They're
doing it again.

They're gonna stuff
the corpse of
Hugo Chavez and
put it on display
in a glass case.

Why?

They did it to Lenin.

For 80 years he lay
on a bed of flowers
in a glass topped coffin
lazin away the days
in the Kremlin Wall
before they locked
him away behind
closed glasnost doors.

For those eighty years
Lenin's comrades
paraded his
corpse around
like an extended
Weekend at Bernie's;
raising old Ilyich
to mouth every
dictatorial diatribe
uttered by the
deathly stale
bread breath
of Stalin and all
the petty knockoffs
that followed him.

V.I. did a lot of
talking for a
dead man, serving
the dictatorship
of the proletariat
with valor and
distinction.

They did it
to Mao,
reminding all
happy Chinese Proles
that great peoples
revolutions must
dutifully mind
the unerring
instruction of
the secular deity;
resting assured
that progress is an
historical
dialectical
inevitability
proceeding apace
until classlessness
is realized in every
Hunan rice paddy,
Shanghai noodle
factory, Mongol
Steppe Village
and Buddhist
Tibetan Temple
in the glorious
workers paradise.

As of this writing Mao
hasn't been heard from
since the
Gang of Four
walked the last
Capitalist Roader plank.

Lady Mao
indignant to the end,
coolly quipping final zingers
from the Third Edition
of the Little Red Book as
last death sentence breaths
escaped her charcoal stained
great leaping forward
lungs.  
  
As always
Deng Xiaoping
got the final
laugh, counting
heavenly
Renmibis;

his yuan
piling up faster
then the number
of displaced
peasants
clogging the
streets of
The People's
Republic
new and improved
discount cities
beggin for jobs
at a toxic
iPod
factory.

Crafty
Deng  bought
the copy rights to
Mao's Quotations
his profit driven
start-up
fills
fortune cookies
with the
Chairman's
wise maxims
eagerly consumed
by the country's
burgeoning
class of
happy
lunch time
capitalists.

By the
waters of the Nile
they stuffed dead
pharaohs with
with onions,
spices and
frankincense
and buried em
in billion dollar
pyramids.

When a pharaoh  
crossed the River
Styx the expense
was justified
because of his
station in life.

The undertaking
also served as a
shovel ready
infrastructure
improvement
initiative for
idling slaves.

The humongous
public works project
didn't do much
for the economy back then
because the wages of
slaves don't go too far;
but through the
expanse of
expired millennia
the strange fruit of
chattel workers
is a proven boon
for the tourist trade in the
Valley of the Kings.

Its a bit unfortunate
that enterprising
grave robbers daring
the risk of the mummies curse
and imperialist archaeological
pillagers wouldn't let the
league of buried
Pharaoh's -like
young King Tut-
just
RIP.

..and then
there's the case of
Sweet Jesus...

Half of America
believes him to be
Chairman Emeritus
of the GOP,
authoring a gospel
of righteousness
in the party platform,
sprinkling holy water
on the hardest edges of
free market capitalism.

Though
his body was
lifted to heaven
on Ascension Day
Jesus
remains
the main course
at the festive Eucharist
every Sunday morning.  

Pious padres
transubstantiate
sacrosanct wafers
say its the Lords Table
but they act more
like its their own.  

Wrapped
in riddles
within sacred
paradoxes
exclusionary
catholic churches
refuse spiritually
starved pilgrim's
slices of happy meals
if they ain't down
with their
righteous
creed.

I recall
Jesus feeding 5,000
soul staved people with
seven loaves and five fishes
and had enough left overs
to feed every famished
woman and child
in Biafra;

don't remember Jesus
checking membership cards
before filling their bellies
with wholesomeness;

but the
pietistic pastors
parsing out
the holy loaves
remain quick to draw
heinous crucifixes
believing in the
holy justice of  
their crossianity
to ecstatically
bludgeon a
fallen heathen...

some Muslim
fundamentalists
do the same thing

a Hidden Imam
been walking
the earth since
the death of
The Prophet
Muhammad
(PBUH)

the ubiquitous
Mahdi is around
somewhere
and when he shows
his face he'll team
with Isa
enabling the Shia's
to tell the Sunni's
I told you so
and demand
that they
stop
murdering
fellow
Muslims

I just want to
tell my brothers
and sisters in
Venezuela
that they are the body
and soul, the heart, hands
and mind of the nation

the body is theirs
the body can't be
without them.
el corpus es usted

what ever happened
from dust you have come
to dust you shall return?

and now as a
Caracas glazier
cuts a glass box
for Chavez

i say
i think its a bad idea.
it never goes well for the dead ones

and as for the living
when myth becomes history
the potentates of politics
and the priests of power
become ghoulish tyrants
that devour the lives of
the living


ERRATUM
+++

As Marx observed in the  
18th Bremaire of Louis Bonaparte

"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living...
he goes on to say, "history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce"...

I hope my Venezuelan brothers and sisters avoid the tragedy and don't fall victim to farce...

Final thoughts from Jesus:

"Wherever there is a carcass,
there the vultures will gather.
Let the dead bury the dead"

Smash the icons!
Hugo deserves his heavenly rest
he wouldn't want it any other way.

