© 26 May 2006, The Griot Poet
A true martial art
explores the limitations
of one's ignorance.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Sunday, May 07, 2006
The Invasion of Forrest Gump
© 21 April 2006, The Griot Poet
"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence." Martin Luther King, Jr.
We have been invaded by “Looney Tunes,”
The freaking CRAZIES have entered the room
President Duck Dodgers-in-chief
Has a decades missed date with reality to keep.
He “hears the voices”… but of who?
It’s from the “cuckoo’s nest” where that comment flew!
One more Long Island Iced Tea than he should have bothered.
He says he answers to a higher Father,
I have no qualms or bother with his religious beliefs
Except it shouldn’t be the basis for global policy and domestic relief
(Especially in New Orleans!)
His VEEP, Sir Elmer Fuddle the first did one more draft deferment than needed.
Had he heeded the call of his country,
His quail/fish-in-a-barrel shooting skills might-have-been a little less shabby!
He is a pacemaker glitch from the “big one!”
Slurring his speech like he’s in the first throws of a stroke,
Yet, he’s the privileged son we have in a secret bunker
To keep order in case Duck Dodgers goes AWOL again?
Dodger’s approval rating is one degree just above freezing,
Congress is THREE below that
Elmer’s TWELVE below them… Shh! Be very, very quiet!
In this morass, we’re hunting common sense.
It is to the chagrin of sense
That we are in this present mess
Fed by co-religionist rapture theories
Listen: no parent gives absolutes to any punishment,
So why do you box God into the role of warrior-tormenter for the last judgment?
And when did He attach a nuke to his promise to come back?
Refresher: During the Cold War, M.A.D. stood for Mutually Assured Destruction,
And Carl Sagan computerized and prophesied a “nuclear winter.”
Since Yeshua Himself said “no man knows the time or the hour”
How do you have the power to see that tactical nukes are the key to our salvation?
The only oblation that makes sense
Is that you are “the man of sin”; “the son of perdition” the “6-6-6”
Along with your 3-6 Mafia cabinet of Vulcan fools…
Fixing elections as a matter of rule.
Decrying gay marriage, Terry Shiavo, and “family values”
While families suffer from your brazen rule.
Your brain Karl Rove is a college flunkout,
Yet, he advises you on how to appeal to baser views
On hot-button issues designed to motivate the electorate to move
On things that will not prosperity net them,
Yet in the end, pay off your rich friends.
The one prophesy I’ll leave you with for what it’s worth:
“The meek, not the rich, will inherit the earth!”
"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence." Martin Luther King, Jr.
We have been invaded by “Looney Tunes,”
The freaking CRAZIES have entered the room
President Duck Dodgers-in-chief
Has a decades missed date with reality to keep.
He “hears the voices”… but of who?
It’s from the “cuckoo’s nest” where that comment flew!
One more Long Island Iced Tea than he should have bothered.
He says he answers to a higher Father,
I have no qualms or bother with his religious beliefs
Except it shouldn’t be the basis for global policy and domestic relief
(Especially in New Orleans!)
His VEEP, Sir Elmer Fuddle the first did one more draft deferment than needed.
Had he heeded the call of his country,
His quail/fish-in-a-barrel shooting skills might-have-been a little less shabby!
He is a pacemaker glitch from the “big one!”
Slurring his speech like he’s in the first throws of a stroke,
Yet, he’s the privileged son we have in a secret bunker
To keep order in case Duck Dodgers goes AWOL again?
Dodger’s approval rating is one degree just above freezing,
Congress is THREE below that
Elmer’s TWELVE below them… Shh! Be very, very quiet!
In this morass, we’re hunting common sense.
It is to the chagrin of sense
That we are in this present mess
Fed by co-religionist rapture theories
Listen: no parent gives absolutes to any punishment,
So why do you box God into the role of warrior-tormenter for the last judgment?
And when did He attach a nuke to his promise to come back?
Refresher: During the Cold War, M.A.D. stood for Mutually Assured Destruction,
And Carl Sagan computerized and prophesied a “nuclear winter.”
Since Yeshua Himself said “no man knows the time or the hour”
How do you have the power to see that tactical nukes are the key to our salvation?
The only oblation that makes sense
Is that you are “the man of sin”; “the son of perdition” the “6-6-6”
Along with your 3-6 Mafia cabinet of Vulcan fools…
Fixing elections as a matter of rule.
Decrying gay marriage, Terry Shiavo, and “family values”
While families suffer from your brazen rule.
Your brain Karl Rove is a college flunkout,
Yet, he advises you on how to appeal to baser views
On hot-button issues designed to motivate the electorate to move
On things that will not prosperity net them,
Yet in the end, pay off your rich friends.
The one prophesy I’ll leave you with for what it’s worth:
“The meek, not the rich, will inherit the earth!”
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
A Prayer For Australia
© 20 March 2006, The Griot Poet
Sent to Thom the World Poet (an Aussie Poet and Friend in Austin, Texas)
My prayers to your countrymen…
The chagrin of “ignorance is strength”
Is the proper Orwellian quote,
Not the “bliss” misquoted and we note that
Global warming like evolution is not a "theory"
That can be ignored due to it not playing well politically
With “the base,”
Which is the literal translation of the phrase “Al-Qaeda."
Shall we then devolve to Neanderthals
For the prediction that Einstein made
(though not one for prophecy)
Was chilling in any age:
"I do not know what weapons they'll use in the Third World War.
"But it is assured in the fourth; they will be sticks and stones."
Shall we deplore factual gathering as moribund
as tsunamis, earthquakes and cyclones wreck biblical havoc
On Asia, New Orleans and now Australia?
On shores we could protect
were we not connected to political bloodsuckers
more intent on winning than dominion; on domination than governing?
Sent to Thom the World Poet (an Aussie Poet and Friend in Austin, Texas)
My prayers to your countrymen…
The chagrin of “ignorance is strength”
Is the proper Orwellian quote,
Not the “bliss” misquoted and we note that
Global warming like evolution is not a "theory"
That can be ignored due to it not playing well politically
With “the base,”
Which is the literal translation of the phrase “Al-Qaeda."
Shall we then devolve to Neanderthals
For the prediction that Einstein made
(though not one for prophecy)
Was chilling in any age:
"I do not know what weapons they'll use in the Third World War.
"But it is assured in the fourth; they will be sticks and stones."
Shall we deplore factual gathering as moribund
as tsunamis, earthquakes and cyclones wreck biblical havoc
On Asia, New Orleans and now Australia?
On shores we could protect
were we not connected to political bloodsuckers
more intent on winning than dominion; on domination than governing?
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
On The Cusp of Things...
© 7 March 2006, The Griot Poet
I am forty-three.
Admittedly, I am supposed to be at the apogee of my career.
I once was.
Because of the “good” of the global economy,
My job was downsized, outsourced without apology
(Or lubricant) for the entrance of my cubicle
And the exit of my own self assurance
That I could provide for my family.
I have not the perspective that politicians see on official visits across the sea to India that this is a good thing! This is not Martin’s “let freedom ring.”
I wrote a blog called “Outsourced American”
As spiritual breadcrumbs
I refuse to be dumb
About the pain I’ve gone through
The changes I’ve endured
It’s a wonder my family is together, whole...
