"Uppity" - Article

An article e-mailed to Daniel in the Black Democratic Coalition for publication. VERY insightful.

With this - and the inspiration of the so-called "debate" last night - I will compose a poetry piece of the same title as Ron's article. Well Done! TGP, 17 April 2008

A bonus: very FOXY news...






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Daniel-

This thing with Hillary Clinton accusing Obama of being "elitist" reminds me of the shenanigans they pulled in South Carolina, only worse. So, please consider the following for publication:


Uppity
By Ron Horne
April 15, 2008

Interesting how Senator Hillary Clinton paints Barack Obama as an elitist. This son of a Kenyan, fatherless at the age of two, raised by grandparents of a teenage mother, is elitist. This Harvard Law Review editor who, instead of going for a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship or quarter million dollar wall-street law firm salary, worked as a civil rights lawyer and community activist in the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago for a fraction of what he easily could have made, is an elitist. And Sen. Clinton? She’s lived in the White House, has two posh homes on the east coast, and, between her and her husband, the former President of the United States, has racked up $109 million in the last eight years. Folks, that’s $13,625,000.00 per year on average. According to Reuters News Service (3/25/08), “Obama's income with wife Michelle jumped in 2005 with the re-release of his first book ‘Dreams from My Father,’ which brought him $1.2 million, and in 2006 when his second book ‘The Audacity of Hope’ earned more than $500,000.” So, he went from a quarter million to nearly two million in five years. The Clintons make over $13 million every year. Hillary and Bill-$109 million; Barack and Michele- $2 million. Sen. Clinton ran as the Democratic incumbent to the presidency, like she was the heir to the American throne of the Clinton dynasty . . . until, of course, the American people said otherwise. And Obama is elitist? Clinton said that the caucuses and primaries in the small rural states, those states where Obama won, don’t matter, don’t count. Rather it is the large, populous, urban, cosmopolitan states that matter. She basically said that rural America doen't count and Obama is elitist?

Hmmm. $109 million vs. $2 million. White house v. brick house. First Lady v. first brutha. The elitist argument may work for Clinton in the “Alabama” portion of Pennsylvania (James Carvilles’ characterization, not mine), but in North Carolina, as well as other highly populated Black states and cities, Black voters will read her attack as code for something many accomplished and aspiring Blacks have been called by their White counterparts in both high and low society: Uppity. You know, uppity, as in Uppity Negro. For those too young to be familiar with the phrase, it means a Black man or woman, who doesn’t realize their “place” in the social fabric, i.e., beneath whites in terms of what he or she is “allowed” to do. He’s elitist, she says, thinks he’s better than you. Translation: despite his hard work and educational and professional achievement, you are better than him. Here I have been living and working in Washington, First Ladying in the White House, getting funding together from lobbyists to run my coronation campaign, waiting my turn. Then all of a sudden, this young buck comes in, unknown to most, hasn’t lived in the White House, hasn’t “suffered” under the trappings of the presidency, hasn’t paid his dues to be known, yet he comes in here with his Harvard degree and law professorship, holding those big tent rallies like some kind of black Baptist minister getting people all stirred up when it is MY turn to be president. Who does he (that BOY) think he is?

Uppity. Black people of a certain generation know exactly what that means: second class, lower class, racially undeserving, ambitious beyond your station, not knowing your “place”. As the first Black “post racial” candidate (a term that, to my knowledge, has never been applied to White candidates), Barack Obama cannot, and will not, say what many Black people will inevitably take from the latest Clinton tactic. Frankly speaking, he’s cool like that. He will do what he usually does, make simple comparisons and appeal to the basic fundamental needs of all people of all races that are not being met by the current political and governing system where the Clintons are heavily entrenched. It is no wonder that in a poll last week more than 25% of women who had supported Clinton now think less of her as a result of her campaign tactics. It is no wonder Clinton is losing to Obama by margins of 7, 8, and 9 to 1 among Black voters. It is no wonder that Clinton trails in delegates, votes, and states as of this writing. She says what she needs to say and does whatever she needs to do to win. And while they may not fall cleanly and distinctly into the categories of lie, cheat, and steal (i.e. lie about sniper fire, cheat on the Michigan and Florida primaries, steal pledged delegates), her campaign has and is effectively burning a bridge between herself and the Democratic party’s fundamental constituents: Blacks, Hispanics and Women. She continues to pursue the Rev. Wright issue (while his statements have been labeled as “hate speech”, no one has addressed the truth of his statements [we did bomb Hiroshima, Vietnam, and Iraq; Blacks have been medically experimented on by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) from 1932 and 1972, there is resentment in the Middle East due to the effects of our funding of Israel on Arab Palestinians]), the 3 a.m ad (there’s a Black man lurking around the corner in the dark), and whether he is Christian or Muslim (“so far as I know”). She decries NAFTA and the Colombian Free Trade Agreement (which appears to have benefitted Hispanics, although some may differ on this point) and flip-flops on issues, displays emotional schizophrenia, and relies on her husband’s record (the good parts) as her curriculum vitae, something many women, and feminists in particular, find especially irritating.

As for Obama’s statement itself, according to MSNBC.com, he was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Like the statements of Reverend Wright, his explanation also has a historical foundation. The Rosewood Massacre (http://www.displaysforschools.com/rosewood.html) resulted, in part, from the economic hardship of the white segregated town of Sumner and the economic success of the black segregated town of Rosewood, Florida. The catalyst was common for the south: black man accused of violating a white woman. But the economic climate between these two towns in the same county led to the massacre and abandonment of Rosewood by its Black residents and businesses. Today, this country is filled with segregated “sundown towns” where blacks cannot live despite the money to do so. And numerous towns in this country have instituted or tried to institute anti-immigration ordinances to prevent immigrants from getting jobs or renting property including Riverside, New Jersey, Valley Park, Missouri, and Farmers Branch, Texas. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26riverside.html).

Despite these documented circumstances, Clinton chose to do the politically expedient thing: parse the words instead of the facts. Certainly, if she learned nothing else from her husband’s campaigns (or the Bush campaigns thereafter), she had to have learned that Presidents win elections via their base first, even if they need swing and independent voters. The take-no-prisoners conduct of her campaign could leave her bereft of a large portion of that base support were she to somehow garner the Democratic nomination. Of course, on the bright side, since Senator Clinton has clearly opted to utilize the tactics expected to come from the Republicans in the general election, after the last primary in June Obama will be able to argue, as he already has on occasion, that having weathered the Clinton storm he has proven that he is vetted and electable. Ironic since, by her own actions, Senator Clinton may succeed in putting this uppity Negro in his place . . . The White House.

Some Thoughts on a 40th Anniversary

I was 5 years old in Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on April 4, 1968.

We were "Bethlehem," the labeling by the United Methodist Church for day care services on our side of town. "Wesleyan" was reserved for West Winston-Salem.

Yes. We were segregated, and our lives reflected it visibly. Now, as I travel home, the signs are down, we no longer just go to the "Ritz" Movie Theater and anyone can ride on any part of the Metro they desire. East Winston is still segregated, de facto versus legal writ now. Economics, opportunity, education and globalization are the new fences, the new overseers. Bethlehem and Wesleyan are still community centers serving a new generation of the same constituents albeit interspersed with Hispanics now.

I remember April 3, 1968 sitting next to my dad as Dr. King preached a sermon. I asked him what he means by "I've been to the mountain top?" I, my teacher, my parents, my neighbors and that kindergarten class were soon to find out in the cruelest fashion.

We found out in that kindergarten class that life can be cruel, that flawed heroes can fall. We found out you can cry tears until your eyes burn and your gut hurts. We found out that our teachers hurt just as much as we did. We heard horns honking and saw rebel flags flying outside and later on the news: as we cried in agony, many celebrated our loss. I'm told by Vietnam veterans the scene was similar in country to the stress and detriment of soldiers of color. We graduated from kindergarten into a world without our Dr. King.

I appreciate the impact Martin Luther King had on our lives in that we understood our loss: usually at that age (as I recall), loss is not so personal even within the family unless it is a close, involved relative. He was like the uncle we’d never met and knew somehow his importance in our collective plight. We played, as kids are apt to after the midmorning nap. That was the only thing we could think to do.

Today, we are his legacy. And what we do with that legacy will be an interesting test of the democratic experiment known as America. Those that denigrate this commentary with simplistic, salacious epithets do not have the vocabulary or the intelligence to see their worldview other than that of a pie that is being subdivided to their disadvantage, that their culture and privilege somehow is threatened. Nothing could be further from the truth: no one registers culture, nationality or political party at the gas pump, in the supermarket, when your company has downsized you for cheaper labor overseas. We are all America.

John Donne said it best "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Four-Thousand Faces

Four-thousand faces,
Human beings from divergent lives and various places,
When we'd crossed the first Rubicon of 1,000 faces,
I wrote a poem that I hoped would reveal to us
Maniacal machinations
Are not what represent us, and
Are not the ways of democracies...
The hypocrisy of holding so-called "elections"
At the same time withholding the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.

