We Can't...

 

Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas, David Frum, The Atlantic

© May 24, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

“Schools scared to death.

The truth is, one education under desks,

Stooped low from bullets;

That plunge when we ask

Where our children

Shall live

& how

& if”

Amanda Gorman, Inaugural Poet’s tweet

 

I just got back from my granddaughter’s dance recital,

She did what looked like the funky chicken to “Here Comes the Sun,”

In Austin, Texas,

It was innocent, uplifting, and precious.

 

Eighty-five miles outside of San Antonio,

Nineteen kids and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Texas,

 

Senator Chris Murphy is full of PTSD from Sandy Hook,

“Cancun Cruz” tweets “thoughts and prayers” and arm more teachers,

Uvalde has the greeting “Bienevidos”: welcome,

On the entry sign, the shooter saw,

 

Cancun: how do I protect my granddaughter?

 

Do you [REALLY] want me in your office?

 

Does it have to hit your exclusive Cul de Sac,

Until you [actually] give a shit?

 

Your NAME is Theodore Raphael Cruz, Junior,

You are the child of a Cuban immigrant,

Fleeing Fidel Castro,

Born in Canada,

Qualified to run for office,

Because your mother was a citizen,

(Just like President Obama's),

You’re just as brown as those babies in Uvalde, Texas,

Stop fronting; you brown Anglo-Saxon!

 

They have guns in Canada,

But no mass shootings ten days apart,

Seventy percent of licensed gun owners,

Are a-okay with stricter background checks,

 

You’re a sadomasochist,

If your instinctive reaction,

Is to quote gun industry talking points,

Shrug, and go to your next fundraiser,

 

This ghoul-ism should have stopped with Columbine,

 

America is a death cult,

The only thing exceptional is its willingness,

To stomach a high body count,

 

My grandbaby was born into a pandemic,

She has masks fashion-coordinated,

When she gets to elementary school,

She’s going to be introduced

To active shooter drills,

 

Like Chris Murphy,

Spare me your bullshit,

About mental illness,

 

Like Coach Steve Kerr,

HR8 for background checks was passed by the House TWO YEARS ago,

Held up by Moscow Mitch and the antebellum filibuster,

 

We’re eleven people from universal background checks,

The only checks Republicans care about are from Smith and Wesson,

We have liability insurance to drive automobiles,

Why not for the idiots who need an arsenal of semiautomatics?

 

This shooting is the WORST In Texas history.

The NRA: not responsible anytime - are having a meeting,

May 27, Friday in Houston, Texas,

Cancer Cruz will probably give a keynote address,

Cornyn has a “scheduling conflict.”

 

We are the antithesis of John Donne’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls,”

We’re not “a piece of the harbor,”

“A part of the main,”

We’re an island among similar industrialized nations,

The number one way for a child to die in America is by gunfire,

We’re utterly alone.

 

El Paso, Waco, the UT sniper,

Twenty-six angels in Sandy Hook,

Now, angels have taken flight in Uvalde, Texas,

Texas passed a bill so that ANYONE can walk around with a gun,

Without training or licensure,

You need training wheels to ride a bike,

A learner’s permit to get behind a steering wheel,

Texas LAW enforcement was against this,

31,000 that would have been caught with a background check,

Freeing psychopaths to arm themselves,

Gregg Abbott still passed it.

You can’t pass up a chance to “own the libs,”

A fresh check from the NRA hot in his pocket,

No chance of duck and cover at the Governor’s mansion,

Or Cancun Cruz’s Cul de Sac,

 

We can’t keep doing this!

 

I don’t need your throwaway “thoughts and prayers” bullshit,

We’re not going to be a functional society,

When there are NO safe places for humans to be in,

See how “free market capitalism” works then!

The Assault Weapons ban from 1995 to 2005,

It was allowed to EXPIRE

By George W. Bush,

Bloodbath payback to the gun lobby,

Australia solved the issue in Port Arthur in 1996,

And haven’t had a mass shooting since,

 

Other countries were on lockdown during the pandemic,

Other countries have mental health issues,

Other countries were in Zoom classroom meetings,

Other countries have young, impressionable men,

Other countries don’t have this amount of slaughtering,

 

Roe vs. Wade and “right to privacy” is on the chopping block,

 

We have an election in November,

We need a bigger share of sanity in the Senate and Congress,

 

Nancy Pelosi needs a supermajority,

Chuck Schumer needs a 62-38 Senate,

So Manchin, Sinema, and the archaic filibuster are rendered irrelevant,

And we can investigate Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh,

 

We need useless lawmakers, unemployed, and insignificant,

We can’t trust these psychopaths with total power again:

VOTE!