If I’d taken a poll six months ago
I wouldn’t make a fair bet that
I’d yet be typing these words…
Corpses don’t do diction well.
Though these thoughts are dark,
No one contemplates
Heaven or hell
When the very meaning of one’s existence
Falls into question...
I have had
Crash learning sessions
With ecliptics and reflector telescopes
Labs and homework
Working with people almost half my age
At the stage of their life where things are just beginning...
I remember well!
I remember when my time had ended
At my undergraduate matriculation
Volunteered service to the Air Force
That started the first seeds of strife...
Forced to leave for a lie, I had to recreate another life
As a semiconductor process engineer
For reference, see the first stanza
Of this piece, first line beginning: “I am forty-three.”
A midterm approaches
As I appeal to the UNKNOWN God
Of Paul (and me)
That created all
To recreate in me a mind that recalls
Everything on Black Holes and Binary Stars
Because it is through favor that I am even here at all…
Failure is not an option
Because I have fewer decades ahead of me
And more behind
The only motive that spurs:
Cadet Colonel Wall of Army JROTC stating to me
“Your kind will NEVER rise to this rank.”
I’ve had this shank stabbed in my chest before
And when I was younger I endured
And fought hard
To let the enemy know I deplore his tactics
That he’s a PUNK;
A chump!
And just like you didn’t stop me then
You WON’T stop me now!
However: I am forty-three.
I am further from my birth and closer to forever.
Even though I tire of the assault: face bloody, wind sucking, knees buckling; boxed ears ring; I will not be defeated.
I feel... I am on the cusp of things!
I am forty-three.
Admittedly, I am supposed to be at the apogee of my career.
I once was.
Because of the “good” of the global economy,
My job was downsized, outsourced without apology
(Or lubricant) for the entrance of my cubicle
And the exit of my own self assurance
That I could provide for my family.
I have not the perspective that politicians see on official visits across the sea to India that this is a good thing! This is not Martin’s “let freedom ring.”
I wrote a blog called “Outsourced American”
As spiritual breadcrumbs
I refuse to be dumb
About the pain I’ve gone through
The changes I’ve endured
It’s a wonder my family is together, whole...
If I’d taken a poll six months ago
I wouldn’t make a fair bet that
I’d yet be typing these words…
Corpses don’t do diction well.
Though these thoughts are dark,
No one contemplates
Heaven or hell
When the very meaning of one’s existence
Falls into question...
I have had
Crash learning sessions
With ecliptics and reflector telescopes
Labs and homework
Working with people almost half my age
At the stage of their life where things are just beginning...
I remember well!
I remember when my time had ended
At my undergraduate matriculation
Volunteered service to the Air Force
That started the first seeds of strife...
Forced to leave for a lie, I had to recreate another life
As a semiconductor process engineer
For reference, see the first stanza
Of this piece, first line beginning: “I am forty-three.”
A midterm approaches
As I appeal to the UNKNOWN God
Of Paul (and me)
That created all
To recreate in me a mind that recalls
Everything on Black Holes and Binary Stars
Because it is through favor that I am even here at all…
Failure is not an option
Because I have fewer decades ahead of me
And more behind
The only motive that spurs:
Cadet Colonel Wall of Army JROTC stating to me
“Your kind will NEVER rise to this rank.”
I’ve had this shank stabbed in my chest before
And when I was younger I endured
And fought hard
To let the enemy know I deplore his tactics
That he’s a PUNK;
A chump!
And just like you didn’t stop me then
You WON’T stop me now!
However: I am forty-three.
I am further from my birth and closer to forever.
Even though I tire of the assault: face bloody, wind sucking, knees buckling; boxed ears ring; I will not be defeated.
I feel... I am on the cusp of things!
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Sovereignty
© 27 February 2006, The Griot Poet
To answer without answering:
The definition of the word is… itself.
George Orwell would be so proud!
Though Webster seems locked away
On his dimwitted, Ivy League shelf
I can hear the faint sound of snickers
From the once moribund press corps
On his ironic struggle
To describe
What Native American tribes
DO NOT have
Because of his elite ancestry and their
Robber Barron thievery many scores before:
“Sovereignty: Supreme power, especially
Over a body politic;
“Freedom from external control: the right to self-govern: autonomy!”
To answer without answering:
The definition of the word is… itself.
George Orwell would be so proud!
Though Webster seems locked away
On his dimwitted, Ivy League shelf
I can hear the faint sound of snickers
From the once moribund press corps
On his ironic struggle
To describe
What Native American tribes
DO NOT have
Because of his elite ancestry and their
Robber Barron thievery many scores before:
“Sovereignty: Supreme power, especially
Over a body politic;
“Freedom from external control: the right to self-govern: autonomy!”
Sunday, February 12, 2006
A Prayer For Amy
© 11 February 2006, The Griot Poet
Amy Green Dickerson
Sunrise: 7 February 1915. Sunset: 3 February 2006
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints, Psalms 116:15
We laud those assembled here
For the home going of our precious Mother Dear.
Many a summer we can remember
Visiting before the rigor of school in September
How HAPPY she’d be to see us…
That lasted about a day!
After that welcome,
She’d task a detailed list of chores for us
Keeping us too busy for Satan’s mischief,
Making us render due reverence at each meal served.
We read the Bible; studied the Word, learned from her example how to pray.
Though diminutive in stature, she was a WARRIOR on her knees:
Supplexing principalities and pimp-slapping demons
Petitioning God-Almighty for the life of her assaulted husband Horace,
A noble soldier in the Civil Rights struggle
And each blessed one of her children’s, children’s children.
Mother Dear imparted “her mind, her will, her imagination, her emotions and her intellect” to you
It is this soul-glue that holds this family together
To weather the storms of wars;
Economic downturns and political struggle…
“What hath God wrought,” Samuel Morse, from this man of God and this matriarch?
All those chores she had you do,
And the beatings she’d administer with the switch you’d pursue
Imparted her character: “never quit, never give up”
To each one of you…
She breathed out her spirit long before this assemblage.
The tears we cry of her spirit’s departure, but not as those without hope!
We will se her again in that great day of freedom, “true North”
In the air with the LORD
And beyond the fear of violence, death or rope
“Jesus wept.”
And afterward, raised Lazarus like He will Mother Dear and each one of us.
Have HOPE and not distress!
Heaven has gained three noteworthy angels:
Rosa Parks;
Corretta Scott King;
And Amy Green Dickerson…
And “Pa-Pa” is reunited with his princess!
Amy Green Dickerson
Sunrise: 7 February 1915. Sunset: 3 February 2006
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints, Psalms 116:15
We laud those assembled here
For the home going of our precious Mother Dear.
Many a summer we can remember
Visiting before the rigor of school in September
How HAPPY she’d be to see us…
That lasted about a day!
After that welcome,
She’d task a detailed list of chores for us
Keeping us too busy for Satan’s mischief,
Making us render due reverence at each meal served.
We read the Bible; studied the Word, learned from her example how to pray.
Though diminutive in stature, she was a WARRIOR on her knees:
Supplexing principalities and pimp-slapping demons
Petitioning God-Almighty for the life of her assaulted husband Horace,
A noble soldier in the Civil Rights struggle
And each blessed one of her children’s, children’s children.