That deserves to be said again:

That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.

Yet, "we're safer" for the effort,
"So, what?" That the electorate has turned their opinions on it.
From one who served in the wealthy and privileged Houston, Texas "Champagne Unit?"
And the ever smirking, fish-in-a-barrel quail killing Darth Elmer Fudd
With "other priorities..."
It's easy to talk tough as chicken-hawks!

The election is already fixed for another internment of the junta
Masquerading as our government,
We genuflect between sexist and racist rants
That takes our focus off the chance
For real, lasting change that could positively affect
The next generation...

Four-thousand faces,
Human beings from divergent lives and various places
Their noble sacrifice
The blood on an arcane altar
to gods that take their spoils from our tax coffers
paid for by an economy faltering
[I fear: and I wish desperately to be wrong]
on the late, Great United States.

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright

Please note: when I went to check the original source of the "news," the video has been removed from YouTube due to terms of usage violations. Yet curiously, every major news outlet has a copy and has run it ad nauseam. The Senator was grilled to repudiate, condemn and reject in no uncertain terms comments made by his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. Obama's own comments cast doubt: it's not much of a prophesy to predict an army of journalist are pouring over every DVD of the Reverend Doctor's sermons to see a thin future presidential candidate in the midst as he delivers a stirring sermon in the tradition of "call and response."

History: "Call and response"

"In Sub-Saharan African cultures, call and response is a pervasive pattern of democratic participation -- in public gatherings in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental musical expression. It is this tradition that African bondsmen and women brought with them to the New World and which has been transmitted over the centuries in various forms of cultural expression -- in religious observance; public gatherings; sporting events; even in children's rhymes; and, most notably, in African-American music in its myriad forms and descendants including: gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and jazz extensions." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response_(music)

This tells me two things:

1. Most likely the church did not post this sermon. Out of the thousands of hours of sermons they could post that would not be so controversial, why post THIS one?
2. It is to the advantage of opponents of Obama's candidacy to run it.

Who are the opponents? They are legion:

- History;
- Ignorance;
- The source of the video.

I've read about the history of the black church since, most of my life I've attended one. I started with the Baptist Church, by far the oldest form of worship pattern in the New World. We were organized by masters into separate but hardly equal organizations.

Call and response stemmed from shear enthusiasm: Sunday was a day of rest from labor in the fields, and since we could not read - that would make us "uppity" and question authority, and since, like the history above it was something we brought from Africa, it has dominated our form of worship since. In contrast, evangelical pastors tend to speak in soft, lecture tones. Some can get fiery, I admit like: Jerry Farwell (deceased) - who said 9/11 was due to gays and lesbians, Rod Parsley - who advocates the destruction of Islam by the US and John Hagee - also not a friend of GLBT.

Many things we do in the black church stems from slavery, like: holding up one's finger to walk from one's seat. That meant you were asking permission from the overseer that observed your congregation. It made sure your "pastor" wasn't saying anything crazy like liberation, freedom, etc. Our ancestors made the coded 100s (no wikipedia on it) like "Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming forth to carry me home," itself a coded message for escape to the north to freedom.

The Azusa Street revival was lead by William J. Seymour, a pastor from Houston, Texas that took his revival and "speaking in tongues" to Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California 14 April 1906. It was the first time whites and blacks mingled worship together. The profound prejudice confounded the effort and people went back to their worship patterns.

In the 1930s, W. D. Fard established a new type of church in Chicago that would be inherited by Elijah Poole, a.k.a. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. They called for separation because they experienced separation. There is some evidence that the Klan invested in the church since their aims were quite... similar. The lack of teaching of black history, extensively researched by the sect would attract Malcolm Little, a.k.a. Detroit Red, a two-bit criminal that would be known as Malcolm X. He would attract a disciple from Winston-Salem Teacher's College, Louis Walcott now known as Louis Farrakhan. The same who would lead The Million Man March in Washington DC, 16 October 1995 with both Christian and Muslim brothers of color.

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It is the ignorance of this history that is quite interesting to watch unfold. That the magazine of the church (not the church) would give Louis Farrakhan an award - what award it escapes me, but enough to ruffle the establishment. That his sermons would stem from his experiences in a formerly segregated country as a former US Marine coming back from the Vietnam War. That such a man might attract followers that struggle to make a middle class lifestyle in a country that does not favor them, or predominately white liberal campuses where they feel "alien" according to Michelle Robinson's senior thesis at Princeton. That his sermons aren't much different than sermons I've heard in churches like his that developed under this rubric. The fact that I said the previous statements will get a reaction - probably from "anonymous" that I am again a racist. That is neither a broad brush on black pastors nor a labeling of African American Christians - just a statement of experiences.

On http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html it states "About 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute in 2002, the number of black men in prison has grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago. Today, more African-American men are in jail than in college. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college." 1980: that was my freshman year. Beyond statistics, those experiences might shape how we see things, how we view things and how we relay the gospel to each other in the nation’s most segregated hour.

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It's possible that someone released the video to YouTube, but it's doubtful without the church's permission. What's more possible is someone at the church that for whatever reason did not like Obama. Not some racist, but someone that looked like him and did not like his meteoric rise to possibly becoming the president. That person may or may not be a Hillary Clinton or John McCain supporter. The only description I can muster that best illustrates him or her is: crab. Crabs are boiled alive. The proverb is that they pull each other down below the steaming depths and all die together.

The candidates’ repudiate, reject, distain and respond to surrogates every week. The economy is in a shambles, the Iraq war is unpopular and cost 12 billion a month, gas is approach $4 and milk $5. I'm paying the same mortgage on 20% less of an income, and THIS is what I get from the First Amendment Media?

"Separation of church and state": what a NOVEL idea!

Grandmother Poem

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/negritude: (circa: 1945-1950) The historical, cultural, and social heritage considered common to blacks collectively: An aesthetic and ideological concept affirming the independent nature, quality, and validity of Black culture. An ideological position that holds Black culture to be independent and valid on its own terms; an affirmation of the African cultural heritage… © 7 March 2008, The Griot Poet, TGP

I've seen a lot this election cycle, and experienced a lot on this blog: the comment I replied to "anonymous" is one individual that thought I was a racist and that my culture has and has never had value. That challenge I could not leave hanging.

This is a commentary I wrote in the cubicle. I hope it speaks to what Africans in America/African Americans/Blacks/Negros go through on a daily basis. Our silence is not consent: we have mortgages and college tuition's to pay. So we leave our place of employment each day, our jowls tight and our blood pressures and sugar levels elevated. If you just had to say it, and you had the gift of spoken word, I think this is how you'd spit it. TGP

* * * * *

I sit in a cubicle
Surrounded by the descendants
That owned my ancestors

During this election season
My reasons for my choices are derided
I’d invite direct challenge, though I’d be chided for breaking a company edict that they flagrantly violate daily.

So, the issues are gaily bandied about me,
Subtly, without directly calling me
Delusional,
Feeling less human and more Labrador retriever
Sleeping silently, my stomach to the floor, my tail ready to wag before
Someone whistles.

A pious air of pedigree
Is their refusal after evidence abounds contrary
To the negative pictures they mentally filter to review any news of me.

CNN did a special: “26 Hours of Terror” when a brother went crazy and shot up downtown ATL…

For the other brother who risked his life to rescue the four children of another man and his wife from a fire – he said he was a dad too, and wouldn’t want anyone to leave his children to house fires hotter than hell – he got a one-time, five-minute sound bite.

I want to hug my grandmother basking in the morning sunshine of the village of my beginnings.
I want to smell the air, taste the dew unmarred by middle passages, only the smog of so-called modernization that mars even Eden.
I want to see you dance a welcome [to me] in a pink tribal dashiki as I, the prodigal son walk, trot then run to your greeting.
I want to hug my grandmother and feel the grip of her embrace as she communicates the spirits of my ancestors in each breath sigh, each tearful cry I shed.

Shush, Hon!

I have been gone long, grandmother:
My father married and divorced my mother.
At one time I was called mulatto, now I mark “other”
As I take a census of my history
A mystery that I had to solve that eventually led me to you and this embrace.

My father voluntarily journeyed to a distant place,
And did not speak over me his blessings,
Or tell me who I was
As the quiver of his loins
He was little more than a ghost to me
Before his earthly demise
We corresponded via letters now known as snail-mail
And so, through sorcery and liquors, I tried to escape
And disguise
The responsibility of my lineage
Taking psychedelic trips did little to alleviate the derision seen when I hailed a cab, got on an elevator, furrowed my brow, combed my hair, shaved my head, inhaled – flaring my nostrils, pursed my lips, or wore a turban from my father’s tribe.

When I express my negritude, I am chided as a racist.
When my church celebrates its heritage, they are scolded as separatist.
When I express any views that are contrary to the control of the ancestors of former oppressors, I am a black nationalist (or terrorist).