Hugo Chavez
(28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013)
Godspeed Beloved


Joan Baez & Mercedes Sosa "Gracias A La Vida"

jbm
Oakland
3/8/13

I could hear as the rigid solitude knocked on my window,
I stand up with my trembling legs and look out through the glazier blot.

Dark towers of the night looming, mantle the Moon's light
Of which fairies were buried by fiend  of the shadow.

The beast huddled,
And with that, solitude also forsakaned me.

Emptiness, that I became,
Like a void spirit,
Who is silently striked by the devistating fist of scarcity.

Since the Moon was locked up in a faraway cage...
Shoreless the dark night, which burns between us,
And racking me for an endless time.

I am a bird, which pursuing its warmth,
And flying trough the stiffed mainlands.

I am a sunflower, which lives for the Sun
And nervously golden colour of it
feared from others.

I am an asterisk, which devouted to the Moon
And relishing its dim beams.

But I would rather be a shooting star once,
Than a callow craven.

I would rather wait among Time's grains of sand that snaring backwards,
Than becoming a desolate corner of life.

I wish the solid smoke of darkness would just fade away,
So my blinking eyes would know where to reach for you.

Frigid the scrapering, destitute nothingness.

Only you could smelt me, like the sunny sky a bird.

Deprivation of yours is devouring me,
Like affection my sanity.

Please bring back the Moon,
Because the night is perishing my Sun.

a limning rush of sinister
     fiery angry flames bent avast
analogous copse,
     where every limb bough, bore full

     roaring furnace hot blast
spewing weighty incendiary volcanic
     magmatic eruption out classed

Krakatoa, no longer the benchmark,
     sans most powerful trajectory arc
this latest supernatural phenomena poetic
     pre sent dent trumpeting not don
     shearing, slamming,

     and stripping off tree bark
(most definitely paging the innocuous Clark
Kent, where like loess lain
     during Pleistocene Epoch
     rendered, manifested dark

kenning shroud likened
    to world wide webbing em brace
where lava floes easily did
     (like a poetic souped up Chevy)
     out to chase innocent prey
smoothing over (akin to mason,

     or gigantic glazier) clearly shining deface
of planet Earth with a smooth glassy like face
though starkly barren, bereft, bilked
     every last trace of civilization
     nonetheless exhibiting amazing grace

which global catastrophic event poo tin brake
fast upon ONE haughty, egoistic
     arrogant **** Sapiens chief drake
particularly ***** king machine "FAKE"

superman usurping free reign crowning himself
     totalitarian American tyrant,
     bare ring his right arms
emulating gesticulation sans dictatorship

     of the Proletariat make
pact with credo of Karl, Harpo,
     Groucho, and Chico Marx,
     where mortals DID NOT quake
especially empowered youths
     asper grassroots action they did take.

(revised August 30th, 2018)

Courtesy of one or more tradesmen,
       the first Monday
     in September set aside
especially honoring employees
     dedication, gratification, honing
     job duties till
     second nature inculcation...
     evidenced by being

     able, eager, ready
     and willing to acquire money
     maybe marry a groom or bride,
climb corporate ladder, or
     become an artisan,
     entrepreneur, laborer, technician
     (to side step ascending
     stair weigh heavily

     rung out, drafted
     like an oxen plow,
     commandeered and chide
did by management as insubordinate
     nonetheless ironically feted
     receiving glazier plaques
     acknowledging career employee
     deserved retirement, whence joining

     kiln fields once died)
from over exertion, yet nonetheless
     sweat of brow efforts praise,
     aye worthily corroborated, espied
searching me noggin
     and Google, sans a brief history
     re: aforesaid day,
     where barbecues fried
dispersed aromas recognizing efforts

     of workers with
     quality control as guide
grievances against rod need
     danger field challenged      
     sense and sensibility and/or      
     against excessive pride and prejudice
     stalwart did not hide
the shenanigans took place inside

     warranted unprintable colorful prose
     smoky boardrooms linkedin
     tandem fouled nose
     just common every
     day highs and lows    
trading Jane's and/or Joe’s
who weathered extreme temperatures,
     whereby bodies froze,

but thanks to those,
     who battled elements
     at large and snatched a doze
birth of brute efforts eventually
     earned reserved renowned
borne a couple shy
     of the nineteenth century,
     whence the sound

of industrial silence replaced
     with parades, where
     hoof beats did Ezra pound
the burgeoning, and
     bustling city streets
     echoed along the hardened ground
where fealty to country soldered
     with faith, federation union freedom,

     and job security
     did thence abound
which holiday under
     went transformations
     as bustle and hustle
paved the land of milk and honey –
     from straining of muscle
whereby life, liberty and pursuit

     of happiness less
     of a physical tussle
set (via masons), the
     cornerstone to an invisible
     complex edifice originally
     from New York
     those forgotten builders,
     farmers, machinists, unskilled labor

     et cetera whose dis shoveled
     spades laid groundwork
wrought by destruction
     from the Civil War
     bean counters largesse and pork
loosed from the bottle
     in Antebellum South,
     when off flew the cork

freeing a genie,
     which became supreme
     in the court
     such as (the no longer
     remembered) Robert Bork!