Mother Dear imparted “her mind, her will, her imagination, her emotions and her intellect” to you
It is this soul-glue that holds this family together
To weather the storms of wars;
Economic downturns and political struggle…
“What hath God wrought,” Samuel Morse, from this man of God and this matriarch?
All those chores she had you do,
And the beatings she’d administer with the switch you’d pursue
Imparted her character: “never quit, never give up”
To each one of you…
She breathed out her spirit long before this assemblage.
The tears we cry of her spirit’s departure, but not as those without hope!
We will se her again in that great day of freedom, “true North”
In the air with the LORD
And beyond the fear of violence, death or rope
“Jesus wept.”
And afterward, raised Lazarus like He will Mother Dear and each one of us.
Have HOPE and not distress!
Heaven has gained three noteworthy angels:
Rosa Parks;
Corretta Scott King;
And Amy Green Dickerson…
And “Pa-Pa” is reunited with his princess!
Future Venues
© 12 February 2006, The Griot Poet
Inspired by an e-mail from Thom the World Poet and the article “Crossing the Rubicon” by John Pilger on truthout.org
Prepare to sing sonnets in foxholes
And haiku in bunkers
As the only theology will be the pleas
Of human beings to thunder deities
Reigning down "shock and awe"
With "rods of god"
And weapons of massive destruction
For an addiction not just to oil which withers and sours,
But to broad, maniacal unadulterated power!
"Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven,"
John Milton knew us so well,
And we will soon have dominion over a cinder of what's left of earth:
Home of our birth
As ideologies replace ideas and scientific curiosity,
As scientific experts on global warming are silenced by
Politically appointed "hack-artists" lacking the graduation
Credentials from Texas A&M: he worked on the campaign;
He is our friend, is the only acid test of rampant cronyism
That spread from Texas to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Prophets Of Eternal Truths: sing loud at venues,
Like Pablo Neruda, we do not have time for "lilacs and
Poppy-petalled metaphysics."
We speak to megalomaniacs in ivory-glassed towers of babbling fools
Determined without consideration of consequence
Mjolnir's clap of nuclear lightning and sonic thunder:
Or, prepare to sing sonnets in foxholes
And haiku in bunkers!
Inspired by an e-mail from Thom the World Poet and the article “Crossing the Rubicon” by John Pilger on truthout.org
Prepare to sing sonnets in foxholes
And haiku in bunkers
As the only theology will be the pleas
Of human beings to thunder deities
Reigning down "shock and awe"
With "rods of god"
And weapons of massive destruction
For an addiction not just to oil which withers and sours,
But to broad, maniacal unadulterated power!
"Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven,"
John Milton knew us so well,
And we will soon have dominion over a cinder of what's left of earth:
Home of our birth
As ideologies replace ideas and scientific curiosity,
As scientific experts on global warming are silenced by
Politically appointed "hack-artists" lacking the graduation
Credentials from Texas A&M: he worked on the campaign;
He is our friend, is the only acid test of rampant cronyism
That spread from Texas to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Prophets Of Eternal Truths: sing loud at venues,
Like Pablo Neruda, we do not have time for "lilacs and
Poppy-petalled metaphysics."
We speak to megalomaniacs in ivory-glassed towers of babbling fools
Determined without consideration of consequence
Mjolnir's clap of nuclear lightning and sonic thunder:
Or, prepare to sing sonnets in foxholes
And haiku in bunkers!
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Promotion to a New Conservatory
© 5 February 2006, The Griot Poet
1 Corinthians 13:13 "And now abide Faith, Hope, Love, These Three; but the greatest of these is Love."
Nary a word spoken on their first date
When a young philosophy major stated: "The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all."
She would fall under his spell a year later.
They would marry, have children, preach sermons, organize and participate in marches; dodge rocks, bullets, bombs, and CONINTELPRO pre-FISA electronic surveillance and death threats.
Yet, when she became a single mother and a famous widow, she picked up his mantle without hesitation.
It would be her purview to carry on his message of Civil Rights, Human Rights, Poverty Rights for workers in Memphis before her husband was buried, and like him: the sum total of her living was not the accumulation of things.
Yet, she fought hard to get the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change built. Despite seen by many as aloof, competing for monies from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and more concerned with Martin’s legacy than his struggle.
Character
Before Bill embarrassed Hillary, she had to drink the bitter swill of his confession of infidelity. Even though he tried to justify it by saying “she reminded me of you,” the anger was probably hot and the suspicions of his not liking her on the trail coalesced on infidelity, not about her or the children’s safety. Yet, she stayed, through adultery, bombs and death threats…
Personality
Coretta had her own dreams and her own mind before the Morehouse fellow nicknamed “Tweed” turned on the charm. She caused quite an alarm to both Martins, father and son when she demanded the word “obey” from her wedding vows stricken: she was her OWN woman. She got her wish…
Intelligence
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, the middle of three children born to Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She grew up poor, picking cotton in the hot fields of the segregated South, watching buses full of white kids pass to “separate but equal” schools or doing housework.
Coretta graduated first in her high school class of 17 in 1945. She thrived at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
She studied education and music. Coretta Scott competed for and gained access to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Not an easy feat even today! Her goal: to become a classical singer. She worked as a mail order clerk and cleaned houses to augment the fellowship that barely paid her tuition. Sister was on a mission…
Beauty
“Tweed” smoothly uttered the words: “You know every Napoleon has his Waterloo. I'm like Napoleon. I'm at my Waterloo, and I'm on my knees.”
She replied the elegant equivalent of “Negro, please!” “That’s absurd, you don’t even know me.”
Disappointed that he was shorter than she, he made up for this by his erudition and confidence. She made him wait six months after proposing before she said “yes.” At 350 guests, the wedding was the largest Atlanta had seen – then or since.
And who didn’t wish to be the cheek she kissed when he’d be freeze-framed for magazines like Ebony, Life, Time and Jet?
“Behind every great man” is so cliché. But without Coretta, would there be a Martin we laud today? Without Eve, would we remember Adam, who cowardly abdicated his responsibly in Africa/Eden, saying, “it was this woman you gave me?”
It is fitting she is the first person of African descent, male or female, to lie in state in the Georgia capital, after Brown proudly flying the “stars and bars.”
Though we wept, the vehicle that once housed her spirit and soul reflected the beauty that once dwelled within.
And Martin now has his final Waterloo in Heaven’s blue: reunited forever with his queen.
1 Corinthians 13:13 "And now abide Faith, Hope, Love, These Three; but the greatest of these is Love."
Nary a word spoken on their first date
When a young philosophy major stated: "The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all."
She would fall under his spell a year later.
They would marry, have children, preach sermons, organize and participate in marches; dodge rocks, bullets, bombs, and CONINTELPRO pre-FISA electronic surveillance and death threats.
Yet, when she became a single mother and a famous widow, she picked up his mantle without hesitation.
It would be her purview to carry on his message of Civil Rights, Human Rights, Poverty Rights for workers in Memphis before her husband was buried, and like him: the sum total of her living was not the accumulation of things.
Yet, she fought hard to get the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change built. Despite seen by many as aloof, competing for monies from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and more concerned with Martin’s legacy than his struggle.