Comments from anonymous in Cyberspace ridicule the age wrinkles of wisdom on your beautiful face and my own as “gorilla,” evidence that some of us have yet to evolve from Neanderthal separatists thought processes.

What began as “hope” perhaps is hopeless since the word “America” can be rearranged into three distinct that describe this country’s characteristics: “I am race.”

I want to hug you grandmother, basking in the morning sunshine of the village of my beginnings.

I want to run down streets owned by my people since time began in Eden, like the children I see, for a childhood not experienced in Indonesia or Hawaii playing soccer and hopscotch, double-dutch with lollipops as your prodigal grandson.

I need the strength of my Faith, my people and origins as I am in a contest with others like me who side against me,
Cultivating the seeds of their own destruction in the process,

As I am in a contest that most suspect rigged – for or against me anyway,
And that most after wards will not denigrate their intelligence with participation.

I want to hug you, grandmother and feel the grip of your embrace as you communicate the spirits of my ancestors

I need to hear from our village Griot their whispers from long ago and their assurance that this Goliath will also fall to the stones of my truth.

Shush, Hon! It’s going to be alright. Grandmother’s here… embracing you.

Open Letter to Anonymous

Dear sir or madam:

I'm afraid www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions is the type of web site that is constructed to appease one's brused ego.

The web sites I'd refer you to are the following:

http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/Famous_Black_Inventors.htm
http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/history.html

Also, look at the following:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

I can find patent 147,363 dated February 10, 1874 belonging to:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllatimer.htm

I found the patent search tool, sir or madam, from your web site's bibliography.

It's interesting and sad: I typically don't get responses to my postings. However, I take umbrage to being called a racist. In my experience, racism takes a certain amount of authority and power, like the kind that hung my grandfather for the crime of being a teacher: it seems reading was a criminal, revolutionary act in South Carolina at the time. You should try it sometimes.

The fact of history is that it has always been written by the victors. You may have your opinions sir or madam and I may have mine. This is after all, a country of laws, not of men. And the law we both have access to as Americans is the First Amendment.

Sincerely non racist,

The Griot Poet

February Flow of Negritude

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/negritude: The historical, cultural, and social heritage considered common to blacks collectively: An aesthetic and ideological concept affirming the independent nature, quality, and validity of Black culture. An ideological position that holds Black culture to be independent and valid on its own terms; an affirmation of the African cultural heritage… © 20 February 2008, The Griot Poet, TGP

Was it important to you to erase my history? Whitewashed sepulchers that hide the mystery of my origins and contributions to biblical, historical, technological and modern history…?

Would it kill you to admit that the stories in the Bible resemble the inhabitants of ancient KEMET? National Geographic FINALLY put a black pharaoh on its cover after Richard Burton as Mark Anthony and Liz Taylor as Cleopatra confused us! Nefertiti: you’ve got archeologist and anthropologist vultures filled with their culture, arguing if she was a sister. As the “beautiful one that has come,” how could she be anything else but?

Charlton/Charlatan Heston as Moses lied to us (breaching one of the 10 Commandments), raised in pharaoh’s palace as a black prince that married Jethro’s daughter, an Ethiopian princess, and the only race they could NOT BS us with was the Nubians, the ONLY people of color in Africa according to Cecile B. DeMille.

That Adam is from AD-HAM, Adonai-Black and that the dust he was created from was correctly called “dark mud”? Yet the Klan opens its meetings with cross burnings and prayer.

Enlightened liberal fascists derisively admit the “opiate of the people” is necessary to combat the ravages of racism, compassionate conservative socialists decry “family values,” all the while the upper 1% make killings in the stock market making it hard for families to value the dollars spent at: the gas pump and grocery markets.

Would it kill you to admit: that a black woman created central air conditioning; that a black man created the filament for Edison to invent the light bulb; that Garret Morgan invented the stoplight and gas mask; that Washington DC was laid out by astronomer/engineer/civil-rights-letter-writing-to-Thomas-Jefferson Benjamin Banneker? Now, you have scholars denying the copulation of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming, question: name a white Jefferson! Was it necessary to go around Egypt knocking off noses and lips from obvious African princes?

What twisted psychotic mentality allows liberals or conservatives not to consider either Hilary (woman) or Barack (son of AD-HAM) as viable presidential candidates?

Michelangelo did a number on you, painting the Sistine Chapel in your hue until you came down with a bad case of: narcissism. You have defined beauty, dominating the cover of every magazine cover other than Ebony, Jet and Upscale with women that get 20 minute tans, plastic “Nip/Tuck” surgery and botox enhanced lips.

And your schism will not allow you to admit others other than your hue into the Nuclear nightmare club med: when if they go off, no one will distinguish the dead from the color of their skin, but the content of their corpses: uranium 236! We should all disarm and find peaceful uses for this godlike power. I say in this hour: 6-6-6 is the perfect binary code that is the inverse of itself. And until you recompense what you’ve stolen, you tick-tock down the clock to your civilization built on lies and not truth. Else, your wages of sin on this earth will be well spent!

Eating Our Own

We in the African Diaspora in America have a problem: political (not actual) cannibalism. I will not give any racist a talking point to rant about.

We eat our own. Now, whether or not Barack Obama could afford to leave the campaign trail in Texas to sit with my frat brother in Louisiana, it doesn't matter. That Hillary can afford the side trip to show her "sisterhood" at the State of the Black Union, it doesn't matter. I really don’t care if Tavis Smiley has an inflated ego or not. We are poised, like in 2004, to snatch defeat cleanly from the “jaws of victory.”

Did I say the African Diaspora? Hillary and Barack have pilloried each other in the name of total victory. Each day, the dream ticket becomes a distant nightmare and the DNC proves itself feckless to stop the avalanche and broker a truce that can govern before the August convention.

All the while, a Vietnam veteran, prisoner of war, war hawk, Republican Senator will gain the votes necessary to continue the Iraq war 100 years (his words), make tax cuts permanent, privatize almost EVERYTHING from Social Security to Medicare and appoint a massive majority on the Supreme Court that we won't recover from for a generation - maybe two or more, IF we're still a country. Our great-great-GREAT grandchildren will pay this debt. Again, the big IF we’re still a country. When you try to project yourself the modern Roman Empire, you must inherit its inevitable lifespan to social demise from within as well. I suppose one day we’ll look good – in a museum.

In the movie, “V for Vendetta,” the news commentator kept referring to us as the “former United States,” and that we were in the throws of a full-scale twenty-first century Civil War. With the amount of guns and crazies that seem to buy them and shoot them at will: Virginia Tech, Omaha Mall, NIU, several high school nuts that revere Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold , life may yet imitate art!

Democracy - a romanticized experiment balanced on a thin, steel blade.

On Gender and Race

To be Hillary, you must endure the distain of your image being placed on a "nutcracker": the nuts leveraged between thighs. Obama is derided as a "Halfrican" by Rush Limbaugh, and he produced a song on his so-called talk show called "Barack: the Magic Negro." (Think: Puff, the Magic Dragon).

Beyond the attacks the candidates levy against each other, the dark underbelly of sexism and racism is being exposed daily.

Will all due respect: I cannot agree with Gloria Steinem that gender, not race is the "most restricting force in America." Your mothers were not restricted when my mothers worked the field and birthed black and mulatto babies. Your mothers shared the wealth gotten from free labor, and the "women's place in the home" as your wealthy fathers pursued politics and developed an acumen that modern southern gentlemen STILL possess. Your mothers had servants while still staying home. My mothers WERE the servants while still trying to maintain a home.

What are we afraid of? Do we really want change, or merely the "feeling" of change?

This is a wide open, exciting election. I have my qualms about the super delegates that could decide for the Democratic nominee and the Supreme Court possibly poised to decide for the rest of us if McCain gets to a squeaker finish in either Florida or Ohio, or does state even matter?

What are elites afraid of that they push out Rush to do their dirty work, and Chris Matthews spewing comments like "the only reason she might be a front-runner is because her husband messed around?" Why did Bob Johnson allude to Barack's former drug usage -- admitted in his book (NOT his community activism) -- as a surrogate to the Clinton machine? And lastly, why is Rush so concerned with our seeing a woman age in the office of the presidency? We've seen countless MEN age in the office since 1776. I'm sure Mr. Limbaugh and the rest of the country will adjust and survive either the first Woman or African American president (and, if he were to check all of our lineage, about 25% of us are kind of all "halfricans": it was called rape, without witness, habeas corpus or trial). Are you, white males, so disturbed that your base inclinations surface in subtle and overt attacks as someone ELSE might occupy "The 'White' House" for the first time since this country's inception that does not remind you of the typical Eurocentric "high father"?

Is this a democracy? I wonder sometimes. TGP

even sunshine makes shadows...