GRT...

 

Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ about Black people jeopardizes democracy for all, Angela R. Pashayan, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

© May 15, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing,

Killing four little girls whose crime

Was being ready to sing a hymnal,

 

A fascist descendant shot up Christchurch, New Zealand,

Because he had issues with Muslims and immigrants,

 

Dozens of young LGBT at Pulse Nightclub,

Living their lives and partying in Florida,

Gunned down like throwaway cannon fodder,

 

Heather Heyer ran over in Charlottesville,

Jews killed in the Tree of Life Synagogue,

Asians killed by a nut job in Atlanta,

Sikhs in their temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin,

Nine souls unsuspectedly showing Christ’s love,

Inadvertently invited their killer to Mother Immanuel,

And, just like the brown-skinned Messiah, Evilgelicals do NOT follow: forgave him!

 

An incel fascist drives NINE hours from Dallas to El Paso, Texas, to kill Hispanics,

 

Now 86-year-old grandmothers can’t get groceries at Tops in Buffalo, New York, minutes from Niagara Falls?

The shooter drove several hours to get to Buffalo,

The shooter was fifteen when he heard “there were fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville,

False comparison between peaceful protestors and Nazis,

 

The UN needs a travel advisory: enter the United States at your own risk!

 

Great replacement theory,

Is utter bullshit,

It’s just the latest Reich Wing fundraising grift,

 

Lies from the Internet cesspool 4Chan parroted,

By the likes of Tucker Carlson and Matt Gaetz,

Complete silence from Republicans in the House and Senate,

If they’re not speaking out, that makes them complicit,

To the violence their stochastic terrorism solicits,

Do you know who else is silent?

Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk,

The owners of Fox Propaganda and Twitter are eerily quiet,

Not a breaking news report or a tweet about the Buffalo, NY Tops grocery shooting,

Because none of the victims LOOK like them!

Biden still has to answer questions about “defunding the police,”

 

Why can’t we ask them about this?

 

Stochastic terrorism (noun): the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted:

The rhetoric of stochastic terrorism influenced the lone-wolf attack.

 

Infantile incels decrying decreasing birth rates,

Failing to invest in charm, cologne, and coitus,

If your ancestors were so concerned about the spread of Melanin,

Why did they sire Mullatto children?

Why did they bother stealing my ancestors from Africa in the first place?

I have had six decades-while-black to get sick of this,

Thrown up against a wall, stopped and frisked,

At fourteen,

By the store detective who refused to believe my innocence,

The KKK threatened my life

A seventeen-year-old teenager with assassination threats,

For the audacity of promoting to JROTC Cadet Colonel,

 

The “gang of Putin” is more concerned about:

 

The Second Amendment (never under threat),

Antifa (which means anti-fascist)

Book banning like American Nazis,

Black Lives Matter (because they [obviously] don’t),

Bloodsucking pedophile sex traffickers operating pizza parlors with no basements,

Josh Hawley’s a little TOO concerned about online child porn for my comfort,

Voter fraud committed by THEM,

“Critical race theory,”

Code for teaching actual American history,

You only teach CRT in law and sociology grad schools,

NOT K-12,

The latest Reich Wing boogie man,

To scare people into not voting in their best interests,

 

I want a class-action lawsuit,

“We the people” of the United States,

Against Fox Propaganda, Tucker Carlson,

Reich Wing media outlets,

And Republicans who parrot it,

They, like Sarah Palin,

And “don’t retreat: RELOAD!” Jared Lee Loughner,

Have blood on their hands for stochastic terrorism,

Bill O’Reilly, “Tiller the baby killer” for a dishonorable mention,

Get Tuck, not his lawyers, in a court under sworn deposition,

Let him PROVE his “evidence” for replacement theory,

The cretin doesn’t have any!

Put a few BILLIONS on the chopping block,

He and Rupert Murdoch will back the fuck down like QAN on election fraud,

I want him DRENCHED in sweat and dread,

Beads tumbling out of his foppish head,

Fumbling for his talking points,

 

For the arts, I charge this:

Comics: make them look like complete idiots!

Musicians: make some viral tunes about it.

Reporters: chase them as they eventually RUN from the interview.

Poets: write some spoken word about it!

 

For Tucker Carlson and republican “lawmakers,”

We need to hammer out Newsweek’s three questions,

Before the November midterm elections:

 

-“Do you believe in the replacement theory?”

-“Do you condemn the replacement theory, or do you support the ideology that has inspired numerous mass terrorists?”