Character
Before Bill embarrassed Hillary, she had to drink the bitter swill of his confession of infidelity. Even though he tried to justify it by saying “she reminded me of you,” the anger was probably hot and the suspicions of his not liking her on the trail coalesced on infidelity, not about her or the children’s safety. Yet, she stayed, through adultery, bombs and death threats…
Personality
Coretta had her own dreams and her own mind before the Morehouse fellow nicknamed “Tweed” turned on the charm. She caused quite an alarm to both Martins, father and son when she demanded the word “obey” from her wedding vows stricken: she was her OWN woman. She got her wish…
Intelligence
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, the middle of three children born to Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She grew up poor, picking cotton in the hot fields of the segregated South, watching buses full of white kids pass to “separate but equal” schools or doing housework.
Coretta graduated first in her high school class of 17 in 1945. She thrived at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
She studied education and music. Coretta Scott competed for and gained access to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Not an easy feat even today! Her goal: to become a classical singer. She worked as a mail order clerk and cleaned houses to augment the fellowship that barely paid her tuition. Sister was on a mission…
Beauty
“Tweed” smoothly uttered the words: “You know every Napoleon has his Waterloo. I'm like Napoleon. I'm at my Waterloo, and I'm on my knees.”
She replied the elegant equivalent of “Negro, please!” “That’s absurd, you don’t even know me.”
Disappointed that he was shorter than she, he made up for this by his erudition and confidence. She made him wait six months after proposing before she said “yes.” At 350 guests, the wedding was the largest Atlanta had seen – then or since.
And who didn’t wish to be the cheek she kissed when he’d be freeze-framed for magazines like Ebony, Life, Time and Jet?
“Behind every great man” is so cliché. But without Coretta, would there be a Martin we laud today? Without Eve, would we remember Adam, who cowardly abdicated his responsibly in Africa/Eden, saying, “it was this woman you gave me?”
It is fitting she is the first person of African descent, male or female, to lie in state in the Georgia capital, after Brown proudly flying the “stars and bars.”
Though we wept, the vehicle that once housed her spirit and soul reflected the beauty that once dwelled within.
And Martin now has his final Waterloo in Heaven’s blue: reunited forever with his queen.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Imperious Unum
© 15 January 2006, The Griot Poet
''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on." David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, “Bush could bypass new torture ban Waiver right is reserved,” by Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff | January 4, 2006
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
Skull and Bones does not fall in this category. It is a Germanic, fraternal order, not a secret society, but a society with secrets! Besides, I spell Mammon with a little “g.”
2. You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
The American eagle is and was the standard of old and new Rome. I’m the president: the KING of this home! It is not hypocritical for me to quote scripture, stating “wonder-working power” and curse out a staffer or middle finger a liberal in the next half hour!
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
I’m the president! I don’t go against the grain to say my most eloquent cursing uses liberally YOUR name!
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Except on strafing runs with Depleted Uranium guns for the wealth and protection of my rich cronies and their spoiled sons.
5. Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land, which the LORD your God gives you.
I do indeed. It was Pappy’s connections that skated me from Vietnam into the Houston, Texas champagne squadron, survived two-failed business ventures and bought me two elections! I talk to him and my higher father regularly to run the country and my sobriety.
6. You shall not kill.
3,000 Americans died on 9-11, souls that went to Nirvana and Heaven. And the attack was predicted, and then conveniently discarded by my cabal from the Project for a New American Century. We needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to shake you from your apathy, have sympathy for Bill Krystal’s empire and accept your loss of liberty in the political night’s growing tyranny. Also: A few hundred heroic brothers spent in Afghanistan, 2,000 plus in Iraq for Saddam and weapons of mass destruction (that didn’t exists) and, oh about 30,000… others.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
Those lies are not true. Condi is my advisor. Besides, the dress this time was not blue!
8. You shall not steal.
We will make tax cuts for the upper 1% permanent. It stimulates the economy. What’s this talk of “no quality jobs?” It’s a HUGE job market; just check Wal-Mart, Temp America, Sears and Target!
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
It was the State of the Union Address. It was 16 words about a Uranium purchase that did not exist. I call that “faulty intelligence.” Besides, those weren’t my neighbors it was Congress! Most of you couldn’t afford the road that passes my ranch. So, get off this Air America, Common Cause, and Counter Punch, Truth Out conspiracy theory stance. You expect the Patriot Act to be some kind of caper: the Constitution just is a Got-Damned piece of paper!
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is your neighbor’s.
Again, you seem to be confused. Iraq is as far from the US as I am from you.
And though the land is salted and spoiled, the place is brimming with lovely oil! My bible has Eden in a mythical place. Saddam is Nebuchadnezzar’s descendant? Coincidence! Abraham’s city of Ur in Iraq? Ridiculous! Jesus black? Nonsense! Which is why we let the history museum be ransacked. Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing! That’s why we give you slogans and hopeless crisis’s like: the assault on Christmas, the assault on the sanctity of marriage, “we’ll smoke ‘em out,” “let’s roll!” Reality takes its toll on the controls we want to enforce. Be like ME! I’d never want anyone’s ass except those that are paying for my servitude abundantly. As for Condi: technically, she’s not my neighbor nor is she married!
''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on." David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, “Bush could bypass new torture ban Waiver right is reserved,” by Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff | January 4, 2006
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
Skull and Bones does not fall in this category. It is a Germanic, fraternal order, not a secret society, but a society with secrets! Besides, I spell Mammon with a little “g.”
2. You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
The American eagle is and was the standard of old and new Rome. I’m the president: the KING of this home! It is not hypocritical for me to quote scripture, stating “wonder-working power” and curse out a staffer or middle finger a liberal in the next half hour!
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
I’m the president! I don’t go against the grain to say my most eloquent cursing uses liberally YOUR name!
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Except on strafing runs with Depleted Uranium guns for the wealth and protection of my rich cronies and their spoiled sons.
5. Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land, which the LORD your God gives you.
I do indeed. It was Pappy’s connections that skated me from Vietnam into the Houston, Texas champagne squadron, survived two-failed business ventures and bought me two elections! I talk to him and my higher father regularly to run the country and my sobriety.
6. You shall not kill.
3,000 Americans died on 9-11, souls that went to Nirvana and Heaven. And the attack was predicted, and then conveniently discarded by my cabal from the Project for a New American Century. We needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to shake you from your apathy, have sympathy for Bill Krystal’s empire and accept your loss of liberty in the political night’s growing tyranny. Also: A few hundred heroic brothers spent in Afghanistan, 2,000 plus in Iraq for Saddam and weapons of mass destruction (that didn’t exists) and, oh about 30,000… others.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
Those lies are not true. Condi is my advisor. Besides, the dress this time was not blue!
8. You shall not steal.
We will make tax cuts for the upper 1% permanent. It stimulates the economy. What’s this talk of “no quality jobs?” It’s a HUGE job market; just check Wal-Mart, Temp America, Sears and Target!
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
It was the State of the Union Address. It was 16 words about a Uranium purchase that did not exist. I call that “faulty intelligence.” Besides, those weren’t my neighbors it was Congress! Most of you couldn’t afford the road that passes my ranch. So, get off this Air America, Common Cause, and Counter Punch, Truth Out conspiracy theory stance. You expect the Patriot Act to be some kind of caper: the Constitution just is a Got-Damned piece of paper!
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is your neighbor’s.
Again, you seem to be confused. Iraq is as far from the US as I am from you.
