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grumpy thumb Feb 2018
They are bombing children
as their own
are hummed lullabies.
They are bombing children
as their own
are tucked into bed tonight.
They are bombing children
as their own are rocked to sleep.
They are bombing children
with rockets burying them
in rubble deep.
Syria
The man was not the kind to say "I love you"
He'd look you in the eye and you'd know how he felt
When Dad was of a mind to tell you something
He said it with an open fist, a switch or a belt

Dive bombing alone
After all the bars have closed
Dive bombing will sure enough get you low

Hard to watch your father have a nervous breakdown
But no one said that life was kind
One day when you look into the mirror
I wonder who you'll find?

Dive bombing alone
After all the crowd's gone home
Dive bombing was all he'd ever known

And it may as well have been blood
All the sweat, the oil and the mud
That stained his hands
Left their mark on the wood
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, more than I ever thought he would
He did all...He did all...
After all, it's only love
And dive bombing is so much easier from above
© 2010 by James Arthur Casey
JJ Hutton May 2010
remember when we used to joke about
bombing the bombing memorial?

that was morbid.
Copyright 2010 by Joshua J. Hutton
T Jones Aug 2014
Not a poem but in protest of flagging truth about racism in Traverse City, Michigan


Traverse City, Michigan: Racism is still alive and well in our area.

We weren't always welcoming
Cross burning's (City of Traverse City, MI)
I'm born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan and still living in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember when blacks were not welcome in most parts of town and the one or two around were military visitors.

We had two known cross burning incidents. One back in the late 80's or early 90's the other was around 1924, ******* groups like Ku Klux **** was behind both cross burning incidents. I found old articles on the earlier one but someone is trying hard to white wash history of Traverse City by hiding evidence of the most resent one. Ones like me who were there remember those dark days like it was yesterday. It don't bode well for tourism or the Cherry Festival if there's a record of racism in our city.

Copy pasting one two different retelling of story reported by our sometimes biased Record Eagle articles regarding the first and and will continue to dig for the other one.

January 31, 2009
KKK was active in early '20s

The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first **** activity in northern Michigan.

The Record-Eagle reported flaming crosses in the Mancelona area on Aug. 1, 1923, a full year before. Six weeks later, Traverse City commissioners refused the **** permission to hold a Sept. 17 open-air meeting at the corner of Front and Cass.

About 300 people showed up anyway and marched to a vacant lot west of Front and Union after the unidentified property owner gave permission, carefully noting that it "did not commit him to any relationship with the organization," the newspaper said.

The Record-Eagle also passed on information from an identified **** source in its Sept. 17 report:

Two, maybe three organizers had worked for weeks in Traverse City. About 150 Traverse City men from "among the leading citizens" had joined. An open-air ritual with the traditional fiery cross burning on a hillside would be held "sometime but not yet" in or near Traverse City, and it would be "merely a part of the **** ceremonies and have no special significance."

People who expected to see hooded men in white robes performing rites at the Sept. 17 rally were bound to be disappointed, the paper said. A new state law banned wearing masks in public. It also would be difficult to tell how many in the audience were KKK members because "every person who has signed the Ku Klux card has pledged to keep his membership an absolute secret."


Traverse City, Michigan wasn't always welcoming to people of color.


Traverse City Record-Eagle

February 1, 2009
Ku Klux **** terrorizes TC in 1924

KKK cross burnings, explosions rock city

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Black History Month has special significance, since it begins fewer than two weeks after the nation's historic inauguration of its first black president, Barack Obama.

But there are parts of that history that Traverse City, like the rest of the nation, would rather forget. The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux **** during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.

Traverse City has never seen anything like that night of terror. Buildings shook. Store windows cracked and shattered. Houses as far away as 16th Street quaked, the Record-Eagle reported.

And though outside agitators were blamed, some local people may have been involved.

It started about 8 p.m. after three explosions went off across the river from the Lyric Theatre, where the State is today.

The crowd at the Lyric all but stampeded toward the door as women and children screamed. Panicked shoppers spilled out of downtown stores. City police phones jangled with alarm.

A large cross burned on the north side of the Boardman River near Cass Street. About 50 smaller burning crosses appeared almost simultaneously at the centers of intersections across the city. Each was crudely nailed together and swathed in oil-soaked rags. Sparks flew when several cars struck them. A city fire truck raced through town to douse flames.

Then, a "touring car" with four men, robed and hooded, though not masked, slowly trolled down Front Street carrying a sign surrounded by red flares blazing three letters: KKK.