-“If you do condemn it, then why are you and your colleagues repeating it?”

 

And KEEP asking them after it!

Democrats: stop bringing a butter knife to a gunfight!

This is a fight for our democracy,

DEMOLISH them, or [go] fly a kite!

Fascism, like flatulence, has the same remedy,

The best disinfectant for gaslight is sunlight!

VOTE!

Dilemma II...

 

Image source: Ava DeVernay, Twitter

© May 12, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

I have another dilemma:

So-called “sovereign citizens.”

Who stood with Cliven Bundy and his relatives,

Armed against the Bureau of Land Management,

The other acronym for “BLM” before Trayvon Martin,

I’m curious why they’re not up in arms,

About Saudi Arabia’s refusal to pump more oil,

Sending the price of gas soaring,

Sending groceries through the roof,

Sending stocks tumbling,

All because the “House of Saud” has a preference,

To the Republicans in the midterm elections,

We might see unleaded get to $7:00 per gallon,

It’s almost like we don’t have a sovereign democratic republic.

 

Vladimir Putin has cut off oil to Europe,

Particularly Poland,

Waiting out the made for TikTok heroics

Of Zelensky, the EU, NATO, and the US,

Because he’s betting that the inconvenience, stress,

Plus, as a society, we’re attention deficit,

He doesn’t care how many Russian generals,

Or soldiers buy it,

As in, “pushing up daisies,”

It’s still a “special military operation,”

In Ukraine,

Which he doesn’t consider a nation,

By him calling it a war would mean mobilization,

Of Russian conscripts,

Young Russians have gotten the hell out of there,

Fleeing [to] Eastern Europe,

Thus making the median age in eleven time zones equivalent to Fox News,

 

Putin,

The Saudis,

Venezuelans,

The nations of OPEC,

 

Play this game:

They control the world population with

Scarcity,

And the fears that come with that reality,

 

Think about it:

 

Would you stay in a job you didn’t like if we had universal healthcare or paid-for college?

 

Would our groceries be expensive,

If every home and apartment had solar panels?

Could they differentiate neighborhoods based on property values?

Thus de facto re-segregating schools and resources?

How could the grocers

At HEB, Stop n Shop, and Harris Teeter,

Justify the high price of eggs delivered by a battery-operated 18-wheeler piloted by a drone controlled by Alexa or Siri?

 

What if instead of supermarkets,

We had vegetables grown in vertical victory gardens?

 

What if we had corner vegan restaurants and butcher marts?

 

It would reduce the need for Ukraine,

To be the planet’s breadbasket,

A role they’ve had

Since antiquity,

 

Every human society,

Has kings & queens, billionaires, emperors, oligarchs, potentates, and sheiks,

Controlling the levers of commerce,

Where people live,

And what’s said about them,

Mike Bloomberg owns Bloomberg News,

Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook (or whatever “Meta” is),

Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post,

Elon Musk just purchased Twitter,

Rupert Murdoch and a Saudi Sheik

Owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox Propaganda,

 

Putin runs state TV Channel One

RT and Sputnik,

There is profit,

In gaslighting the masses,

Curating reality,

 

Curating what they see,

In 280 characters and “news feeds,”

 

Plantation oligarchs,

Used pamphlets to send

Poor southern peasants [to] fight

The “war of northern aggression,”

They bought the printed gaslighting,

None of those confederate soldiers got anything for their “lost cause,”

Except for missing limbs and PTSD,

 

The plantation oligarchs

Who didn’t fight one INCH,

In the Uncivil War conflict,

They had one last trick up their sleeves:

They got reparations from the US government,

For the “loss of property,”

 

Now they have Reich Wing outlets,

Spewing bile and feces,

On radio, television, and the Internet,

Keeping them jacked up on anger and adrenaline,

Solving nothing in their lives,

And still turns a healthy profit,

 

My ancestors,

Who BUILT this nation

We are STILL waiting on reparations,

The framework of this nation is a caste system,

Ask Isabel Wilkinson,

The Dalets in India,

Jews, Gypsies, intellectuals, and the LGBT by the Nazis,

Who borrowed their insane ideas,

From AMERICAN eugenics,

Fascism is raising its ugly head,

In the 21st Century,

Gene Roddenberry predicted it with Khan Noonian Singh in “Space Seed,”

MAGA is fascism

Fed by

Orange Satan’s version of

Joseph Goebbels “Big Lie,”

IBM sold the Nazis’ accounting machines,

Tattooing numbers at Auschwitz and other death heaps,

Florida privatized the foster care system,

Making bucks on the high occupancies that WILL occur,

After the revoking of “Roe vs. Wade,”

Mimicking for-profit prisons,

For-profit foster children that they do NOT care about,

Except for insane profits,

From Disney to New Auschwitz,

It seems Shakespeare was right:

“What’s past is prologue.”