And though the land is salted and spoiled, the place is brimming with lovely oil! My bible has Eden in a mythical place. Saddam is Nebuchadnezzar’s descendant? Coincidence! Abraham’s city of Ur in Iraq? Ridiculous! Jesus black? Nonsense! Which is why we let the history museum be ransacked. Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing! That’s why we give you slogans and hopeless crisis’s like: the assault on Christmas, the assault on the sanctity of marriage, “we’ll smoke ‘em out,” “let’s roll!” Reality takes its toll on the controls we want to enforce. Be like ME! I’d never want anyone’s ass except those that are paying for my servitude abundantly. As for Condi: technically, she’s not my neighbor nor is she married!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Annus Horribilis
© 30 December 2005, The Griot Poet
Where to begin…
Tsunami wipes out Asia…
Hurricanes made super by nature and global warming…
“Our economy's on the mend,” the “our” meaning CEOs, CFOs, and the lot of his corporate friends…
Then, came Katrina, Rita, Wilma and a record breaking twenty-seven
And the world watched in horror as
The freest nation in the world
Had a third world visitation
With cameras filming the plethora of misery on its own soil in black communities in New Orleans (and un-filmed elsewhere)…
The boy-king-candidate promised we’d do no nation building,
Yet, that is exactly what we’ve cared doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa for natural gas and oil…
And now forced to by Gulf coast embarrassment to do after photo ops on American soil.
Foiled by Kanye’s declared salvo that shattered his very cold soul.
His popularity below 50 percent,
His gained political capital well spent
Now, he’s spying on us domestically without FISA court consent,
Protecting us from boogey-men and civil liberties stoking Reichstag fires
Patriot Acts resemble Article 48 of the Weimar constitution abrogating:
-Free expression of opinion
-Freedom of the press
-Right of assembly and association -Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
-Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
-Individual property rights
-States' right of self-government
Supplementing this, the creation of the Storm Troopers and SS agencies.
Even he quipped, “If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator!”
The phrase “by no other name can men be saved”
Was first printed on Roman coins for the adopted son of Julius,
Named Caesar,
Then the son of Caesar, born Octavius, made himself Augustus: “worthy of reverence and worship”
Both faces graced an empire with the inspired words on both sides: “Divine Caesar and the Son of God.”
Power corrupts,
And absolute power corrupts absolutely
Until the moment transforms the mediocre into the megalomaniac;
Until lack of cerebral thought becomes strongly delusional;
Until he forgets that he’s a recovering alcoholic,
Until he talks of answering to a “higher father”;
Until his walk is that of a strutting peacock between vacations decrying terrorist killers and private golf course drives.
Until we live to see the abomination of desolation walk into the holy of holies and he and his followers follow the course of all Caesars and dictators… self-proclaimed divinity.
If he was a true believer of the Palestinian prophet he says he follows,
Does he hear “blessed are the peacemakers”?
When Yeshua said, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
Greater things would His followers’ do
As they defied the empire that crushed every Palestinian, Roman and Jew
And proclaimed Him as the “Son of God” and “King of Kings.”
Such a thing caused men imprisoned, crucified and hacked by the earliest SS.
For me, personally
I am one of the fading middle classes.
Squeezed between the availability of cheap labor within the US by Vicente Fox’s devalued Peso
(Wire transfers go back to their native Mexico)
And cheaper labor still overseas.
Jobs added are low wage, low or no medical benefits and degrading to citizens born here.
Yet, a man that has never had a hungered day in his life or career states “our economy is sound.”
I can see the madness of declaring a recession when there was none to be found.
He literally talked the markets down in 2000: a feat of mass hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, crony favors and the blackest of magic’s.
What was depressing was his rich friends that had the most wanted it ALL:
All the wealth,
All the gold,
All the monies,
All without spending in the highest category: wages.
When sages write about this,
I hope it will be on papyrus
And the wealth and resources they tried to hoard is more than well spent,
And the fears of Socialists, Communists, Compassionate Capitalists
Devolve
To a feudal society
Without technology...
That is our destiny
If we do not adhere
To the terrible lessons
Of this horrible year!
Where to begin…
Tsunami wipes out Asia…
Hurricanes made super by nature and global warming…
“Our economy's on the mend,” the “our” meaning CEOs, CFOs, and the lot of his corporate friends…
Then, came Katrina, Rita, Wilma and a record breaking twenty-seven
And the world watched in horror as
The freest nation in the world
Had a third world visitation
With cameras filming the plethora of misery on its own soil in black communities in New Orleans (and un-filmed elsewhere)…
The boy-king-candidate promised we’d do no nation building,
Yet, that is exactly what we’ve cared doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa for natural gas and oil…
And now forced to by Gulf coast embarrassment to do after photo ops on American soil.
Foiled by Kanye’s declared salvo that shattered his very cold soul.
His popularity below 50 percent,
His gained political capital well spent
Now, he’s spying on us domestically without FISA court consent,
Protecting us from boogey-men and civil liberties stoking Reichstag fires
Patriot Acts resemble Article 48 of the Weimar constitution abrogating:
-Free expression of opinion
-Freedom of the press
-Right of assembly and association -Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
-Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
-Individual property rights
-States' right of self-government
Supplementing this, the creation of the Storm Troopers and SS agencies.
Even he quipped, “If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator!”
The phrase “by no other name can men be saved”
Was first printed on Roman coins for the adopted son of Julius,
Named Caesar,
Then the son of Caesar, born Octavius, made himself Augustus: “worthy of reverence and worship”
Both faces graced an empire with the inspired words on both sides: “Divine Caesar and the Son of God.”
Power corrupts,
And absolute power corrupts absolutely
Until the moment transforms the mediocre into the megalomaniac;
Until lack of cerebral thought becomes strongly delusional;
Until he forgets that he’s a recovering alcoholic,
Until he talks of answering to a “higher father”;
Until his walk is that of a strutting peacock between vacations decrying terrorist killers and private golf course drives.
Until we live to see the abomination of desolation walk into the holy of holies and he and his followers follow the course of all Caesars and dictators… self-proclaimed divinity.
If he was a true believer of the Palestinian prophet he says he follows,
Does he hear “blessed are the peacemakers”?
When Yeshua said, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
Greater things would His followers’ do
As they defied the empire that crushed every Palestinian, Roman and Jew
And proclaimed Him as the “Son of God” and “King of Kings.”
Such a thing caused men imprisoned, crucified and hacked by the earliest SS.
For me, personally
I am one of the fading middle classes.
Squeezed between the availability of cheap labor within the US by Vicente Fox’s devalued Peso
(Wire transfers go back to their native Mexico)
And cheaper labor still overseas.
Jobs added are low wage, low or no medical benefits and degrading to citizens born here.
Yet, a man that has never had a hungered day in his life or career states “our economy is sound.”
I can see the madness of declaring a recession when there was none to be found.
He literally talked the markets down in 2000: a feat of mass hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, crony favors and the blackest of magic’s.
What was depressing was his rich friends that had the most wanted it ALL:
All the wealth,
All the gold,
All the monies,
All without spending in the highest category: wages.
When sages write about this,
I hope it will be on papyrus
And the wealth and resources they tried to hoard is more than well spent,
And the fears of Socialists, Communists, Compassionate Capitalists
Devolve
To a feudal society
Without technology...
That is our destiny
If we do not adhere
To the terrible lessons
Of this horrible year!
