Showing posts with label patriotism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patriotism. Show all posts
MEMORIAL WHISPER
Memorial Day launched its whisper to the sky
and another lies in wait on the mountaintop
beneath the bleached mass of atonement.
O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture the patriot tree
until we can climb near to God!
Near enough to ask,
“Is this your desire?”...
Near enough so that the question
needn’t even be uttered,
just near enough
to see the river’s flow.
O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture this; our flag-waving heap
beyond the gaze of God!
Beyond the flow of the deity’s torrent!
Beyond this; our notion of existence!
Higher! O! Onward! Higher still!
Carry them aloft! Reverently lay these;
our strident armed forces of war and peace!
We can have it both ways you know;
write our storm’s name across the sky
and climb beyond the stare of God!
O! I am determined by our failing!
Indomitable of our worshipful peak!
Joy filled by our divine reaching
to build, amass, pile, mound, and stack!
We’ll have surpassed the mournful eyes
and soon be able to look down
upon the brazen head of God
and declare ourselves the victor!
O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture the patriot tree
until we can climb beyond God!
Higher! O! Onward! Higher still!
© 2006 mrp/thepoetryman
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-
DIE!
Warmonger - war·mon·ger - [wawr-muhng-ger, -mong-] – noun
a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war.
[Origin: 1580–90; war1 + monger
]~
~
CAUTION: This video contains a very simplistic and dreadful message.
(If you consider patriotism to be a virtue then you should have no problem with its meaning.)
The group is "Dope"...but this isn't about a band’s name. The song is "Die Motherfucker Die" ...but this isn’t about the title of this particular song. It’s about the fact that so many, following 9-11 and prior to Afghanistan and into the occupation of Iraq, have used this song as a template for expressing their rage and fear and sorrow. It is also this template that screams "vengeance" and "revenge" toward a phantom enemy. If these citizens could, would but reflect on the meaning behind such, they might see that they are projecting an image of themselves more than of some phantasmal adversary.
The fact that so many, not a majority to be sure, but so many found and find nothing wrong with taking a simplistic song with a dreadful message and applying it to video of the war in Afghanistan and/or the occupation of Iraq and its peoples destruction is precisely what I and many of my blogging and non-blogging friends are fighting against; a blind love or devotion (patriotism, nationalism) to country
that leads to nothing but more blindness and overwhelming rage
that cannot and will not dissipate until
every last drum of oil has been stolen,
every brown skinned person is dead or maimed,
every Muslim is bowed to empire and Christianity,
and every flag replaced with Old Glory!
That is not an attainable goal. Completely unachievable, and yet it is the very goal that the US government is proving it wants and that an uninformed public can’t see for a lack of reasoning skills, gluttony and complacency. This, the objective, is the end-game, the final stand or it surely will be if we continue down the witless path of vengeance and conquering the world, we will pay an exceedingly heavy price and likely not be around to even know it.
The video above is most sad, despicable, and most unworthy of praise. It is the rot that has swept over this country more since 9-11 than at any other time in our history. Kill. Kill. Kill. If we do not stop saying, "Die motherfucker die" and dropping bombs and firing guns and slaughtering for oil we will soon find ourselves at the short end of a colossal, all-inclusive stick…
~
~
With that I offer an ode to our need to use Dope's "Die Motherfucker Die" or any other senseless song or rant as anthem for the United States of America's marching music for the theft of godforsaken oil from relatively defenseless countries or as anthem for our ruthless and mighty vengeance of a day that trembles on our streets and collapses upon our hearts, but will never and can never be avenged or righted. This rage, this vengeance has become us… and we it.
The ghouls have all gone home.
Hell… They were never here.
It was your own expression
Floating within your fear,
Your own miserable manifestation.
Die, warmonger! Die!
Thrash no more your hell’s plague!
Die your death away,
Annihilate your starvation
And feed your joy instead.
The apparition is not unfamiliar,
It is your face, your own
Hovering in the skies.
O! Bring your wrath down
And eradicate the lies!
Die, warmonger! Die!
Thrash no more your hell’s plague.
Die your death away, die!
Bring your finishing breath down
And crack large the sky.
© 2008 mrp/tpm
Rolling along "A"...
Open Letters to George W Bush - A Level Gaze - A Long Tough Blog - A New Chautauqua - A Noble Undoing - A Poetic Justice - Ablogination - Adgita Diaries - Almost There - Alternate Brain - AmericanGoy - Americans United - An Unfound Door - Angel Feathers Tickle Me - Another Point of View - Anti-New World Order - Aristocrats - Army Girl - Army of Dude - Art of Mental Warfare - Art Threat - Austin Permie - Axis of Justice
DREARY BROOCH
Pin a heart on us, the living;
We, the unmoving.