 

My dilemma,

How long will we let the wealthy pimp us?

When are we going to recognize billionaires and oligarchs as grand theft artists?

 

From Bildeberg to Trilateralists,

Parliament to Congress,

The filibuster in the Senate,

Republicans, either in the majority

Or the minority

Represents 41,549,808 fewer people than Democrats,*

They’ve shown us their kryptonite,

The grand theft artists fear “too much democracy,”

For this midterm,

And EVERY election,

Let’s give it to them:

VOTE!

 

* https://www.vox.com/2020/11/6/21550979/senate-malapportionment-20-million-democrats-republicans-supreme-court

Dilemma I...

Image source: Ava DeVurney, Twitter

 

© January 15, 2021, the Griot Poet

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives:

 

YESTERDAY, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

 

Speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, New York (Transcript)

 

Good evening.

 

Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, and our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.

 

George W. Bush, 9/11 Address to the Nation

 

Go home; we love you.

 

Dumbo Gambino, 1/6/2021

 

The inauguration will be held in a Green Zone,

Not in Afghanistan or Iraq,

But at the nation’s Capitol,

 

Capitol Hill Police assaulted with fire extinguishers and American flags,

I guess “Blue Lives Only Matter,” in contrast to Black,

 

Baghdad on the Potomac,

Concrete barriers and checkpoints,

Reinforced not against Al Qaeda,

But white domestic terrorists,

QANON extremists,

A man arrested with fake press credentials,

Five hundred rounds of ammunition,

Saying, of course, it was: “an honest mistake!”

 

20,000 troops sleeping in the Capitol Rotunda,

Democrats not trusting republicans,

Who they think might kill them,

A toxic work environment on steroids,

National Guards in fifty states mobilized by governors,

The Michigan storming was a dry run,

It started with a tweet to “liberate Michigan,”

This action should have gotten the account suspended,

As was Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s threatened kidnapping, trial, and killing,

As it was running the Biden/Harris Campaign Bus off I-35 in Austin, Texas,

Each coup attempt was answered with impotent silence,

It seems like we’re the fever dreams of a pulp fiction novelist,

 

Or a Master Spy and KGB agent,

Insisting his phone calls have no official government readout of what’s said,

Exploiting the pettiness of his “useful idiot,”

Holding something stronger over him than pee-pee tapes,

Maybe it’s a promise of being an actual billionaire, first-rate,

Not a caricature of the one he played,

Who is now in complete psychotic,

Nuclear meltdown over his future legal fates,

And has the codes to go with it,

 

We are here because the aforementioned KGB agent,

Petitioned his useful orange gremlin,

To steal Orly Tate’s birtherism,

Use it to create a political catechism,

Of nonsensical questions and ludicrous answers,

That astroturfed the Tea Party,

Devolved into QANON,

Dehumanizing fellow Americans into pedophilic cannibals,

Which sounds more like a reality show

Put on by the inmates

At Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane,

 

We are counting down on Facebook,

Holding onto hopes and future dreams,

We need to rethink the wisdom

By putting the power of God and Armageddon,

 

In the hands of a single woman or man,

That can launch [a first] strike in five minutes,

The exchange would come soon after this,

The sobering reality of Mutually Assured Destruction,

It kept our chief executives from contemplating this,

 

Except: we have a subhuman jellyfish,

A spineless, spoiled brat,

A criminal monster and sociopath,

Skipping town is typical for his kind,

Knowing he has little room to maneuver,

Or, options left to what can arguably be called his “mind,”

 

I write this with five days left,

As the human species hangs on a precipice,

Militias and white supremacists,

Chatter about attacking fifty state capitols,

 

December 7, 1941, was the first day of infamy,

The United States emerged supreme in the 1950s,

Germany and Japan in ashes,

Europe, by conventional ordinance,

“Little Boy” and “Fat Man” at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

 

September 11, 2001, the first year of the new century,

We were introduced to the concept of planes as weapons,

We went from walking loved ones to their flights,

To our saying goodbye before metal detectors, body scans, and searches,

 

January 6, 2021,

Captain Crazy Pants told his minions: “come to the Capitol: it will be WILD,” and “we love you; go home,”

After gleefully watching them ransack,

The seat of his own government,

 

After allowing coronavirus to ravage,

His nation’s citizens,

He’s killing at a rate

Of one-point-five 9/11s daily,

Making Osama Bin Laden terrorist second-rate,

 

We’re a nation fearful of our neighbors,

Whether next door or at the Capitol,

We hold onto hopes by our fingernails,

Virtually viewing The Inauguration,

 

The sad part is, we’ve already changed,

We will defeat this pandemic,

But what we knew as “normal” discourse,

I’m afraid without rebuilding the arts, critical thinking, addressing income inequality and police disparity; science, trust, and truth,

 

There’s no going back to it: for real progress, we can’t.