Copies of the Ku Klux **** newspaper, "The Fiery Cross," later were found downtown, and police determined that at least two cars were involved in planting and lighting the crosses.

**** leaders called the explosions and flaming crosses a recruiting gimmick, but it was more than that. The 1920s was a reactionary time in the United States. The **** had risen again, starting in 1915, widening its anti-black focus to Jews, Catholics and immigrants, particularly those from southeastern Europe. Its membership was strongest in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The ****'s most powerful year was 1924, when it reached an all-time high of 5 million members nationwide and virtually controlled the government of Indiana. Its most popular slogan was "100 percent pure American."

The **** had a solid base of support in Michigan. The **** fielded two candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1924 and a ****-backed candidate was elected mayor of Flint. A write-in **** candidate even made a strong showing in a Detroit mayoral race.

In June 1924, 1,000 men joined the KKK in an Oakland County cross burning attended by about 8,000 people. Traverse City's demonstration took place just two months later. But who was really behind it?

"There is some doubt among the authorities as to whether the offenses were actually committed by local people or men from outside. They believe that local people were associated in the affair," the Record-Eagle reported.

An unidentified spokesman for the local **** denied responsibility, speculating that it was the work of **** enemies or rogue Klansmen. He told the Record-Eagle that the **** repudiated terror tactics and burning of "unwatched crosses."

Two weeks after the bombing, city police obtained felony and misdemeanor arrest warrants accusing Ku Klux **** organizer Basil Carleton of Richmond, Ind., of setting off explosives. Indiana police arrested him on Aug. 29.

Witnesses testified in two trials in December and January that Carleton had purchased 25 pounds of dynamite, fuses and three caps from Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. about two hours before the explosions. A Park Place Hotel clerk said he saw Carleton hurrying away from the direction of the explosions about 10 minutes later. Two **** members testified that Carleton was not at the scene.

Yet he was never convicted. Juries acquitted him in both cases because the prosecutor could not prove to their satisfaction that he was at the scene of the explosion or that he personally set off the dynamite.

The bomber escaped justice. But the good news was that in Traverse City, no night of terror like that happened again.

It was this event that sparked the cross burning in Traverse City. We had only one black family in our city, when Betty Ponder and her family left Traverse City for the first time due to no one wanting to rent to them, population of blacks in our predominately white city drop to zero.


******* Movement Targets Northern Michigan

by Robert Downes

National Alliance advocates the creation of "two Americas"

Traverse City, Mich., noted primarily for its beaches, tourists and cherry pie values, appears to be erupting as a national battleground of opinion over the ******* movement, with forces on both sides of the issue coming out of the woodwork to vent their outrage over racial issues.
On Thursday, June 5, residents along stretches of Washington and Front streets in town came home to find a slick package of information from the National Alliance hanging from their doorknobs. An outgrowth of the American **** Party, the National Alliance is a ******* group which advocates the creation of "two Americas," one of which would be "White Space only with no Jews or blacks." The Alliance, advocates genocidal practices if need be to achieve its goals, and plans to distribute 1,000 information packets in Northern Michigan.

Protest organized to oppose July "NordicFest"
The incident arose only a day after more than 150 people from throughout Northern Michigan gathered at a "Hate-Free TC" meeting to oppose the NordicFest, a skinhead rock festival sponsored by the Ku Klux ****, to be held at a secret location 20 miles south of town, July 3-6.
The NordicFest is being advertised on the Internet and will feature at least six skinhead bands featured on Stormfront Records and Resistance Records -- both of which are purveyors of neo-**** hate music. It will also reportedly feature speakers from the Ku Klux **** and Aryan Nations.

Thus far, the NordicFest's location has been a closely-kept secret by David Neumann of Bloodbond Enterprizes, the concert organizer and a former director of the Michigan Knights of the Ku Klux ****. Neumann has told local media that 300 tickets have been sold for the concert -- about half the number he expects to sell. Reportedly, concertgoers will be provided with maps to the secret location at a checkpoint.

Bands expected to play at the NordicFest include Intimidation One, Aggravated Assault, Blue Eyed Devils, Max Resist and the Hooligans, and No Alibi.

