crumbs to nourish our imaginings
Of those and their private room of horror,
But all of our shelter is paralyzed by battle.

Give sorrow words.

The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o're-fraught heart,

And bids it break.
-W. Shakespeare


Calling out now to clergy our urgent need for comfort.
“Speak of God. Why didn't he hold him from this rage?
Shroud the dead, place his hand over their cowering?”
Now the answer we’ve come to cherish, “God’s plan.”
Thirty-three? What of one hundred and seventy?
Does God find them worthy of nails through their palms,
To suffer a hell that can't be quenched in daily loss?
They are scattered about with our fingerprints upon them
And, as with so much of our beauty, a gun takes them away.

Our nation is somewhat sad,

But we're angry.
There's a certain level of blood lust,
But we won't let it drive our reaction.
We're steady,
Clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon
We'll have to start displaying scalps.
-W


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

DETACHED FROM REALITY

(Ben Heine - Cartoons)

...when Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.

That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.
(Read the whole post.)


When I heard about the coming war,
The occupation of Iraq,
I dug up a beautiful rock from my yard, a buried wish.

I picked it up out of the dirt,
Polished it vigorously
And held it up toward the bright midday sun.

I then observed the star
Rudely abandon my offering
And round up the clouds; his cheerless band of thieves.

I asked him why he was not pleased,
Wasn’t the rock pretty enough?
He just wrinkled his mug and stepped behind the haze.

I was hurt, but more determined,
I knew that war would incinerate the children;
Iraq’s pristine treasures hunkered down in trembling.

So I dug up another rock and another.
I dug until my fingers bled.
I dug at a furious pace; time was not on my side.

Soon I had three hundred rocks,
And no feeling in my hands.
Again I offered them to the veiled and sneering sun.

Again the superlative star mocked me,
And the clouds scoffed
Then commenced to spit upon my pleading expression.

So I dug and dug and dug.
I was a madman, digging up grass and flowers.
And, as I dug, the hovering mob threw down their noise.

Lightening struck now,
Yet I was determined to find the perfect stone,
I was digging for all the marbles; the kit and caboodle!

And, “CLANK”, there it was, a door.
A beautiful and brilliantly shining silver door;
A most curious thing to find buried beneath the yard.

The sun peaked through
Inquisitive of this amazing find,
Even the clouds ceased their scoffing and gathered near.

I banged the shovel down upon it
And a massive echo rumbled deep.
The blood from my hands dripped upon the silver frame.

I looked now to the sun,
“Is this magnificence enough?”
But before he could answer there came a thunderous knock…


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Glenn Greenwald - Why the Beltway Class Can't Comprehend Russ

Feingold Bill - Redeployment From Iraq

Vagabond's "Denial as a Political Philosophy"

Previous Post - WAR STORIES

THE DISTORTION OF EVE

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)



BETMO
sent me an email I thought I'd share... The inspired poem follows...
"Let's all shop at Sears!!! I assume you have all seen the reports about how Sears is treating its reservist employees who are called up?

By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up reservist employees for up to two years. I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution. Suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement ! it well deserves. Pass it on.

So I, decided to check it out before I sent it forward. I sent the following email to the Sears Customer Service Department: I received this email and I would like to know if it is true. If it is, the Internet may have just become one very good source of advertisement for your store. I know I would go out of my way to buy products from Sears instead of another store for a like item even if it was cheaper at the other store. Here is their answer to my email......................

Dear Customer: Thank you for contacting Sears. The information is factual. We appreciate your positive feedback. Sears regards service to our country as one of greatest sacrifices our young men and women can make. We are happy to do our part to lessen the burden they bear at this time."


THE DISTORTION OF EVE
Upon the homeward rumble of unkind supremacy;
The breathtaking leap of winter, and black sky…
Our marching lions return from their stalking submission,
Arriving champions, thrashing and pining for quiet
To pull open drooping eyes against the use of this globe.
When the warrior sleeps, and the higher peace consumes
And wraps around their grip, freeing the feel of the trigger,
And they know the bird’s touching down upon home
The screech of gears jostles them out of their sleep;
The vision of the children’s scattered brown skin
Surges now their scope like some distortion of Eve.
The planes tires have the shattering cries of the fallen
Breathing their last and now the ears pierce with humming;
They think, better to be home, than pleading in the shadows,
Than pulling the action and cutting strangers in two
Or seeing their own legs lying next to them…

Home! Home at last!
No more angry fingers clutching at roadsides.
No more the rigid fists of quagmire their reaping.
No more exploding flesh. No more! No more!
Let the harvest stray in the sand of that land!