Stare decisis...

Republicans Voting Against Their Own Interests: It's The Hatred, Stupid...Andy Ostroy, Contributor, 2017,  HuffPost

 

© May 3, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

The “Supreme Court” is neither.

 

The arbiters for the “rule of law,”

Have taken Jerry Seinfeld’s philosophy literally,

Reducing jurisprudence to “WHATABOUTISM,”

 

Stare decisis

A Latin term citing legal precedent

Made from previous legal decisions,

 

A leaked draft memo outlining how,

Samuel Alito is poised to gut

Roe vs. Wade in the US and legal territories,

 

He,

Crybaby Kavanaugh,

Neil Gorsuch,

Amy Coney Barrett,

All lied in their confirmation hearings,

 

Susan Collins

“Looks concerned”

And cringes her brow in earnest,

 

Don’t worry:

Not a single white, cisgender woman,

Will lose her right to an abortion,

Won’t the state let her leave and go to another?

No?

A Passport and frequent flyer miles get her to another country,

And back in time for the next PTA meeting,

 

This draft decision is about control,

Of the black, brown, and white bodies of women,

Who can’t afford those luxuries,

Who might have to drop out of college,

As they bare the children of their rapists,

And can’t file for bankruptcy from student loan debt,

 

This decision is about control.

 

It makes an utter myth of working toward a “more perfect Union,”

 

If you can gut a decision like a fish,

Based on “right to privacy” issues,

That should be in the confines of a woman’s

Life, faith, and decisions,

 

What ELSE is under consideration?

 

The right to contraception to avoid getting pregnant in the first place,

The right for same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses,

The right of interracial couples to get married,

Since Richard and Mildred Loving,

It has been settled law since 1967,

The next things on the list:

The Voting Rights Act of 1965,

The Civil Rights Act of 1964,

 

The Reich Wing has been gunning for the highest court,

Since the “Brown vs. Board of Education” decision of 1954,

 

Since we’re de facto re-segregated,

I’m sure they’ll leave that one untouched!

 

Saint Ronnie said,

“Our best days are behind us,”

He didn’t qualify it,

Because it didn’t apply,

To those of us on the margins of society,

 

The Civil Rights Act came 100 years after the end of the Civil War,

We got castrations, cross burnings, lynching, redlining, high-interest rates,

AND student loan debt,

With no jurisprudence or legal retribution,

They just made lynching a federal crime in 2022,

I take it back:

That’s the first thing that would go next,

 

The LGBT wasn’t in the closet,

So they could plan a killer “coming out” party,

Revealing who you were and who you loved,

Posed existential danger,

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was an open question,

 

Roe vs. Wade was a decision.

By all nine Justices,

SEVEN appointed by republicans,

One of them, Richard Mulhouse Nixon,

Before that,

Back alley abortions

Took the lives of women,

Too poor to leave the country and have one safely,

 

“Life imitates art” is often said,

Referring to Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale,”

The Canadian Poet has said

The elements of fascism have existed here

Since the time of the Puritans,

When women accused of witchcraft were burned at the stake,

As Winthrop made the duplicitous claim that we were a “shining city on a hill,”

A throwaway line of presidents used by Reagan and Obama,

 

Speaking of Obama,

The public fascism started,

When he was denied his appointment of Merrick Garland,

It would not change the conservative majority,

A legal coup staged by Moscow Mitch,

Has the court stacked for a generation,

To perpetuate white supremacy,

Into the midpoint of the 21st Century,

 

On closer examination,

That “shining city.”

It was a pile of feces,

A painted facade,

Actualized at the Capitol on January 6,

Armed insurrection cum patriotism,

Patriotism cum fascism,

The “rule of law,”

The Code of Hammurabi,

The Ten Commandments,

Are “just suggestions,”

Jurisprudence cum WHATABOUTISM,

 

There is no history on which to base legal precedent,

 

A kangaroo court has gutted Stare decisis.