Sunday, December 18, 2005
For Josephine and Other Queens
 |
| Ean Wood: The Josephine Baker Story |
Josephine Carson Baker was just dancing…
From dancing in the streets to
Prancing in bananas
From the ghetto of East St. Louis to the Ziegfeld Follies
Probably more sensual and revealing than the smut that masks as art
Presented on 24-hour soft-porn cable TV
Or music videos that celebrate our sisters’ posteriors,
She was also a civil rights pioneer, adopting 10 more of the earth’s dear children than Angelina Jolie, her “rainbow tribe”
Yet, I never heard anyone except racists in this new world or the last in English or French
Describe her as a bitch...
Dorothy Dandridge was a star before her time,
Carmen, Porgy and Bess
Got an Oscar nod
When the best job a black person could get was janitor in the theater coming in from the back...
Lena Horne
Was my forlorn father’s pin-up gal in the Navy,
And, even though it’s crazy,
There’s a picture on the Internet of Lena signing autographs among
Naval men of color…
The guy on the far right looks like my father’s twin brother (he didn’t have one)...
Perhaps I am amiss,
But I lament the days of
Old when we treated our women like gold
And would slap on a beat down if anyone of any stripe tried to call them out of their names...
Before video
Ruined music and created visual universes that are programmed by directors penetrating the hymen of our minds...
I remember the time when they were our queens
And how some of them – gone or still alive
Must feel when they see their beautiful daughters
Bump and grind
On a video
For a nickel bag pretend GANGSTA who hasn’t spent ten minutes in the ghetto, and
Whose first reference to them is “bitch” followed by “ho”?
I remember
Before Carter G. Woodson’s “Miss Education of the Negro”
Became the flipped script for MTV rap videos
And we in “Step-and-Fetch” followed this jest in our best-burnt cork face
To its Viacom clone: Bankrupt Entertainment Television
Until hip-hop like opera before it
Went from the streets to the board rooms of American aristocracy and became “hip-POP”
So that Gwen Stephanie can make hits on rhymes that make NO sense!
Skeeting our seed with Little John “to the window; to the wall!”
And pimping all our future mothers like those
Whom we pay for the oldest profession in the world...
I remember
When Josephine, Dorothy, Lena, Dianne Carroll, Lola Falana, Rosa Parks, Corretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Lieutenant Uhura (whose name means “freedom”), Ida B. Wells, Sister Soul Ja, your own MOTHER
When we treated our women like precious queens!
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
I'm Explaining a Few Things
This s a poet I can appreciate: I give you Pablo Neruda
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
-- Pablo Neruda
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
-- Pablo Neruda
Monday, December 12, 2005
12:01 AM (Stanley “Tookie” Williams)
© 12 December 2005, The Griot Poet
We lamented the birth of Margaret Sanger,
Bombing abortion clinics; stopping women from exercising their personal consent...
We compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler,
Bombing his country back to the stone ages in our rage to “kick someone’s assets” for 9-11...
We made Terry Schiavo our poster child,
Years having decayed her brain stem, most actions autonomic; all the while politicians’ manipulated events – “erring on the side of life” – making her husband look selfish, inhuman...
We convicted Scott Peterson
On circumstantial evidence, though he’d personally made his life a mess with premeditations to murder, perjury, adultery and a double life…
We've set double standards
Between the hyphens: birth – abortion; vegetation – euthanasia, imprisonment – death.
We speak of Christian virtues:
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these]; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
“Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
“Envying, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like...”
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
“Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
We speak with forked tongues
As the natives once said: recidivism versus redemption; straddling fences, going down two paths, splitting our pants as our groins stretch over an infinite chasm called...
Hypocrisy!
Gal 5: 19 – 21; Gal 5: 22 - 23
We lamented the birth of Margaret Sanger,
Bombing abortion clinics; stopping women from exercising their personal consent...
We compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler,
Bombing his country back to the stone ages in our rage to “kick someone’s assets” for 9-11...
We made Terry Schiavo our poster child,
Years having decayed her brain stem, most actions autonomic; all the while politicians’ manipulated events – “erring on the side of life” – making her husband look selfish, inhuman...
We convicted Scott Peterson
On circumstantial evidence, though he’d personally made his life a mess with premeditations to murder, perjury, adultery and a double life…
We've set double standards
Between the hyphens: birth – abortion; vegetation – euthanasia, imprisonment – death.
We speak of Christian virtues:
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these]; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
“Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
“Envying, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like...”
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
“Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
We speak with forked tongues
As the natives once said: recidivism versus redemption; straddling fences, going down two paths, splitting our pants as our groins stretch over an infinite chasm called...
Hypocrisy!
Gal 5: 19 – 21; Gal 5: 22 - 23
Saturday, November 12, 2005
She Sat
© 12 November 2005, The Griot Poet
She sat.
After a day of working for another, she sat with swollen, tired feet and beaten spirit.
You see, her mediocrity was reinforced by de facto writ: signs that said “whites only” for the best services rendered; “coloreds only” for entrances, seats and water fit for dogs.
She sat.
And the writ said she should not hog her seat, but give it up and go to her place at the back of the bus. But…
There was something about that day.
There was something about the way the bus driver said:
“Move back, heifer!
“Get a moving, gal!
“Get on back there… where your kind belongs!
She was a 42-year-old mature, married black woman:
Not a heifer.
And, no one's gal.
She’d worked in the budding Civil Rights movement, planned marches, sang songs of faith like “we shall overcome, someday,” truly the “substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not [yet] seen.”
In her belief
That her faith would bring material reality to her expectations;
In her belief
That she would soon see the evidence of the labor everyone said – black and white – would bear no fruit.
In her belief
That she would live to see a country without the demeaning signs on entrances, seats and drinking fountains,
That she would live to see her people vote every November without the need of voting tests or poll taxes,
That she would live to see lynching become less frequent, southern trees bearing “strange fruit, blood on the leaves, blood on the root” and white sheets minimized (though now they where Armani three-piece)
She straightened her back, giving backbone to a movement that had otherwise stalled.
She nodded her head “no!”
She sat.
For our American hero, Rosa Parks: "My feet may be tired, but my soul is at rest."
Rest in peace, Rosa. We love you.
She sat.
After a day of working for another, she sat with swollen, tired feet and beaten spirit.
You see, her mediocrity was reinforced by de facto writ: signs that said “whites only” for the best services rendered; “coloreds only” for entrances, seats and water fit for dogs.
She sat.
And the writ said she should not hog her seat, but give it up and go to her place at the back of the bus. But…
There was something about that day.
There was something about the way the bus driver said:
“Move back, heifer!
“Get a moving, gal!
“Get on back there… where your kind belongs!
She was a 42-year-old mature, married black woman:
Not a heifer.
And, no one's gal.
She’d worked in the budding Civil Rights movement, planned marches, sang songs of faith like “we shall overcome, someday,” truly the “substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not [yet] seen.”
In her belief
That her faith would bring material reality to her expectations;
In her belief
That she would soon see the evidence of the labor everyone said – black and white – would bear no fruit.
In her belief
That she would live to see a country without the demeaning signs on entrances, seats and drinking fountains,
That she would live to see her people vote every November without the need of voting tests or poll taxes,
That she would live to see lynching become less frequent, southern trees bearing “strange fruit, blood on the leaves, blood on the root” and white sheets minimized (though now they where Armani three-piece)
She straightened her back, giving backbone to a movement that had otherwise stalled.