Local churches offering seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity
GATHERING STORM

Journalists have made inquiries on the NordicFest from as far away as London, New York and Colorado as a result of the Northern Express story circulating on the Internet. A segment for National Public Radio is expected to take the issue nationwide, possibly focusing the world's attention on Traverse City on the eve of the National Cherry Festival -- an event which draws more than half a million visitors, many of them from ethnic minorities.
"We're creating a rainbow ribbon that we hope everyone will wear in rejection of skinheads and the ****," said Rabbi Stacey Fine of Hate-Free TC. "We hope to have hundreds of ribbons during the time the **** is here, available from downtown merchants."

Fine says the group also hopes to march in the National Cherry Royale Parade with a three-by-eight-foot banner covered with thousands of signatures in a show of support for racial and cultural diversity. Thus far, Cherry Festival officials say they have received no applications from Hate-Free T.C., but will consider the request if approached.

Dottie Kye of Hate-Free TC says the group doesn't plan to try stopping the NordicFest despite their opposition ot the concert. "We're ignoring it," Kye says. "We celebrate anyone's right to organize and free speech. But our thing is unity and celebrating diversity." In addition to several church seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity, Hate-Free TC is organizing a three-day "Unity Festival" which will feature dozens of musicians, artists, poets, actors and peace activists at the Traverse City Opera House, July 3-6.

Concert organizers Tim Hall and Tom Emmott say that more than 40 musical acts will send a pro-diversity message to area teens, with performers including Willie Kye, Alright Already, John Greilick, Samantha Moore, the Motor Town Juke Boys, Bentley Filmore, the Sisters Grimm, and Lack of Afro, among many others. A concert with Fishbone is planned for later in the month.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence"
THE TEEN CONNECTION

The Unity Fest counter-concert is seen as a vital tool in fighting the influence of the ******* movement on teens in the area. After the initial story broke, the buzz in local high schools was that the NordicFest would be offering free beer to minors. Although that notion is clearly erroneous, a small number of teens in the area still cling to the idea and have also been attracted by the rebellious nature of the skinhead rock scene.
Tim Hall believes that his Unity Fest concert will help turn that tide. The three-day concert will be located in the heart of Traverse City in the old City Opera House, with easy access for the hundreds of teens who hang out downtown, often with little to do. "Our message is going to be one that values racial and cultural diversity," Hall said. "And we've had a great response so far. We had to put a lid on the performers when we reached 40 acts, because everyone wants to play at this event."

The Unity Fest will also coincide with the Annual Reggie Box Memorial Blues Blast, which was created five years ago to bring the heritage of black music to Northern Michigan for the overwhelmingly white Cherry Festival. This year's Blues Blast will feature John Mayall, Marcia Ball and the Bihlman Bros. in a free concert downtown on July 6. The concert will also feature a strong message promoting diversity.

The law enforcement view Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine says members of the law enforcement community, including the State Police and sheriffs from Grand Traverse and Wexford counties, are taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the NordicFest will even be held.

"People ask what we would do if the skinheads wanted to march, and it's our position that they have the same rights under the First Amendment as anyone as long as they're obeying the law," Soffredine said. "It's a neutral situation for us. We just want to maintain the peace."

He added that skinheads coming to Traverse City would be treated "no different than if longhairs come into town, or square dancers. We'd certainly observe them and respond if there's trouble."

The chief noted that a similar event occurred in the Buckley area several years ago when several motorcycle gangs gathered for a rally. While the event was monitored by local police agencies, few people in the area knew that it occurred.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence, which has become a serious problem in our community and our schools," he concluded. "The unfortunate thing is that it sometimes takes a ******* or a racial issue for people to get active."

"Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."
ANGER FROM ACTIVISTS

Not everyone is happy with the neutral attitude of law enforcement. Judy Lowenzahn of Traverse City thinks that local police agencies should get tough on the **** concert, which has no legally-required bond or liquor license.
"These hateful groups are using skinhead music to recruit soldiers for their facist movement," Lowenzahn said. "If they are allowed to hold this event, in violation of local, state and federal laws and in violation of common decency, we will be capitve audience to their deranged homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, sexist ideology. Those who protest this message, along with those who are their scapegoats will be targets for hate crimes."

Lowenzahn upbraided Grand Traverse County Sheriff Barr after he made comments in a local paper that "I'd just as soon personally let them have their little event and be on their way." Barr added that if there was a confrontation between the skinheads and protestors, "there's going to be someone in jail."

"Does Sheriff Barr suggest that people of color and others who don't fit the aryan model hide inside their homes for the holiday weekend?" Lowenzhan responded. "Rather than offer a plan to protect the community from the violence that grows whenever white supremecists do outreach, Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."