The deceased have more breath
Than our breathing.
Emblems of our emptiness
And weakness
Puncturing hunger’s sleeve with
Dreary brooch.
Cackling our minute’s final gasp
With warring,
Weak idols pinned to proud chests,
Unfilled, all.
Pin sweet thoughts upon the dull,
Not pennants
Of gluttony, empire, warfare
And oil.
Whilst our children die for those
Already dead
Let us begin anew with this; the worlds
Flagless living.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
COMMUTABLE DISEASE
Newsday.com –
Bush Respects the Jury and the Judge but not the Sentence
“I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement.
"But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."
National Review Online – Libby gets what he deserves… freedom
Say what?
“We have urged President Bush to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby from the moment a jury found Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff guilty of perjury and obstruction in the CIA-leak case. Now the president has acted. He didn't go as far as we would have liked, choosing to commute Libby's prison term while leaving his conviction, fine, and probation intact. But his action ensures that Libby will not go to jail, and that's a good thing.
There were a lot of reasons why presidential clemency was appropriate. The first is that the CIA-leak investigation was a fundamentally political exercise from Day One. Even before the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in December 2003, Justice Department investigators knew that it was former State Department official Richard Armitage, not Libby, who originally leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson. The Justice Department also knew enough to conclude that Libby had not violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law at issue in the case. Lacking proof that an underlying crime took place, and knowing the source of the leak, the Justice Department should have shut down the investigation then and there.”
Chairman Conyers on President Bush’s Decision to Commute
A Betrayal of Trust of the American People by Nancy Pelosi
Chairwoman Slaughter on President Bush’s Decision to Commute
Libby Sentence Commuted: Inexcusable
Tony Snow Spins the Libby Commutation
Bush Does Not Rule Out a Pardon
COMMUTABLE DISEASE
The people readied themselves for the celebration; burgers, hotdogs, refreshments, and beer, but ahead of their gleeful caravan was mankind’s lies and grime that the wind dropped until the unbearable stench was hard upon them.
The grave spirits wept of the fading justice, tears tilted their red cheeks into the pungent air opening the fear-filled and stinking carriage, lowering the trappings across the doldrums.
They stood, one next to the other, smiling in quiet optimism as the odor drifted through and crawled up their expectant noses making bed in the deep ruts left by the torrent of recent wars.
The spirits had not meant to overstay their welcome.
They had not meant to disillusion.
(But the world’s people are so pliable, so tired, that even expected news rocks them back.)
Monuments of sacrifice on that day split open like melons, exposing the battered hearts gasping at the shock of dishonor standing limbless before them.
They never imagined the disease would find them so easily, yet its stench fell freely, flooding the dried up land.
How could this have happened, they shrieked!
We love our dear country!
We took all the necessary precautions:
sunscreen, fireworks, USA T-shirts, shotguns, the bible, ice, extra towels and coolers, ice-cream, apple-pie, the American flag, sunglasses, and reusable cups.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
Olbermann's Special Comment on Libby and Bush/Cheney.
GRAVITY
The flags aren't flying like they used to.
They're not riding on cars, fastened
To newly bent, molten beams
Wafting in the prickled air
Where gray spines of steel sliced
Open our fortified tranquility,
Where the most we had to fear
Was ourselves.
“Where is the wind?” we call out.
“Why do we still bury our poor
children in the flag draped caskets
of a rich man’s war?”
Have our principles plummeted
Into the craven jaws of gravity
Where a once proud people reveled
In the reasoned hope of humankind?
Where is the wind?
The pennants to their flying?
They’re not waving red, white and blue.
They’re not beaming over the living,
Or wafting in the haggled air
Where bodies coursed downward,
Hands empty of symbols.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
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
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
ENGAGE...NOT RAGE!
I was reading through some sites this morning and came upon this at Al Jazeerah.info…Our world is blessed with some truly world-class intellects. We must engage them to engage with us simple folk. We have brain power at our disposal and we need them dearly. Like say, Dr. James Zogby and Professor Juan Cole. We need you to teach and lead us. Engage with us and give us a hand. The politicians like say the Republicans and the Democrats and whomever can please excuse themselves right now. You’re not helping. As an example, how about Bare-ax Oh-bomb-uh and his wanton desire to blow the bejesus out of Iran. How does that help senator?
