Words
     Rendered
           meaningless
Spoken softly
Or harshly
No longer do they
       M
       a k
       e
         se..nse
What infuses meaning?
Fact?
Emotion?
Words
        Fall
             O
           f
              f
Leaving the sentence bare
No longer understood
In this mad crazy world

Words
       Rendered
             Meaningless

Kelly Rose
© January 26, 2017

a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service

where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods

this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho

he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day

when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived

they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC

who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck

that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed

when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ******* duty

fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well






.

Wasn't many days ago .
we were weaving in the mills .
they called our names .
ten at a time .
and taught us ******* .
see that young girl crying .
standing on the shore .
turn around and wave boys .
you'll see her face no more

Sent as rats with thin tin hats .
mow us down in rows .
here we go together boys .
we've no time left to grow .
see that young girl crying .
standing on the shore .
blow a kiss goodbye boys .
you wont kiss her anymore .

Taken from the mill towns .
left face down in the blood .
we never dreamed we'd die boys .
but others knew we would .
see that young girl waving .
standing on her own .
turn around and wave boys .
we wont be coming home .

Before we all go over boys .
one thing they never said .
they'll carve our names .
ten at a time .
among our brothers , dead .
see that girl upon the shore .
slowly turning round .
she'll soon be standing next to you .
laying flowers on the ground ..

You are so much more
invested in
domesticated
or non-domesticated
furry friends
then Syrian refugees
who look more
like you and me.

You are so much more
invested in
a piece of multi-colored cloth
that ***** in the wind
a symbol
of an idea
that has not been
fulfilled
then the victims of
drone bombings.

You are so much more
invested in
a barely ancient book
then women’s rights.

You are so much more
invested in
police authority
then those oppressed
for centuries,
those brutalized
incarcerated,
demonized,
enslaved,
and murdered.

You are so much more
invested in
sports and reality shows
then education
and the pursuit of truth.

And here is what
your investments
netted you
apathy, violence,
greed, destruction,
pain, suffering
terror, and the dividends
are still pouring in.

two hundred years ago
   or so
this title might have read
"America", etc.,

according to the myth
that then was strong
and still exotic
   and promising to aliens
with no experience

today, after Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears,
the Civil War, the Restoration, all the lynchings,
after Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua,
the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan,Lybia, Syria & cetera,
Ferguson, Baltimore, & cetera,
"America" has disappeared

it has, in fact, become quite evident
that to subsume the continent
   on the far side
       of the Atlantic or Pacific
   with this name
will do no more

   in truth, it rarely ever did

the mythic notion
   of a just and free society
was definitely buried at My Lai,
Panama City, on the desert plains
of Kurdistan, the Baghdad prisons,
    and Guantanamo
by racist violence & arrogance
   and pitiful ideas of white supremacy

   the usa today lies bare
   of the old promise of 'America'

street people, rampant fundamentalists,
drugs, and low employment rates,
in a society that longs
   despite its cherished myth
   of tough but honest competition
for holy war in order to rebuild with profit
   what it has destroyed with arms

that, to all evidence, cares not
a penny's worth for
   the unbuildable
   which never shows in the domestic census
or for the lives of others but their own brave boys
   preferably white
who have in recent years
      though with increasing discomfort
upon appointment by their country's presidents
achieved the dreary fame
   of bombing back into the stone age
distant lands that had
    just barely begun
to make it out from there

           * *

When he’s alone in the night,
In the absence of the light
And the presence of the sight,
There, begins the tearing blight:
Dark veiling dark, light veiling light.

(What am I doing?
Poetry-dwelling
In these dunes of salt
With five syllables?)

When he's alone in the night
In the half-presence of the light
There, begins the specular fight –
The scarlet mutiny within.

© LazharBouazzi, December 12, 2016

and these waves
             of longing
                  are burning me
              into stumbled
           desert trances
  as I crawl, parched
upon
        earth that
             sears and spears
                 my limbs
                        my inner organs,
                             once wet              
                 with the fire
             of my blood
now only
ashen embers
         the very salt
               of the sum of
              my wounds
lacerated open -
   barely held by
        a secret tourniquet
            wrapped tight, ******* me  
      in reverse tempest
and I clamor within my being
move in jolts,
like a voodoo dance
             zombie girl
stuck in the hell
of no-woman's land
a landscape of spires  
piercing me hot
making the sharpened path
dangerous for strangers
As for me,
I can only succumb to
their scalding roast
if I want to somehow
get out alive,
my skin charred
from that branding of insults
my heart scarred
from countless lashes
that your serpent's tongue
has inflicted upon me
             This.
is not the pleasure
of being tethered
tender flesh teased
  until writhing
                   This.
          is not the grind
          of earthen fire
           and sky mixed
     with underwater lava,
swarming cloistered whispers
   into my brain temperatures
                This.
is not the conflagration of
love seeds developing
into a ripe field
of the succulence of lustfruit
            This.  
        Is just an
        attempt
   to wear down
the goddess in me
     And to that
          I say
          No.

I turn the other cheek
to your barbed wire lies.
In the frequencies of the
next universe over,
an echo bursts into flames
rapidly oxidizing,
licking into
           nourishment
the rebirth
   of my
own
    divinity

The television blinds us from seeing
the real ways of the human being
it only brings falseness to our minds
these are such troubled times

leaders speak of peace, while killing
those words are only filling
convicted of their human crimes
these are such troubled times

preachers preach, but ears won't listen
there's something gone, something's missing
so many caught up in life's binds
these are such troubled times

one of the Orient’s oldest
and most beautiful important cities
inhabited for thousands of years
by generations after generations
of craftsmen, merchants, artists, dynasties,
famous architects of all styles and religions,
the western end of the old silk road
home to over 2 million citizens
until not long ago

a few weeks of modern warfare
were enough to destroy
what hundreds of generations had built
for their living as well as their sense of beauty

     rockets exploded churches, temples, and mosques
     artillery pulverized ancient palaces and new houses

     barrel bombs and poison gas
     killed the people

on tv we now see acres of urban wasteland
miles of rubble with no life
except for occasional tanks and soldiers
proclaiming victory over these ruins
in the name of a dictator whose regime
has become a puppet in global power games
no matter what the cost in lives or things

     to destroy is easy
     building things up is hard work

     with friends like these
     who needs enemies