Northern Michigan targeted because of the predominantly white population
KLUELESS

Up to now, the vast majority of Northern Michigan residents have been klueless on the **** and the ******* movement. Many, for instance, had no idea that there even was a Ku Klux **** operating in the region until Neumann revealed that there are about 60 members operating mostly as "a fraternal organization" between ******* and the Mackinac Bridge.
Similarly, the existence and agenda of the National Alliance is all-ne
“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum
call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the rain came down THICK and
MEAN and
STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against
the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
from roofs
and there was HAIL
big ROCKS OF ICE
bombing
exploding smashing into things
and the rain
just wouldn't
STOP
and all the roofs leaked-
dishpans,
cooking pots
were placed all about;
they dripped loudly
and had to be emptied
again and
again.
the rain came up over the street curbings,
across the lawns, climbed up the steps and
entered the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the
toilets:bubbling, brown, crazy,whirling,
and all the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a
sunny day,
and the jobless men stood
looking out the windows
at the old machines dying
like living things out there.
the jobless men,
failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children
and their
pets.
the pets refused to go out
and left their waste in
strange places.
the jobless men went mad
confined with
their once beautiful wives.
there were terrible arguments
as notices of foreclosure
fell into the mailbox.
rain and hail, cans of beans,
bread without butter;fried
eggs, boiled eggs, poached
eggs; peanut butter
sandwiches, and an invisible
chicken in every ***.
my father, never a good man
at best, beat my mother
when it rained
as I threw myself
between them,
the legs, the knees, the
screams
until they
seperated.
"I'll **** you," I screamed
at him. "You hit her again
and I'll **** you!"
"Get that son-of-a-*******
kid out of here!"
"no, Henry, you stay with
your mother!"
all the households were under
seige but I believe that ours
held more terror than the
average.
and at night
as we attempted to sleep
the rains still came down
and it was in bed
in the dark
watching the moon against
the scarred window
so bravely
holding out
most of the rain,
I thought of Noah and the
Ark
and I thought, it has come
again.
we all thought
that.
and then, at once, it would
stop.
and it always seemed to
stop
around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
  drip
    drip
  

and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m.
there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
Van Gogh yellow-
crazy, blinding!
and then
the roof drains
relieved of the rush of
water
began to expand in the warmth:
PANG!PANG!PANG!
and everybody got up and looked outside
and there were all the lawns
still soaked
greener than green will ever
be
and there were birds
on the lawn
CHIRPING like mad,
they hadn't eaten decently
for 7 days and 7 nights
and they were weary of
berries
and
they waited as the worms
rose to the top,
half drowned worms.
the birds plucked them
up
and gobbled them
down;there were
blackbirds and sparrows.
the blackbirds tried to
drive the sparrows off
but the sparrows,
maddened with hunger,
smaller and quicker,
got their
due.
the men stood on their porches
smoking cigarettes,
now knowing
they'd have to go out
there
to look for that job
that probably wasn't
there, to start that car
that probably wouldn't
start.
and the once beautiful
wives
stood in their bathrooms
combing their hair,
applying makeup,
trying to put their world back
together again,
trying to forget that
awful sadness that
gripped them,
wondering what they could
fix for
breakfast.
and on the radio
we were told that
school was now
open.
and
soon
there I was
on the way to school,
massive puddles in the
street,
the sun like a new
world,
my parents back in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, "we won't have our
usual recess, the grounds
are too wet."
"AW!" most of the boys
went.
"but we are going to do
something special at
recess," she went on,
"and it will be
fun!"
well, we all wondered
what that would
be
and the two hour wait
seemed a long time
as Mrs.Sorenson
went about
teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little
girls, they looked so
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat still and
straight
and their hair was
beautiful
in the California
sunshine.
the the recess bells rang
and we all waited for the
fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson told us:
"now, what we are going to
do is we are going to tell
each other what we did
during the rainstorm!
we'll begin in the front row
and go right around!
now, Michael, you're first!. . ."
well, we all began to tell
our stories, Michael began
and it went on and on,
and soon we realized that
we were all lying, not
exactly lying but mostly
lying and some of the boys
began to snicker and some
of the girls began to give
them ***** looks and
Mrs.Sorenson said,
"all right! I demand a
modicum of silence
here!
I am interested in what
you did
during the rainstorm
even if you
aren't!"
so we had to tell our
stories and they were
stories.
one girl said that
when the rainbow first
came
she saw God's face
at the end of it.
only she didn't say which end.
one boy said he stuck
his fishing pole
out the window
and caught a little
fish
and fed it to his
cat.
almost everybody told
a lie.
the truth was just
too awful and
embarassing to tell.
then the bell rang
and recess was
over.
"thank you," said Mrs.
Sorenson, "that was very
nice.
and tomorrow the grounds
will be dry
and we will put them
to use
again."
most of the boys
cheered
and the little girls
sat very straight and
still,
looking so pretty and
clean and
alert,
their hair beautiful in a sunshine that
the world might never see
again.
and
Maggie Emmett Jul 2015
PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi
This poem is part of a longer poem called Seasons of Terror. This poem was performed at the University of Adelaide, Bonython Hall as a community event. The poem was read by local poets, broadcasters, personalities and politicians from the South Australia Parliament and a Federal MP & Senator. The State Premier was represented by the Hon. Michael Atkinson, who spoke about the role of the Emergency services in our society. The Chiefs of Police, Fire and Ambulence; all religious and community organisations' senior reprasentatives; the First Secretary of the British High Commission and the general public were present. It was recorded by Radio Adelaide and broadcast live as well as coverage from Channel 7 TV News. The Queen,Tony Blair, Australian Governor General and many other public dignitaries sent messages of support for the work being read. A string quartet and a solo flautist also played at this event.
again a visitation is made, billowing smoke in the bush
again a visitation is made, billowing smoke in the bush
water bombing dowsing the flames, timber stands charred
water bombing dowsing the flames, timber stands charred
billowing smoke in the bush, timber stands charred
again a visitation is made, water bombing dowsing the flames