Thom the World Poet and the Griot Poet
© 26 January 2008, TTWP, TGP

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

killing of journalists women children innocents
indiscriminate bombings.deliberate malice
collective punishments.torture.denial of essential services
Ghandi.Martin Luther King.Kennedy-shot down
message being-"we can kill anyone " assassins
on government payrolls.CIA renditions.prisons.
KNOWING this is wrong-and still permitting...
history being wars.peace a dove torn by war hawks.
half Austin budget going to APD.
TAZERS on musicians.Shootings of blacks.
Three patrol cars for one driving offense
Unprofessional conduct scoring top salaries.
No accountability.No oversight.No civilian authority.
Pentagon war budget blowout/Halliburton contract fraud
Blackwater killings .Brown&Root.As above-so below
Do not blame the victims for resistance to violations
Bill of Rights.Constitution.Impeachment.War Crimes Commission.
NUREMBERG 2008 Jan 26

* * * * *

even sunshine makes shadows...
and, in the depths of its hallows
lurks the modern equivalent
of saber-tooth's...
forces made malevolent
by occult ritual
meant only for the "initiates"
from college sororities and fraternities
to ivy skull-brained-frat-brat-packs
throughout histories
in the not-to-hidden mysteries
of power-absolute-corrupt...

as our ancestors, our survival
is dependent on our abrupt
detect of the snap of a twig, the
read of the scent on the wind...

we each play "social sudoku,"
primates upright,
pictographs to hieroglyphs
to binary 0 and 1 codes in
Nostradamus,
Old and New Testaments
looking to "connect-the-dots"
[J.F.] Kennedy-Evers-Gandhi-Malcolm-Martin-[R.F.] Kennedy

after
Bay of Pigs-Civil Rights-Crushing British Empire-UN Crimes Against Humanity-Vietnam Opposition-Manchurian Candidate Assassin Sirhan CIA Conditioned...

now
9-11
and "a new Pearl Harbor" mentioned
in "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
by the Project For a New American Century
that the signatories conveniently find
themselves in the current administration
and their written oblation
was the blueprint for the invasion
that from the grave Saddam admits bluffing, evasive
on weapons of mass destruction
political slight-of-hand
to confound his arch nemesis Iran...

Martin Luther King stated "either nonviolence or nonexistence"
now Guantanamo prisons
citizen's CIA renditions
to rogue countries not bound
to democracy
or "quaint" Geneva Conventions

and now,
our leader a bust
found deceptive to US
to orchestrate a slaughter
based on draconian ideologues
and dialogues
with "higher fathers"
in empty rooms
no different
[let's hope not: our destiny]
than his fraternity's "tomb"...

"You know d@&^ well what you are capable of doing..." Michelle Obama TIME article

Some political thoughts in this election cycle -- TGP

Read the article: Link in the title above.

Is it me, or do I detect a "crab mentality" in our senior saints?

The Clinton's did a lot for us in the eight years he was in office. We had a balanced budget WITH a surplus. We all had money in our pockets. Unemployment was 3.1%, so if you couldn't get a job, something was wrong with you.

I admit: I didn't think this contest would get so vitriolic between DEMOCRATS. My strategy was to vote for Barack in the Texas primary. He'd probably come in second and get the nod for Vice President. I did the same for John Edwards back in 2004.

When Toni Morrison spoke of brother Bill as being our first "black president," I'm sure she meant it metaphorically and not necessarily literally (then, there is that nose and the swagger...).

Couple of things to remember:

1. George HW Bush brought up NAFTA and Ross Perot lampooned him (and it) as the "large sucking sound" on the American taxpayer.

2. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law and the "chickens have come home to roost" in the loss of manufacturing jobs and the middle class to cheaper jobs overseas, like China and Mexico. My job was affected: was yours?

3. Under Clinton/Gore draconian laws that incarcerated first-time drug offenders INCREASED the population of African Americans behind bars -- the so-called "war on drugs" is a "war on US!" Read the Thirteenth Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

4. Hillary voted for the Iraq war and appropriations bills to fund this international debacle.

5. Barack is inexperienced (so's W after 8 years of practice: he was a C student after all), and did buy property and accept contributions from a Chicago "slum lord." One of Hillary's contributors is indicted for fraud.

6. It's impossible, I think, to be a "closet Muslim": http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp. That Internet myth has been debunked.

7. We haven't had this chance since Colin (Colon) Powell PUNKED out, backed out of the '96 race, settled for/let himself get screwed into a cabinet position and positioned his legacy to be the one who lied knowingly to the UN before the Iraq war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1302834,00.html.

Don't get me wrong: we were living large in comparison to now. "When the country [financially] has a cold, black people have pneumonia."

However, I find it creepy that two families from the same university -- Yale -- control the White House for, if Hillary gets elected and re-elected, 24 - 28 total years!

Barack is around our age. He saw the things we've seen and to some extent we all experienced hip hop in its infancy -- The Fatback Band and the Sugar Hill Gang -- to it's current state in bearing no resemblance to the original intent. Since Powell, hell since 1776 this is our best shot.

Before Doug Williams, every expert from "Jimmy the Greek" and others explained WHY we couldn't quarterback an NFL team. Now, we've graduated to Michael Vick doing something STUPID with illegal dog fighting and it not smearing us as a people. (I don't feel smeared. He could have bought a racetrack for Greyhounds if he liked dogs so much, but I digress...)

No, he didn't grow up in "the 'hood." Michelle did. She describes herself as a working-class wife whose parents, though never going to college themselves got both of their children to Princeton.

I teach teens in our church ministry and they feel they somehow have to "explain" a black president to their friends. Excuse me: anybody "explaining" W to their conservative friends? Fiscally a disaster; socially inept, "erring on the side of life" (and committing many others), got a photo op for the Terry Schiavo bill, blocked stem cell research (that might HELP him someday), with a conservative 5/4 Supreme Court that hasn't stopped a single, lucrative abortion (makes more money than birthing) but shot their middle fingers at Enron employees and investors trying to recover their 401 (k). "Kenny Boy" got off light in comparison: dead men have no debts. His victims have the rest of their financially uncertain lives.

Yes, they'd have to explain a black president. Beyond NFL or NBA ambitions with odds of 1:50,000 of making it, the White House would suddenly be... a possibility. Obama, like Williams need not be the only one.

I feel our senior saints are reaching to what's comfortable and familiar. I don't argue with them. I listen and I've made up my mind on how I'm voting.

Those are my two cents. Hit me back if you have any thoughts. I'd like a dialogue, even if you don't agree.

I might, repeat MIGHT put it on my blog. I'll contact you before I do and post it "anonymous" per your request. TGP

Re: Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© 15 January 2008, Thom the World Poet, © 18 January 2008, The Griot Poet

BIG BROTHERING
already here-corporate monitoring
for astronauts,airline pilots,firefighters-
where professionalism allows no error margin

CCCTV a fixture in every Mall
wiretaps and surveillance available
for all law enforcement
the question is not use-more abuse

cell phones bred upskirt porn
Chuck Berry toilet cams
privacy violations

yet GOOGL:E EARTH still reveals details
of military installations
and data mining continues in waves
like identity theft

technology compounds ethics
atrocities get documented

like Khymer Rouge killing fields
and Darfur massacres

we find the corpses
ex post facto

the trick of democracy is to allow rights
not violations
DAMOCLES POINTS Jan 15,2008

* * * * *

The freest poet on the planet
Is a terrorist named Osama
Who eschews technology
And presto! Transforms himself into
An Islamic invisible boogie man
That like willow-the-wisp, big foot and UFOs can't be detected,
Yet... we leave cookie crumbs in cyberspace
And our tele-screens give us chase
ATM and credit transactions
Our buying patterns
That is data mined
For junk e- and snail mail
From: (take your pick) Nigerian, Russian, European princes
Loaded with unbelievable fortunes
Or lotteries you've never entered
For which you may claim your "prize"
Just give your: name, address and SSN
And like pastor's naive wives
Get robbed cybernetic blind
Until like Winston Smith we'll have a date
For our place beyond the sun
Festooned with rat-caged masks
In our very own "room 101."