Now stepping off to the touch of home,
To a streaming banner of never again.
To flag draped visions rising up chanting `hero’.
To faces stumbling among the fleshy fragments
Looking surprised, uttering unintelligible dread.

And the lion scans the gathering, piercing past the flesh
To walk through, to feel the defeated fingers of home.
Now the air broken with music blasting the newfound peace
And the mob of tears and applause consume the humming
As families look for one another to hold close this discord.

The music faded, photo snapped, banner down, they march home,
And, as the lions drift easily off to the first quiet sleep,
The rumble turns into the voice of a dark pleading,
Asking, “To what end?” “Where were you going?”
“This cloth we use to mop up the oil, wipe shame across the sand?”
The use of this realm, these three-colored banners,
Is all better washed than flown, burned or buried,
Than waved down the broken streets of home.

Even the lions now to their busy, restless lives;
Complacent and lockstep with the re-fragmenting horde.
"No! No! No! Goddmanit! We’ve yet to heal!
We’ve only managed to cover our wound and our wounding!
There’s been no aroma of peace wafting here!
Cease your goddamned marching! Cease!"

Upon the whistling street tosses the signs of conformity,
The smiling empty faces of greed and blindness.
The horrific film loop of deceitfulness.
The casting agents are auditioning our children
As extras in war movies that bow to beasts.

Will we now sleep through the harvest?
March down Old Glory Street?

Oh! Lion…
Step off your plane to the hush of peace...........



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman


العراق - ما من فراغ NO VACANCY

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
Al Mansour Hotel - Modern hotel - 26 kms from Baghdad International Airport. Swimming Pool, Fitness Center, Spa/Massage, Tennis, Air Conditioning, and a Television!

*Isn’t psychosis dynamic?

1. Oil is environmentally friendly.
2. We can achieve peace through war.
3. We build by destroying.
4. Our hungry are better fed than Africa’s hungry.
5. In a health care grounded in miracles, not medicine.
6. There is no difference between a dead child and a broken doll.
7. The Book of Genesis is a scientific document.



*Gen'ls to Bush: Soldiers not props
A trio of retired generals concerned that President Bush might use his scheduled appearance this afternoon at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center to try and score political points against Democrats, urged the president, via a teleconference with reporters, to focus strictly on the problems with military medical care.
The generals were spurred into action by news reports that suggested the president might use the event to take on Democrats as both sides clash over the Iraq and Afghanistan spending bills just passed by the Senate and House which include timelines Bush fiercely opposes for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

*Toll rises as Iraq attacks continue
At least 38 people were killed or found dead in bombings in Iraq on Saturday, taking the Iraqi death toll this week to almost 500 people.
The weekly death toll rose after Iraqi police announced that Tuesday's truck bombing in Tal Afar, northwest of Iraq, killed 152 people, making it the deadliest single attack since the war began

*
Iraqi justice minister resigns
Iraq's justice minister says that he has offered his resignation to the prime minister as a series of bombings left at least 14 people dead across Iraq.
In the capital, Baghdad, on Saturday, a car bomb killed five people and wounded 22 others outside the al-Sadr hospital in Sadr City in Baghdad, police said.

*
Iraqi towns bury violence victims
The Iraqi government says it is doing its best to stop Iraq reaching a "level of despair" after six days of violence that resulted in 508 people dead.
On Friday, marketplaces in Baghdad and in the towns of Tal Afar and Khalis - devastated by waves of bomb attacks - stood in ruins.

*
Al-Sadr calls for anti-US protests
Muqtada al-Sadr has blamed the US for Iraq's current woes and called for a mass demonstration on April 9 to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall.
The Iraqi Shia leader in a statement on Friday also renewed his call for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
"Fly Iraqi flags atop homes, apartment buildings and government departments to show the sovereignty and independence of Iraq," al-Sadr said in the statement.
"[Show]that you reject the presence of American flags and those of other nations occupying our beloved Iraq," he said.


العراق - ما من فراغ

There is no vacancy here,
You’d best move along.
No street musicians
Playing freedom’s song.
This country’s faded. Fetid.
So, let the red sun set,
The darkness strike.
Let it come running
Or bound at the wrist
Twisting in agony,
The truth hidden in gloom
And lies, their planning.
Let it enter strapped in might,
Plummet like a hawk,
Be over and done with,
Settled once and for all.
The laughter of oily whores
Spilling from the alleyways
With a siren’s throat,
Blow to blow the fist of men.
Let it come drumming,
Pounding like the heart of rage.
Let it be done.
Finish it;
The world’s sour blood.