We need to engage with Hamas and Hizbullah and Syria and Iran and oh mercy, won’t that upset the creases in Karl Rove’s pajamas. George Bush is still to this very day trying dearly to figure out what exactly is a “Hizbullah.” Oh it’s true alright. Given that the deathly “al-Qaeda” is a CIA invention, do we continue on with a status quo or engage with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri? Yeah, there’s death and horror on all sides of this current terrorist mess. The United States and Israel are as much “terrorist” as is the H, H, and al-Q axis of whatever. We must engage on all sides or fronts or what the hell ever. The current quagmire of comprehensive slaughter cannot continue. Jeez George, knock that killing crap off right now. You’re not helping. You’re hurting a lot of innocent folk and it’s no longer acceptable. That applies equally to Ehud Olmert. What is wrong with you? Jeez Hud, if you don’t want to talk with Hamas or Hizbullah, sit down and shut up. Let someone else give it a try. Professor Kwiatkowski? Paging Professor Kwiatkowski. America is waiting on you. Raimondo? Rivero? Jones? Sharpton? Dr. Dean, you need to sit down and be quiet. Anti-Semitic? You maudlin dope. What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Finally to that nice Saudi photographer lady, I’m still waiting for that call. We’ve a revolution to get started. Engage with me and let’s change the world. Scott...Ritter, where you at son? Don’t give up now. There’s work to do and our world needs your expertise. Richard Thielman? Where you at son? Come on we need you. Engage and that will be the hard part. For certain! (More...)
Flags again are sensed in our empty gesture,
Tied to so many unimaginable transport,
Stabbed in America’s brittle lawns,
Impaled deep in the freshly wet green of wealth,
Staggered and airless in the crying fields,
Flapped against pickup truck and Humvee;
Nationalism etched in freshly waxed exterior
To twisted frame of the fallen and dead ideals.
We are lifting broken families into the air
Aloft in the explosion of mourning
Without comprehending our rage.
The dead, suspended in bomb's brown sky.
Children are odes instead of laughter,
Funerals instead of schools,
As fear invades their ambitious eyes
Draped in the shadow of war.
We are lifting children up to casualty
While our flags they must be flying!
Hymns of righteousness must be sung,
Anthems exploded… void of comprehension.
Flags fan the air where shrapnel pierces,
Penetrates the steel shell of our lust,
Pitching compassion into the oily cloud
Racking torturous battles upon the world.
There is no national anthem or flag or war
That can lift the soil from off the innocent.
There is not a god with the claws of gravity
To raise this; our soulless murdering.
There is but one mercy for our violent flow;
We must erect a statue as high as the heavens
Made of all of our guns and tanks and bombs
And watch as, one by one, God molds them into stars...
Copyright © 2006 mrp thepoetryman
Engage Not Rage!
MOM'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS
The horror came
As my mom took her refuge
In not speaking my name;
Her marked breath was too much to bear,
To feel me plunging behind her teeth
As her breath pushed forth
And the truth immersed in her blood.
The lie was much easier…
(Fighting, dying, for freedom and country,
Not oil and empire and the gut of want.)
Slippery greed is not enough cause to die;
Betrayed in our clay of patriotism
And liberty and pliant expectation
Hanging like a ripe apple,
Within sight, but beyond our reach.
All people are capable of greed,
All people are capable of hate,
All people are capable of love,
But death is the mallet to hope
And love, birth’s soft petal…
Copyright © 2006 mrp
Inspired by One Veterans Voice
PATRONIZE THIS!
I am as sorry for our loss on nine-eleven as the next idiot, but I hate being patronized to with absurd reminders, "3000 lives" and "biggest terrorist attack on US soil" and "they hate us for our freedom" and "we haven't been attacked again thanks to Bush"!
I want to scream!
It really irks me to hear such idiocy! Then to top it off with the inane conclusion, "We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" is complete insanity! Comparably they should just say, "We ship our jobs over there so you won't have to work over here!"
I want to scream!
The "Over there instead of here" philosophy boils down to the exportation of death and destruction!
I want to scream!
Why the hell did we overthrow a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11!
I want to scream!
The people that will constantly remind us of tragedy and stoke our fear of terrorism (Bush, et al) are to be regarded as dangerous to liberty...
What do you want to do?
mrp
911 Relatives Quotes
They Hate Us?
Bring Them Home!
Reality of Shipping Jobs Overseas
Exporting Death
Saddam's Regime
Famed Liberty Essay
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~The very first two lines of the Iliad read:
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκεν,
Rage—sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles, the son of Peleus,
the destructive rage that brought countless griefs upon the Achaeans...
Achilles is the only mortal to experience consuming rage (menis). His anger is, at times wavering, at others, absolute. The humanization of Achilles by the events of the war is an important theme of the story. ~
O! Handsome warrior!
Great fleeting Achilles!
Your death, where water touched you not,
resounds in this; our flag-flooded globe.
Who can fly their banner higher?
March in more an eloquent step?
Harmonize more superbly
the sacrosanct song?
O! Thetis!
Had you but anointed your child
in a sea of flags
and not the river Styx...
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
The Funny Side of Troy
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