She nodded her head “no!”
She sat.
For our American hero, Rosa Parks: "My feet may be tired, but my soul is at rest."
Rest in peace, Rosa. We love you.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
A Lament of Global Lynching
© 11 October 2005, The Griot Poet
We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
In pantomime rhythm with the mission of “big brother”: deception and derision.
Skull & Bone Trilateral conspiracies: a global, hydra hegemonic manipulation of presidential elections, like Jepetto played Pinocchio: heresy!
Each action of our so-called “democracy” is merely the bargain basement selection of the next “American Idol”: version 1.0 with southern drawl and sax, version 2.0 with southern drawl and cowboy hat!
Ahem: both graduates of Yale.
We got the “kissing cousins” in the last national fire sale; clever and blood lined to playboy Hugh Hefner.
And the elite has us railing at each other in arguments, speeches, threatening violence and chicken flinch (for them, people we’ll never meet) in a national and global application of the letter by Willie Lynch!
Our reality is someone’s Straussian fantasy.
And our “reality shows” a Faustian shell game,
With corporate owned news numbing us and dumbing down our minds
With the kind of control Hitler and Mussolini only DREAMED of!
Now, we can download our dogma and diatribes at light speed
Without the need to feel the least guilty for not using our gray matter
Feeding our thought process with the prattling manipulative chatter
Of radio talk show hosts’ diatribe rants,
Pushing agendas with repetitive chants
Using “bogey men” fears to quack us in our pants… to our chagrin.
As our way of life is in the warped justice balance of MADMEN!
We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
In pantomime rhythm with the mission of “big brother”: deception and derision.
Skull & Bone Trilateral conspiracies: a global, hydra hegemonic manipulation of presidential elections, like Jepetto played Pinocchio: heresy!
Each action of our so-called “democracy” is merely the bargain basement selection of the next “American Idol”: version 1.0 with southern drawl and sax, version 2.0 with southern drawl and cowboy hat!
Ahem: both graduates of Yale.
We got the “kissing cousins” in the last national fire sale; clever and blood lined to playboy Hugh Hefner.
And the elite has us railing at each other in arguments, speeches, threatening violence and chicken flinch (for them, people we’ll never meet) in a national and global application of the letter by Willie Lynch!
Our reality is someone’s Straussian fantasy.
And our “reality shows” a Faustian shell game,
With corporate owned news numbing us and dumbing down our minds
With the kind of control Hitler and Mussolini only DREAMED of!
Now, we can download our dogma and diatribes at light speed
Without the need to feel the least guilty for not using our gray matter
Feeding our thought process with the prattling manipulative chatter
Of radio talk show hosts’ diatribe rants,
Pushing agendas with repetitive chants
Using “bogey men” fears to quack us in our pants… to our chagrin.
As our way of life is in the warped justice balance of MADMEN!
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Near the Levee...
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| Architecture About.com: What is a Levee? |
Inspired by the article from Dr. Cornel West: “Exiles from a city and from a nation,” 11 September 2005.
Note: I corrected the spelling of levee in the title and text (it was originally "levy" as a double entendre). On reflection of the carnival barking political times we're in and to avoid the appearance of xenophobia, a preposition and country name were both exchanged from their original versions. The piece still hits powerfully, and clarifies instead of stereotypes, origin of the demand for drugs in this country is this country in total, and no one group in particular.
Dedicated to my cousin from New Orleans, John (Gus) Holmes, Jr., his beautiful family, and the survivors of Hurricane Katrina (note: they're all fine, and relocated to another state).
**********
“When you live so close to death”
You create songs in the French Quarter on Slave Sundays that follow no pattern.
Rhythm set by clap and tambourine; washboard and kettle drum,
Old people hum in accompaniment in a Constantine Christian jubilee celebration of no cotton bailed; no backbreaking labor toiled.
The one suit you own is spoiled from overuse, and your children’s children carry on the tradition of “dress up” to anesthetize their pain.
“When you live so close to death”
The Mississippi delta builds a sediment foundation for your tragicomic pain:
“Laughing to keep from crying” births the blues!
“When you live so close to death”
People of your hue fought and escaped the French back in the day, and each day are turned away each year as they try to escape the death-hole now known as… Haiti.
“When you live so close to death, you live (life a little) more intensely,”
You create order out of chaos, from Massa raping your sisters and mothers to slaves tipping with another man’s lover: “hey baby, can we JAZZ around a little bit”?
Fighting fiercely in mock duels modeled after “southern gentlemen,” feeling disrespected, passing it down from Jazz procreation to your Hip Hop great-grandchildren’s generation as being “dissed”: with the same deadly consequences.
“When you live so close to death”
What are scraps from Massa’s table become culinary creations:
- Craw dads;
- Jambalaya;
- Gumbo;
- Shrimp Creole
- And Etoufée!
“When you live so close to death”
Lead and pollutants they allowed for your kind to warp your minds & drive the I.Q.s of your babies down scarred your psychology
BEFORE the levees broke;
BEFORE the drug flights to America!
“When you live so close to death”
You are not counted; clouded – an invisible majority under the all-mighty shadow of insignificance: exiles in your own country, resembling from years of neglect more “third world” than ninth ward or US citizenry
Hence, their news media in their quest for a ratings spree mislabeled you “refugees.”
Now, suddenly they are on our side, “shocked and awed” back to the reality of their sacred duty to inform the citizenry of a democracy… neglected for five years.
Shocked by the sight of dead bodies marred by dogs and crocodiles, piled in stairwells like logs… floating downstream! It seems perceptions change once you’re beyond a sheltered, suburban political haze, and find YOURSELF for many days
Breathing the stench,
Your own eyes seeing,
Your own ears hearing the gunshots and screams… in this country,
You cannot believe you could stay reasonably SANE…
Living so close to death!
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Son of Invictus
© 25 August 2005, The Griot Poet
I am Invictus!
"My head is bloody, yet unbowed."
Two years removed from the game by
Downsizing,
Rightsizing,
Outsourcing
Have only revealed that I AM the source
Of my reality;
I AM the cause of my destruction or salvation.
I don't have to look beyond my own faith to know "every need is met"
Because
I AM!
I am Invictus!
"My head is bloody, yet unbowed."
Two years removed from the game by
Downsizing,
Rightsizing,
Outsourcing
Have only revealed that I AM the source
Of my reality;
I AM the cause of my destruction or salvation.
I don't have to look beyond my own faith to know "every need is met"
Because
I AM!
Friday, August 12, 2005
The Gunslinger
(For Cindy Sheehan)
© 12 August 2005, The Griot Poet
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Stephen King
And, her face was grim.
Fixing her chin like flint,
Her silent vigil
Appealing to tens,
Then hundreds, then thousands…
Sitting in a lawn chair
Can cause such despair
To one who birthed war
And, ironically afterbirth
Aborted the lives of many.
Is it any wonder?
He sends lackeys
To answer her questions
While KBR, Halliburton
And Carlyle
Plunder
With the thunder
Of “shock and awe”
And the "iron triangle"
Of the military-religious-industrial
Complex?
Answer her questions!
She is the mother of loss, Casey, every mother’s son.
She has not crossed nor betrayed patriotism.