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman


Open Letters to George W. Bush
~Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones~

BROKEN BY WAR





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…




© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman



Effects of Iraq War on American Citizens


Progressive.org - Broken by This War

Veterans Help Network


The Illustrated Daily Scribble

Previous Post -
WARRIORS



SMITHEREENS

READ THE POEM +/-
(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

They’d make us believe our problems aren’t theirs,
That your dilemma is alien to them,
That the warrior and the war are strangers,
Unknown to one another- sick, broken, lifeless.
Unconnected.
Of course the warrior is not the war,
Yet with war inevitably surfaces the warrior.
Why don’t we see the obvious in this?
We allow the fully soiled, homicidal racket of war
Without a word of objection;
Nuke `em, kill `em,
Blow `em all to
smithereens!
Send the young drones out to slaughter
To annihilate some artificial fear of the moment,
To lie, cheat and swindle the breath of days,
To stink up the earth with the fragrance of failure
At the bidding of the people;
Loose fitting, fleshy corpses
Knitted to wave as flags.

So, as to be expected, upon your sacrifice you
return unknown,
Unrecognizable to our guilt ridden reckoning;
Pitiless schemers grasping for a fix!
Why don’t we see this for what it is?
What could you, or I, have expected?
We are not responsible for your actions!
Your choices are yours
We’ve nothing to do with them!
You can’t lean on anyone now!
You can’t expect anything from us!
You’ve made your bed
Now you’ll damn well lie in it!

The responsibility for the betrayal of our humanity
May not be yours alone to hold,
Yet we will make damn sure to snap your back with it!

We no longer recognize you! You are dead to us!
We do not know the sort of monster you are,
All we know is our pitiless scheming…

~

And this;

It is not enough that you served with honor
It is not enough that you died for the cause
It is only enough that you are most willing
To die over and over until death has no loss
`til it finds passage through the vein of self
Torturing you through its very pounding...(More...)


Copyright © 2007 mrp / thepoetryman

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

Expose: Wounded Soldiers Coming Home to Neglect at Walter Reed


THE TWO HORSEMEN

>

Jim Webb of Virginia was selected to give the Democratic response to Bush's SoTU, and boy, did they make the right choice. Webb hit all the right notes, his points impressive and unassailable. Rather than even dignify the fearmongering and drawing of parallels of 9/11 to aggression in the Middle East, Webb just pointed out that the Democrats are representing the will of the people in their desire to see an end to the quagmire and that if Bush didn't want to listen to the people that put him in office, the Democrats would lead him to the will of the people.
"If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."

Hagel Gives `em Hell (Video)


"I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know that Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend -- they haven't even Team B'ed this plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.... We'd better be damned sure what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more lives into that grinder.... and I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide any more, none of us."


THE TWO HORSEMEN

POET
The trumpet sounds above their dark village
And the slope of wet desire moves them nearer,
Breathing hotly upon the newly expectant spirits
The nighttime sounds of yearning fill the air.
MAN
Is it them?
O! I hope they’re here!
Do they approach?
O! I pray they’ll come?
POET
Tonight the two horsemen are said to be imminent,
Riding fast, their steeds strapped with blazing purpose
Ready to liberate the lands seaward sons and daughters,
Mend the torn away air and smooth the towering loss…
WOMAN
Sentry? Tell us what you hear!
Speak of what you see?
Is it the horsemen?
Are they beautiful saviors?
SENTRY
The horsemen are mortal men born out of our desire,
Our wish for someone willing to speak with certainty
And not cower of the prowling beast’s oppression,
To dispute the salvo of war-jawed tales of terror.
MAN
We don’t need you thinking!
We need you seeing and hearing
You blubbering idiot!
Now do you see them or-
SENTRY
Yes! Yes! They come!
I see two riders!
POET
The streets erupt in joyous hoorahs and release.
Yes. It has been said that the two horsemen
Shall transport the people's bleeding liberty home
And right the tumbling and despotic vessel.
So it is said…
SENTRY
No! No!
Oh! My God!
There are more than two!
WOMAN
More than two?
MAN
How many?
SENTRY
Oh, Jesus…
MAN
How many!
SENTRY
Thousands…
WOMAN
A thousand beautiful horsemen?
SENTRY
No. Many thousands.
MAN
Horsemen born out of our desire...





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