This Butterfly

Dueling poetry between myself, Jason Crowson and Thom the World Poet. © 10 January 2008, TGP

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets..... Definition by TGP

First: a comment from a poet in Australia (friend of Thom)

truly wonderous
needs to be spread - truth everywhere in cyberspace
splashed red on every highway billboard
shouted loud in every sacred boardroom
recited holy chant at bell-ring stock exchange
rapped in cafes on street
prayed from pulpits of churches
instructed solemnly before every high school student
emailed in font 24 flaming gold to every politician
learnt by heart so we may remember
not to forget

pamela mimi ..............rock on

* * * * *

Now, Thom:

this butterfly is 1000 years old
it weighs 40 tons

it will never fly again
like 400 F18A fighter bombers

never scrambled on September 11,2001
a la orders Dick Cheney

it is the new gold standard
(it will never fly again)

it is Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich
excluded from Presidential debates

it is Dien Bien Phu and Gulf of Tonkin
Straits of Hormutz resurrecting

it is saber-rattling,gunboat diplomacy
brinkmanship and Manifest Destiny

it is a New World Odor
spiraling out of control

like an Amero
or 100 dollar oil

like eagle as threatened species
it is weighed down with pasts

it will never fly
a gain.
BROKEN WING PROMISES Jan 10,2008

Next up, Jason:

it is the myth
that american tensions with iran
started in 1979

and not in the 1950s
when we overthrew a democratically elected government
for a british oil company

it is the delusion
that the weapons and training
we are providing to iraq

will not be used
to kill americans

it is the dementia
to not recall

that the man in pakistan
who spread nuclear technology
across the globe
is a free man

(sure maybe he was under house arrest so please forgive my exaggeration; he did get a slap on the wrist)

it is the insanity to believe
that perpetual war
will result in peace

and what to say
about the weapons

imagine if every disgruntled american teenager
had a AK-47

imagine if every pissed off twenty-something
had a surface to air missile

imagine that
and you can understand what it's like
to live in Sierra Leone

imagine that
and you can imagine Thom’s
one-thousand-year-old butterfly
weighing forty tons

it's wings beating down on us
like the memory of Ronald Reagan

January 10, 2007, reply to Thom

Lastly, moi:

Every butterfly starts as a chrysalis
Suspended animation over the river, Styx.
Skull-faced potentates, blood cousins running "against" each other in elections fixed
By Bilderberg conferences from Oosterbeck:

Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
LBJ
Richard M. Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
John Edwards
Barack Obama
The Senate...
The Congress...
CEOs...
Ad Nauseam...

All graduates!

This "gentlemen's club" began
When the rights of man were waived due to over-pigmentation of melanin
And African/Arab/Asian/Persian origins
So, moving 700,000 Arabs off Palestine in '48 to form Israel was of no chagrin...
Pimping the Vietnam war on the Gulf on Tonkin lie - no big!
Overthrowing a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government in Iran the beginning of:

Mullah rulers in Iran,
The Taliban
Osama Bin Laden
Al-Quaeda
9-11

To keep us divided: they hold "elections"
When since 2000 the veil has been lifted to arcane selection
Processes so occult that they coded it in 1 and 0 hieroglyphs
Arguing the "lesser of evils" between Republicans and Democrats
When they are the left and right wings of Moloch

Owl-faced, wings wide to let the innocent
Fall through
As sacrifice: a "Cremation of Care..."

Over the flames consuming the chrysalis
Of our youth's future ...
Birthing instead of a New World Order
A dark, smoldering cinder
That passing starships will find... and no longer remember!

B Movie

From: http://www.gilscottheron.com/lybmovie.html

Humbly - The Griot Poet

Well, the first thing I want to say is…”Mandate my ass!”
Because it seems as though we’ve been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate – or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 3, 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running.

But, oh yeah, I remember. In this year that we have now declared the year from Shogun to Reagan, I remember what I said about Reagan…meant it. Acted like an actor…Hollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We’re all actors in this I suppose.

What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune…the consumer has got to dance. That’s the way it is. We used to be a producer – very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the 3rd World. They have bought the 2nd World and put a firm down payment on the 1st one. Controlling your resources will control your world. This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don’t know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy - of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain’t nothing but the name of an airport now.

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can – even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment – someone always came to save America at the last moment – especially in “B” movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan – and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at – like a “B” movie.

Come with us back to those inglorious days when heroes weren’t zeros. Before fair was square. When the cavalry came straight away and all-American men were like Hemingway to the days of the wondrous “B” movie. The producer underwritten by all the millionaires necessary will be Casper “The Defensive” Weinberger – no more animated choice is available. The director will be Attila the Haig, running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge. The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum. The screenplay will be adapted from the book called “Voodoo Economics” by George “Papa Doc” Bush. Music by the “Village People” the very military "Macho Man."

“Company!!!”
“Macho, macho man!”
“ Two-three-four.”
“ He likes to be – well, you get the point.”
“Huuut! Your left! Your left! Your left…right, left, right, left, right…!”

A theme song for saber-rallying and selling wars door-to-door. Remember, we’re looking for the closest thing we can find to John Wayne. Clichés abound like kangaroos – courtesy of some spaced out Marlin Perkins, a Reagan contemporary. Clichés like, “itchy trigger finger” and “tall in the saddle” and “riding off or on into the sunset.” Clichés like, “Get off of my planet by sundown!” More so than clichés like, “he died with his boots on.” Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo’s substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece – a miracle – a cotton-candy politician…Presto! Macho!

“Macho, macho man!”

Put your orders in America. And quick as Kodak your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the dupe - cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia - remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley “God-damn” Do-Right?

“You go give them liberals hell Ronnie.” That was the mandate. To the new “Captain Bly” on the new ship of fools. It was doubtlessly based on his chameleon performance of the past - as a liberal democrat – as the head of the Studio Actor’s Guild. When other celluloid saviors were cringing in terror from McCarthy – Ron stood tall. It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from “Bonzo” to Birch idol…born again. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights…it’s all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it…first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.

Nostalgia, that’s what we want…the good ol’ days…when we gave’em hell. When the buck stopped somewhere and you could still buy something with it. To a time when movies were in black and white – and so was everything else. Even if we go back to the campaign trail, before six-gun Ron shot off his face and developed hoof-in-mouth. Before the free press went down before full-court press. And were reluctant to review the menu because they knew the only thing available was – Crow.

Lon Chaney, our man of a thousand faces - no match for Ron. Doug Henning does the make-up - special effects from Grecian Formula 16 and Crazy Glue. Transportation furnished by the David Rockefeller of Remote Control Company. Their slogan is, “Why wait for 1984? You can panic now...and avoid the rush.”

So much for the good news…

As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation. And here’s a look at the closing numbers – racism’s up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot - the House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce – and common sense is at an all-time low with heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever and now no one is looking because, we’re starring in a “B” movie. And we would rather have John Wayne…we would rather have John Wayne.

"You don’t need to be in no hurry.
You ain’t never really got to worry.
And you don’t need to check on how you feel.
Just keep repeating that none of this is real.
And if you’re sensing, that something’s wrong,
Well just remember, that it won’t be too long
Before the director cuts the scene…yea."

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”

[Refrain repeated about 25 times or more in an apocalyptic crescendo with a military cadence.]

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”

Message To The Messengers

We all struggle with inner demons, and Gil Scott-Heron is no different.

Before we called it "spoken word poetry," Langston Hughes toured the south and Historically Black Colleges and Universities with a jazz band in tow. He influenced Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets... and they influenced me.

Thus, this gives homage to a great voice: witty, funny, political, angry, intellectual and poignant. May we all wax this brilliant when we write.

The Griot Poet


* * * * * * * *

Gil Scott-Heron
From: http://sbacari.tripod.com/poetry/msgtomsgrs.htm

"...Be sure you know the real deal about past situations,
and ain't just repeatin' what you heard on the local t.v. stations.
Sometimes they tell lies and put 'em in a truthful disguise.
But the truth is, that's why we said it wouldn't be televised.
They don't know what to say to our young folk, but they know that you do.
And if they really knew the truth, why would they tell you???!!!
The first sign is "Peace." Tell all them gun-totin' young brothers
that the 'man' is glad to see us out there killin' one another!!!
We raised too much hell, when they was shootin' us down,
So they...started poisoning our mind and tried to jerk us all around.
And then they tell us they gotta come in and control our situation.
They want half of us on dope and the other half in incarceration.
If the ones they want dead ain't killed by what they've instigated,
They can...put some dope on the brother's body and claim it was...
"drug-related."
Tell 'em "drug-related" means there don't need to be no investigation,
Or at least that's the way they gone play it...on the local t.v. station.
All you 9mm brothers, give 'em somethin' to think about...
Tell 'em you heard that this is the "New Word,"
They gotta work that stuff out!!!
But somehow they feelin' the wrong way with a gun in they hands.
They feelin' real independent but they just pullin' contracts for 'the man.'
They will tell you it's hopeless out there on the avenue,
But if they really knew the truth, why would they tell you???
And if they look at you like you insane,
And they...start calling you "Scarecrow" and say you ain't got no brain
Or start...tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that...white folks have finally co-opted your game,
Or worst yet, implyin' that you really don't know,
That's the same thang they said 'bout us...a long time ago.
Young rappers, one more suggestion, before I get outta your way.
I appreciate the respect you give to me and what you've got to say.
I'm sayin' "Protect your community and spread that respect around."
Tell brothers and sisters they gotta calm that bullshit down,
Cuz we terrorizin' our old folks, and we've brought fear into our homes,
And they ain't gotta hang out with the senior citizens,
Just tell 'em, "Dammit, leave the old folks alone!!!"
And we know who rippin' off the neighborhoods.
Tell 'em that B.S. has gotsta stop.
Tell 'em you sorry that they can't handle it out there, but they gotta
take the crime off the block!!!
And if they look at you like they think you insane,
Or start calling you "Scarecrow," thinkin' you ain't got no brain,
Or...start tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that...white folks have suddenly co-opted your game,
Or worst yet, sayin' that you really don't know,
That's the same thang they said 'bout me a long time ago.
And if they tell folks that you've finally lost your nerve
That's the same thang they said 'bout us, when we said, "Johannesburg!!!"