Those who suggest it with derision have no comparative, equivalent experience.
His unscripted comments are vexed,
Only mentioning her name
And taking flight in Marine One
For her guns are more lethal than his:
Birthed from a mother's burning love
For one she knew nine month's longer
Than even her son's best friend.
Yes, Stephen King:
"The man in black fled across the desert," to off-site meetings, to the White House "and the gunslinger [still] followed" him.
© 12 August 2005, The Griot Poet
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Stephen King
And, her face was grim.
Fixing her chin like flint,
Her silent vigil
Appealing to tens,
Then hundreds, then thousands…
Sitting in a lawn chair
Can cause such despair
To one who birthed war
And, ironically afterbirth
Aborted the lives of many.
Is it any wonder?
He sends lackeys
To answer her questions
While KBR, Halliburton
And Carlyle
Plunder
With the thunder
Of “shock and awe”
And the "iron triangle"
Of the military-religious-industrial
Complex?
Answer her questions!
She is the mother of loss, Casey, every mother’s son.
She has not crossed nor betrayed patriotism.
Those who suggest it with derision have no comparative, equivalent experience.
His unscripted comments are vexed,
Only mentioning her name
And taking flight in Marine One
For her guns are more lethal than his:
Birthed from a mother's burning love
For one she knew nine month's longer
Than even her son's best friend.
Yes, Stephen King:
"The man in black fled across the desert," to off-site meetings, to the White House "and the gunslinger [still] followed" him.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Purgatory
© 30 July 2005, The Griot Poet
Eye am below Heaven and above hell
where familiar spirits dwell.
Teased between what appears to be
the "light at the end of the tunnel";
and the licking flames of discontent.
Oldies songs take me back to the seventies:
before sex;
before bills;
before marriage;
before responsibilities.
Eye remember
all eye ever wanted to do was to
make an honest living.
Somewhere in my story, eye discovered
[John] Milton's nine-level purgatory.
Vision... became lust;
"doing whatever it takes," violating sacred trusts.
If the soul is
the mind,
the will,
the imagination,
the emotions
and the intellect:
eye sold it!
When do visions become vain imaginations?
When does goal-setting lead to coveting?
Thrust into responsibilities before eye was trained and ready,
eye skipped down the "Primrose path" -- eye wide shut -- in "no mind,"
forgetting that
"action without thought"
takes prior planning
and much practice.
So, here am eye
at forty-three
feeling less like
Solomon
and more like
Ecclesiastes *
My prayers as the
vain repetition
of a heathen
Teased between what appears to be
the "light at the end of the tunnel";
and the licking flames of discontent.
*: Ecclesiastes 1: 2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity.
Eye am below Heaven and above hell
where familiar spirits dwell.
Teased between what appears to be
the "light at the end of the tunnel";
and the licking flames of discontent.
Oldies songs take me back to the seventies:
before sex;
before bills;
before marriage;
before responsibilities.
Eye remember
all eye ever wanted to do was to
make an honest living.
Somewhere in my story, eye discovered
[John] Milton's nine-level purgatory.
Vision... became lust;
"doing whatever it takes," violating sacred trusts.
If the soul is
the mind,
the will,
the imagination,
the emotions
and the intellect:
eye sold it!
When do visions become vain imaginations?
When does goal-setting lead to coveting?
Thrust into responsibilities before eye was trained and ready,
eye skipped down the "Primrose path" -- eye wide shut -- in "no mind,"
forgetting that
"action without thought"
takes prior planning
and much practice.
So, here am eye
at forty-three
feeling less like
Solomon
and more like
Ecclesiastes *
My prayers as the
vain repetition
of a heathen
Teased between what appears to be
the "light at the end of the tunnel";
and the licking flames of discontent.
*: Ecclesiastes 1: 2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity.
Friday, May 06, 2005
April 30, 2005
© April 30, 2005, The Griot Poet
April 30, 2005:
Thirty years after the fall of Saigon,
Now Ho Chi Men City,
Truth and Tet Offensives
Get kind of gritty
As political parties – Donkeys and Grand Old Parties both look like asses
Having their hands covered in the blood of saints that Pilate’s goblet
Cannot wash away.
Today, in 1945
A tyrant, still for strange reasons revered, killed himself most cowardly,
A bullet for him and poison for his 24-hour wife, Eva Braun,
A man who may have been secretly a closet homosexual
And openly killed his fellows, Gypsies and the relatives of his Jewish mother
In a six-million plus human slaughter
Encouraged by Ottoman efficiencies in the murder
Of Armenian Christians
And their wholesale “Ministry of Truth”
Treatment of Orwellian “un-person” histories…
This mystery of this iniquity
Can easily be solved:
When evil wants to rear its head,
It does so when activists and poets do not have the resolve
To declare the truth
And remove the spiritual scales from the eyes
Of the “bewildered horde”
“Entertained to Death”
By “fair and balanced” news and reality show media outlets.
April 30, 2005:
Is a date that spiritually resonates in our history
One of the four shortest months of the year remembered in the short ditty:
“Thirty days has September, April, June and November”:
If this is the end of April showers to usher in May Flowers
Then let our light sabers curse the darkness
And hear the words of poet prophets
And give land colonized by occupying armies back to the people who live on it
Replacing not one tyrant like Saddam with another like Ahmad Chalabi
Replacing not truth with lies about “weapons of mass destruction”
It is our function to purge the earth of Sith Lords that see life in black-and-white “us versus them” terms.
Shoulder shrugs from apathy are deadly!
I dedicate myself to this for as long as I am blessed alive…
For what will they say about us on April 30, 2035?
April 30, 2005:
Thirty years after the fall of Saigon,
Now Ho Chi Men City,
Truth and Tet Offensives
Get kind of gritty
As political parties – Donkeys and Grand Old Parties both look like asses
Having their hands covered in the blood of saints that Pilate’s goblet
Cannot wash away.
Today, in 1945
A tyrant, still for strange reasons revered, killed himself most cowardly,
A bullet for him and poison for his 24-hour wife, Eva Braun,
A man who may have been secretly a closet homosexual
And openly killed his fellows, Gypsies and the relatives of his Jewish mother
In a six-million plus human slaughter
Encouraged by Ottoman efficiencies in the murder
Of Armenian Christians
And their wholesale “Ministry of Truth”
Treatment of Orwellian “un-person” histories…
This mystery of this iniquity
Can easily be solved:
When evil wants to rear its head,
It does so when activists and poets do not have the resolve
To declare the truth
And remove the spiritual scales from the eyes
Of the “bewildered horde”
“Entertained to Death”
By “fair and balanced” news and reality show media outlets.
April 30, 2005:
Is a date that spiritually resonates in our history
One of the four shortest months of the year remembered in the short ditty:
“Thirty days has September, April, June and November”:
If this is the end of April showers to usher in May Flowers
Then let our light sabers curse the darkness
And hear the words of poet prophets
And give land colonized by occupying armies back to the people who live on it
Replacing not one tyrant like Saddam with another like Ahmad Chalabi
Replacing not truth with lies about “weapons of mass destruction”
It is our function to purge the earth of Sith Lords that see life in black-and-white “us versus them” terms.
Shoulder shrugs from apathy are deadly!
I dedicate myself to this for as long as I am blessed alive…
For what will they say about us on April 30, 2035?
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