But I think you young folks need to know that...things don't go both ways.
You can't talk respect on every other song or just every other day.
What I'm speakin' on now is the raps about the women folks:
On one song, she's your African Queen and on the next one, she a joke.
And you ain't said no words that I haven't heard, but that ain't no
complement.
It only insults 8 people out of 10 and questions your intelligence.
Four letter words or fours syllable words won't make you a poet,
It will only magnify how shallow you are and let ev'rybody know it.
And if they look at you like they think you're insane,
Or they call you "Scarecrow," thinkin' you ain't got no brain,
Or...start tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that the white folks have finally co-opted your game,
Or you really don't know. They said that 'bout me a long time ago.
If they finally start tellin people that you've lost your nerve
That's what they said 'bout Johannesburg!!!
You ain't insane...you have got a brain...you haven't gone lame...you
have got your game!!!
Remember: KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE
NERVE...WE'RE TALKIN' 'BOUT P.E.A.C.E.!!!"

Essay Addressing Ignorance

This is an essay in response to the comments seen on an AOL posting of the same story in the link above. It just seems convenient (to me) that an investigation of Mr. Sharpton comes at a time of a focus on Jena, Louisiana and the lack of prosecution of cases by the Justice Department of this administration. It is also convenient that it happens, just as Mr. Sharpton observes, at the beginning of the '08 election cycle. Such an investigation could inevitably find something or nothing well after January of 2009, post the election cycle and past any efficacy or civil activism Mr. Sharpton could affect.

© 13 December 2007, The Griot Poet

* * * * * * *

With gem and witty comments like these:

“If stupid black people could reelectede that dem idiot...”

“What does this man do for a living....besides making money keeping racial prejudice alive and in the news????”

“IT'S ABOUT TIME HE GET HIS DUE!!!!!”

It speaks volumes to the superiority of the American educational system. Commenting on the comments:

(I assume he meant “reelect” and either “them” or “democrat.”)

(The answer to keeping racial prejudice out of the news is real American education on real American history.)

(No comment. Just absolutely none I can think of.)

I’m neither a supporter nor an enemy of Mr. Sharpton. But it is patronizing and condescending for some to think of them selves as intelligent enough outside of a group to pick its leaders. Did your parents have the right to pick Gandhi for the Indians?

Exactly what makes you the “experts” on the leaders Black Americans pick for themselves? Conservatives will pick Justice Clarence Thomas or Mr. Shelby Steele to represent their views, the other ninety percent will probably pick Mr. Sharpton or Mr. Jackson.

What defines the experiences of African Americans in this country is a matter of perspective, and I’m afraid yours is blinded by a culture that looks at others through rose-colored glasses, nurtured and pandered by myopic talk show hosts that don’t utilize the rules of investigative journalism because at their own admission, they are not journalists. They are mouthpieces that parrot talking points given to shock and boost ratings pandering to the worst motivations in an audience. You are deserving of the title “ditto heads,” because repetition of the nonsensical is the talent of tropical avian and ventriloquist mannequins, not critically thinking, and rational adults.

Instead of pandering to the xenophobic racist right, try to MAKE AMERICA BETTER and as good as its promise in the Constitution for ALL people(courtesy of Mr. Tavis Smiley, phi nu pi).

Then you will see Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson retire because there will be no more incidents like Jasper, Texas (James Byrd dragging death); Amadou Diallo (41 shots); Sean Bell (23, killed after a bachelor’s party the night before his wedding); Khiel Coppin (NY police fired a hail of 20 bullets, hitting Mr. Coppin 8 times); Jena, Louisiana and nooses in trees to fight!

Instant Writing #39

A piece created between myself and my publisher...

© 7 December 2007, The Griot Poet

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets..... Definition by TGP

No keyboard before me on which to type
my words get punched into the night
by the vibration of sound and
I recite verse free from
the incarceration of time,
meter, measure, rhyme,
my message is louder
than Strunk's hold
on grammar ... so you hear it,
no matter what I say ... and
my speech gets spoken
even though it's unwritten,
I need neither writers
nor politicians to compose
thoughts for me ... my
vocabulary merges with meaning
until deserving sentences write
themselves ... and no editor
dare omit a word ...
least they be found guilty of
treason against
the law of poetry.

The court is now in session,
formality makes indiscretion
obsolete ... as we ...
kneel, bow, and pray
to congressional hymns
that have sown their way
into our traditions ...

"Oh say does that star spangled banner
yet waive ...?"

Chinese slaves built America's railroads
and many of them are buried today
beneath the tracks
over which our passenger trains run [past]
like clockwork ...

our prison is made by a system of bars
called minutes ... and these are forged of neither steel,
nor mortar, but confining still---each believer
behind bars of their own private cell
called: freewill ...

it's an open campus penitentiary
where slaves study the subject of servitude
and every student makes the grade ...
or gets forced to repeat the lesson
until they can recite the lie
verbatim
in unison
with the masses ...

we are new and improved slaves
and our chains are made of
zero's and one's ...
classism is the new bondage
and I am ...

prisoner number 310-02-6624
reporting for mass ...

holy father ... forgive my trespasses
and make all my gas receipts
tax deductible ... least my enterprise
show a profit and I be made liable
to pay for my freedom ...

see ...

a 13% tax caused the Boston Tea Party,
yet, we pay 38% today
and are more than willing to keep our mouths shut
just to keep from being
audited by the IRS ...
which is about as federal
as Federal Express,
by the way,
the IMF has funded
BOTH sides of every
WORLD WAR
and these are the same people
from which we borrow the funds
to buy our homes ...

and I don't want to know anything more ...
and neither do you ...

because it's hard to hear that Prescott Bush
funded Adolf Hitler ... and it's difficult to swallow
the concept of multi-national obfuscation ...

but let us look on the bright side ...

at least most people don't know
obfuscation means.

* * * * *

The words you type ring clear,
Yet, truth is not what we want to hear...
"Truthiness" is the metaphor
Coined by those who obfuscate/confuse by
Their own forked tongues "creating their own realities"
And openly despise the "reality-based community"
That don't cooperate on their tripped-out fantasies
Of PNAC/Pax Americana world domination conspiracy theories...
I use the forward slash to define/educate
those that don't know the meaning...

No pole left or right
Will vote to cut Campaign Finance
from the true masters of the dance
we call "elections"...
The elite in each country throughout time, given reflection
Loath democracy
And give us the hypocrisy
Of rigged elections, writer's strikes,
Prima Dona divas like
Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie and Brittani Spears
To entertain our eyes/misdirect our ears/snowball us
As the US
With the stroke of a pen
Becomes the North American Union
(from the former US, Canada and Mexico)
And the numbing, dumbing drone
Of the obvious oxymoron’s:
So-called "Reality TV" and "fair and balanced news..."

Not that I advocate this,
But famous suicides are rampant:
Cho-Seung Hui, Megan Meier, and Robert A. Hawkins
Of the Virginia Tech Massacre, Myspace teen suicide and Omaha mall shootings respectively

While some of us in the "reality-based community" write
Fighting with pens and electrons in cyberspace
Those without expression or voice choose to check out of this place
And in their quiet or violent passage
Point to the hypocrisy, lies and disasters
Building empires from former democracies make!

ILLEGAL POETRY

© 7 December 2007, The Griot Poet

Sparked from an e-mail from Thom the World Poet...

Commentary:

Her poetry is a little rough, but no more nihilistic than any metal-head-rocker-cum-now-Republican-family-values-proponent.

The slippery slope gets slicker: the definitions of illegal poetry will get lower and lower. I won't have to illustrate a violent act - just opposition to a government policy, or a You Tube video someone doesn't like may get us all "renditioned."

Haiku:

to my distress, I
confess: I am guilty of
thoughtcrime - freedom dreams!

coming soon: Dept of Homeland Security, Poetry Abatement Division (Gene Elders, original e-mail comment)

"I'll be famous"

In "Question Mark" and "Ishmael’s Axe" I accounted for the sordid tale of Cho-Seung Hui and the Virginia Tech shooting. It is poetry most writers would not like to record.

Megan Meier thought that "Josh" loved her. The figment of a neighboring mother's imagination broke up with her and resulted in a sweet girl’s suicide.

Now we have Robert A. Hawkins in what is now the Omaha Mall shooting at the Westroads Mall: nine dead, including Robert and five injured at last count.

I'm old enough to remember when CNN debuted in 1980. Prior to that, HBO had limited showings and television shut down (the "snow" screen in the scene of the movie "Poltergeist") around 11 PM. If you were an insomniac, you REALLY had to work at it.

Not to say there weren't shootings: the UT tower incident in the '60s comes to mind. However, with 24-hour news and the Internet on which you read this commentary, becoming "famous" can happen in nanoseconds at near light speed with the voracious need for copy by the media.

Ironically, "Robert" means "bright and shining fame." I wonder if he knew this when he wrote "I'll be famous" in his suicide note?

In 2004, Nebraska ranked 41 out of 50 states in the rate of suicides recorded: 166 deaths reported in the state at a rate of 9.5. I'm getting this from www.suicidolgy.org.

From the CNN article linked above, his landlord paraphrased: "He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."

Mental health in this country is a phobia, a cousin in the attic no one wants to discuss. We've all got our issues, and they can be exacerbated by the economy, social situations and most importantly, lack of treatment.

It would seem silly if someone broke an arm or the femur in their legs and tried to "play it off" as if nothing hurts. Mind you, I've had my share of hairline fractures as a martial artist that I did the same thing with, but as I get older I'm a little more cautious and check out everything, EVERYTHING with my doctor.

When will we have this attitude about mental health?

Could crime rates be the result of desperate people finding themselves in desperate situations where nefarious criminal activity makes "sense" in warped minds?

Would their be a decrease in wars if we had clear-minded leaders that steered their countries towards peace and alternate energy sources so we're not beholding to despots and dictators to drive our SUVs, pay $3 in gas and turn on a light bulb?

If you were expecting poetry, I've already done it in "Question Mark" and "Ishmael’s Axe."

Sometimes I don't want to be brilliant in tragedy. I want tragedy to spur ACTION that will change or prevent such events becoming more frequent. I write because "I am involved [with] mankind," and I am concerned.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Those lines are John Donne’s From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions."

My prayers to all Ishmaels before their cry for help makes them "famous."

The Griot Poet

Letter to Riley Ann Sawyers (Baby Grace)

© 29 November 2007, The Griot Poet

“Twinkle, twinkle little star…”

Song of Mozart from ages afar

You who were so innocent and true

Stolen from us by one whom

Your mother met

On the Internet

That with its freedoms makes us all act a bit like we’re two…

When we didn’t know a name for your beautiful face

We for a time called you “Baby Grace”

And every parent clutched their kids tighter

And determined to make their lives brighter

To count to ten

Before dispensing discipline

And be bread unleavened

When we receive our own packages from Heaven

Which is where we know now you are – “Twinkle, twinkle little star!”

Some fun on Amazon.com

Posting:

Travis Miller says:
While I appreciate your eloquent viewpoint and applaud you for overcoming adversity in your life, I have to ask, did you read this book? If not, I'm not sure why you chose the forum of a "book review" to express your opinions. Oh, and why is it that no one seems to mind the obvious playing of the "race card" by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as they seek to line their own pockets at the expense of the black community at large?

-------- ------- says:
Hello Mr.Travis Miller,

I don't buy their books either. I prefer to read widely from a variety of sources and form my own opinions.

My point was simply Dr. Hill is in his past. If he is truly not guilty of the harassment he was accused of (I recall his confirmation, and was initially in his corner), then his memoir should stand on its own merits without resorting to personal attacks. At most, she should be a footnote if any mention at all. Such a tactic is sophomoric, and in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the office of a Supreme Court Justice.

Black Americans don't need "leadership" or the media-ordained leaders like Reverends Jackson and Sharpton on the left or Justice Thomas on the right.

Since the assassination of Dr. King, some in the media have tried to replace him and others have exploited his (quite human) life to their own ends.

Dr. King, with all his accomplishments and personal flaws was not the movement: young people like the Greensboro Four from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University that galvanized the tactic of sit-ins across the nation; young people that are immortalized in documented images of fire hoses, dogs, police beatings, marches and mass arrests; young people like my older sister, my wife's aunt and their friends, they were the movement. Dr. King was the focal point and came under critic from the far left and extreme right almost simultaneously, especially after his stance against the Vietnam War. Malcolm X spoke of him derisively until near the end of his life and mission.

We, like all Americans need to accept responsibility for our futures. A Constitutional Democracy is a participatory exercise. Demagoguery only gets in the way.

I thank you for your candor and your gracious reply as far as my background.

PARADIGM SHIFT

© 16 August 2007, Thom the World Poet; © 5 September 2007, The Griot Poet

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

As soon as you change-everything else does
The idea of democracy as rough as ostracon
Pentagon military values override civilian infrastructure budget
Where you put your energies is where you get results
Voting machines programmed result elections
Candidates who represent only their monied interests
Daddy President Paterfamilias of fractious families
Corporate Plunderers buying expensive lawyers
Economic playground riches only for the rich
Millionaires buy from billionaires
Invisible poor in privitized prisons
Embourgoisement executive highrise condominia
Military SUV truck Humvees mercenaries
25 million illegals voting via Western Union
Border Patrol bribed for cocaine gangs
Invasive strikes casualty listings
Role reversal Manifest Destiny Gunboat Diplomacy
Wars to endless Wars.Budget deficit
who speaks of the obvious?Withdraw now!
One World Government for Iraq,Palestine,Afghanistan
Puppets dance for dollars .Yen for yuan.Chinese water torture.
Tibet.Mongolia.Taiwan.Olympic Gamers
Tiemannen Celebrity Squares.Protesters freed
to change the dominant hegemony-first you have to....
WORKATWHATYOUWANT! August 16,2007

* * * * * * *

We become the nightmare of
Eric Blair
We become death - "the shatterer of worlds"
We become the prophesy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad-Gita
Our military, according to Harper's Magazine, a politicized mouthpiece
Of a predominant, militant party
Of born-again militarist
Who would crucify Christ afresh given the chance
For His stance against the first Caesarian Empire...

Nukes flown over our heads for three hours by B52 air transports -- for what...?
Don't worry; it's not to harm us -- then, who?

We've allowed a mafia family to subordinate the Constitution
The resolution - Impeachment, mentioned 6 times not pursued
The resolve of elected officials: don't screw up before retirement!
Conspiring for $130,000.00 guaranteed pensions
Even Lewis Craig can pursue.

When you allow a crime family into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Strange days, myriad ways of wonder-working Sith Lord control
over every means of lazy information: corporate-controlled news
For Laissez-faire politicos and misinformation "Swift Boat" crews...

It's no wonder they wish to bar access to the Internet
Information is power: and we have it in our keyboards
But don't just sit on your political ASSets
Go to poetry venues,
Forward THIS
And DO (VOTE).

The Problem with POWER

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© August 16, 2007, Thom the World Poet

The problem with power
Is that no one in their right mind
Wants nor needs power over others.
O we do not want them to violate our rights
Steal our property or diminish our lives
And we especially do not want bullies to attack
That is why we hire our own bullies-police/military
In a pre-emptive war upon violence
The problem is that our allies attack us
The conundrum is that they confuse themselves with law
They think THEY hold the power!
Have you ever been interrogated by an arrogant functionary?
Control over others' lives is not self-control
It is an invasion/an occupation
Like when the CIA/NSA spy satellites are used
Against our own citizens
And civil liberties are shredded in the name of "Terrorism"
And fear rules, and all rules are broken
By this simple mistake-
Confusing functionaries and agents
As the source of power… You are
And always will be in charge of your life
You are individually responsible for your actions
Every tenet of law and democracy is predicated upon this premise
Which has been violated almost to perdition
Power abuse has led to corporate and political and economic corruption
Just like Rome. Just like Athens. Our ancestors
Had to defend the same values we espouse
Via wars of liberation… Tyrants assume no one will oppose them
Which leads us back to the same question-
If we do not claim our own powers
Someone else will always steal them...
FIX IT! August 16,2007

© 18 August 2007, The Griot Poet

ENRON...
WORLDCOMM...
TYCO...
Afghanistan -- the Taliban OFFERED Osama!
Iraq -- with no WMD found under Bush's desk...
Guantanamo...
The so-called equal branch "formally-known-as" Congress...
The US (In) Justice Department...

And now, in our own back yard
Michael Dell
Faces an S-E-C hell
Of how 17 business quarters of sales... did not exist!

Erikah Badue would say: Oh, sh--! “You better call Tyrone…”

Power players are like actors and prostitutes
Imbued with political nymphomania
Empowered by an apathetic electorate
More sympathetic and involved
If their own American Idol dolls

Paris, Nicole, Brittany and Lindsay
Do a little deserved jail time for acting a FOOL in public!

Feeding on the paparazzi of flash bulbs and notice...

No one in their right mind wants power over others
Because managing one's own life is responsibility enough
Most of those in office would FLUNK the DSM-IV test for mental health,
Like most multinational corporations that have way too much influence on our elections... do.

That doesn’t note the video quote on CNN of two lionesses hunting calves versus an entire herd of water buffalo:

There IS strength in numbers!
(Any wonder why we fail?)

We are the numbers
That can make a difference:

WRITE your Senator, Congressman or Woman: even if you didn't VOTE for them!
Show up at public events, poetry readings
Because if you don't
K-Street lobbyists and green money is the only thing your representatives see.

Don't follow the sick twisted examples of Eddie Murphy and Brian McKnight: VOTE!

Rosa Parks and Dr. King gave their lives
So these FOOLS could make a million dollars
Pimping you on CDs, Broadway and the national box offices
And, any man that jumps from being married to a supermodel to divorcing same, a controversy with a transvestite
To an out-of-wedlock baby by "Scary Spice"
Meanwhile getting engaged to the ex-wife of Baby Face...
Is NOT playing with a full deck!

YOU are that herd of water buffalo to stop a train wreck
Led by the lionesses Bushwhack and Dick that their own parties just don't get
Yet
Cowardice and the spice of political office
That pays FULL retirement pensions
To convicted felons

Is the only thing
Keeping them from doing ANYTHING
To your benefit…

Stop looking
For Avatars
From Krypton
With big red S's on their chests...
YOU are that herd of water buffalo to stop a train wreck
Of democracy fleeing the shores of its modern birth
To become the formerly-known-as United States

Descended into the oxy moronic
Charging headlong, powered by apathy
At hypersonic speeds...

To a FASCIST state!

A tepid response...

Dear ------- :



Thank you for taking the time to write me with your support for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. As your elected representative to the U.S. Congress, I appreciate you for giving me the opportunity to comment on this issue.



As you may know, the impeachment process originates in the House of Representatives. This process is used to ensure the legal and ethical behavior of members of the Executive and Judicial branches of the federal government. At this time, I do not believe impeachment proceedings of President Bush and Vice President Cheney are warranted. I support our President and the administration in their actions to defend and support our nation. Should this matter come before the House of Representatives, I will pay attention to the proceedings and move forward with the best interest of our nation in mind.



Again, I thank you for contacting me on these important issues. Please contact me again if I can be of further assistance.


Sincerely,

John Carter
Member of Congress

For more information on what I am doing in Congress, please visit my website at http://www.house.gov/carter. If you would like a weekly update, you may also sign up to receive my newsletter while youre there.

28301-016

© 10 July 2007, The Griot Poet


“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six.” Rev 13: 18

* “Scooter Libby, AKA Federal Inmate No. 28301-016, walks free” …

And so does scoot our civil liberties out the door, out the window and the belief in a society where “no man (or woman) is above the law”…

The country guffawed when a black man named OJ Simpson – no matter which side of the debate you fall – found his color no liability since his ability to pay 10 million to my Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother, Johnny Cochran to set him free…

And Paris Hilton had no drinking problem – despite driving on a suspended license due to DUI

Had no drug problem – despite her face and verbal admittance to smoking pot plastered on thesmokinggun.com…

She HAS no street creds, whining and crying through 23 thousand dollar days of expensive, sequestered silence, despite all those self-defense and karate lessons daddy had to pay for, cringed from testing her skill accreditation when the thought of being amongst the “common” women’s prison population…

In ONE breath blaming it all on claustrophobia and ADD! Oh, please!

OJ, Paris, Scooter Libby…

G-R-E-E-N is the only color the blind goddess of justice sees…

So we have the Jena six, who after nooses hung in the “white tree,” retaliatory beat downs because the clowns in the school administration did NOTHING to diffuse the situation – racist taunts and threats by the DA to “sign away their lives with the stroke of a pen” face “attempted murder charges, and assault by…. ‘Tennis shoe’” and multiple, consecutive, immoral sentences…

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307B.shtml

Mychal Bell faces a hell of 22 years in prison,

Five of his friends await similar charges on second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

On a case that most likely, since blacks are less than 20 percent of the population of Jena, Louisiana will get argued before… The Supreme Court!

Like the saviors these kids need are Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia and Uncle Clarence Thomas!

And I retort:

* “Scooter Libby, AKA Federal Inmate No. 28301-016, walks free” …

And so does scoot our civil liberties out the door, out the window and the belief in a society where “no man (or woman) is above the law”…

I’ll believe Paris’ change from party girl to charity when I see Scooter spill the beans on the neocon primates Bush and Cheney with an intact 5th Amendment in his back pocket, while they run out the appeals’ clock to January 20, 2009!

Essay - Impeachment: NOW!

I must insist that impeachment CANNOT be off the table!

What happened 7/2/2007 with Mr. Libby's commuted sentence is example of a White House and Executive Branch that thinks itself above the US constitution and the law. We have a Vice President that is conveniently a part of his OWN branch of government -- the US of Cheney -- when giving over documents to the National Archives is "inconvenient" to him.

In TheHill.com 7/2/2007, "Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told Vice President Dick Cheney to 'resign or face impeachment' Thursday night as three more House Democrats lent their support to a plan to impeach the vice president."

Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson was responsible for interdicting Weapons of Mass Destruction [I believe we have a 'Global War on Terror,' so it might be important]. Her cover and the networks set up by Brewster Jennings cannot be recovered and information we could now KNOW about Iran cannot be gathered. If that is not a "high crime and misdemeanor" I don't know what is.

Greater than 3,500 American lives, men and women, mothers, fathers, daughters and sons have been wasted for a lie based on Weapons of Mass Destruction that NEVER existed, that only exist now in the President's, Vice President's and Ann Coulter's deluded minds!

This pardon makes me wonder if we will remain a democratic republic, or slide the propagandized, slick road to a fascist dictatorship.

In Free Speech (for NOW),

The Griot Poet, © 3 July 2007

WHO ARE THE INSURGENTS?

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© 25 June 2007, The Griot Poet

From an e-mail exchange between myself and Thom the World Poet:

THE USE AND ABUSE
of words,civilians,prisoners,concepts-
"friendly fire",plausible deniability","free fire zone"
"collateral damage"-we forget Somalia,Vietnam,Lebanon
were withdrawals and defeats
where values military met resistance effective
when the popular will -with a "surge" of WONT!
rose up against occupiers and invaders
much as we rose up against unfair taxes
to seek to create a better state
their wish for Islam need be honored...
Fundamentalist Taliban (now called TERRORISTS)
were once our allies in Afghanistan against secular Russians
Military dictators in Pakistan our allies against Islam
Church and State once so separate-now called the Church of England
Prayer Meetings in the White House
Bornagains vetted via interviews-to distill ideological purity
We are what our forefathers fought against!
Torture,bombings,assassinations-these are terrorist tools
We are the NUMBER ONE arms dealer in the world
All we need to do is realize-that finger pointing at others
is a mirror of our true intentions...
QUESTION EVERYTHING! June 25,2007

To Vice President "Dick" Cheney.

Dear Troglodyte:

"On June 21, 2007, it was reported that Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted that the Office of the Vice President is not an exclusive part of the executive branch of the US government (he is also the President of the U.S. Senate), and thus is not bound by presidential orders governing the protection of classified information. The White House has confirmed that Executive Orders governing the protection of classified information exclude both the President and Vice President."

According to the Twelfth Amendment, the Electoral College you gerry-rigged in 2000 selected you as President (the other dumb-looking one too).

Albeit with suspicious slight-of-political-hand: caging lists for innocent African Americans that
Obviously weren't going to cast their votes for YOU...

You canned your Texas residency to run along side of Dubya
As his "Dark Lord of Vice" candidate,

Changing to your original state of Wyoming -- who both conveniently enjoy the LOWEST gas prices at the pump in the country!

Now you have Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) conveniently calling for the latest "new-new" direction,
Along with other Sith (=Shit?) Lords from the Dark Side of the political force,
A deflection from their president's and "Dark Lord of Vice's" ineptitude at geopolitics!

The true terrorists reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
A rogue state we've become after an electoral coup,
Our standard of living down, jobs outsourced and deficits up
As Paris Hilton and her billionaire neighbors get richer from the reverse of David Stockton's REAL formula that should be called:

Trickle up!

Putting up puppet third-party candidates to drain votes from the lesser of two evils

(Perot = Nader = Bloomberg),

When the job should go to the most qualified to lead us through
The gray areas of diverse cultures; the danger of sadistic vultures
That despite party, gender or race of our leaders
Want us to bow down to their deities and Sharia laws
That call for our obedience... or non-existence.

But bombing them back to the stone age is NOT the answer, O'Reilly!
Blowback is the only guarantee of testosterone-driven diplomacy.
Gore Vidal would say "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace"
In an updated Orwellian prophecy
Yet, this is not VHS, blue disk or DVD
Which we can pause and go to the loo to relieve our bladders...

DEMOCRACY MATTERS!!!
This is the reality
That only impeachment can remedy

Starting with the "Dark-Vice-Lord-Troglodyte"

I let this piece end with a lascivious, humorous clue:

Dick Cheney,
Before he [continues] to Dick YOU!

"And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs [come] out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet (A.K.A. Dick Cheney)" Rev 16:13