soot black tones cover the mountains, summer fires fierce
soot black tones cover the mountains, summer fires fierce
respite not at hand, e'er the blazes keep searing
respite not at hand, e'er the blazes keep searing
respite not at hand, summer fires fierce
soot black tones cover the mountains, e'er the blazes keep searing

an ongoing trail of embers and flares, scarring the terrain
an ongoing trail of embers and flares, scarring the terrain
smouldering ashes left behind, destroying all in their path
smouldering ashes left behind, destroying all in their path
an ongoing trail of embers and flares, destroying all in their path
smouldering ashes left behind, scarring the terrain

summer fires fierce, scarring the terrain
an ongoing trail of embers and flares, e'er the blazes keep searing
respite not at hand, again a visitation is made
soot black tones cover the mountains, destroying all in their path
billowing smoke in the bush, timber stands charred
water bombing dowsing the flames, smouldering ashes left behind
afteryourimbaud Oct 2017
Kudos to Kaepernick.

I just cannot drown all my beliefs and ideas, even if it contradicts my flesh and soul. When I heard that not standing up to the tune; that has always succeeded on sweeping all of the messes underneath the sad reality, to be deemed as subversive, I know that Rosa would definitely clench onto the seat tighter than ever.

Kneel, my friend, kneel.

To drag our body out there, all over the precious hills and fields, while acting as if the scale has always been set fairly beneath you all this time, will hurt you more than myself. How can a mere matter of things decide our future, our destiny? We shall shape our fate, you shall shape your own fate, and to be judged on the perception biasedly built in the name of order for thousands of years, is a situation that should not be endured by anyone or anything in a tiny dot within this vast universe.

Kneel, my friend, kneel.

And for that, I cannot stand proudly and profess my love to you as of now, even though I will always wear my heart on my sleeve for you to see. To be cheated, to be manipulated, to be deemed as surplus, by those at the tip of the plateau, that cunningly asked us to forget all the tangles and wrangles for the love of this sacred land, while unashamedly distribute everything off the land, off the ocean amongst them, is the last thing that we should allow to happen. I am one of those people that are not able to put on the mask on top of our meant-to-be honest faces, to say hail to the thief is worse than the eternal grief. I have never dreamed of burying the hatchet with them, not even for a second and if I ever do it, I shall be condemned and dismissed for forgetting the roots, the fons et origo of mine. To love you does not mean to stand still to the soulless melodies, to love you does not mean to bow down to the meaningless piece of cloth that has overseen countless infiltration and bombing over the years.

Kneel, my friend, kneel.

To love you is to fight for the rights of many, by any means, even by not standing up. When black is no longer the symbol of miserable, filth and calamity, we shall then breath with ease, stand on our feet and fully embrace the real meaning behind all those majestic words.

Kudos to Kaepernick.
Big Virge Aug 2014
(Pt. III)

After the 7/7 bombing ...
This is part of a Trilogy of poems to remind people about
where some of their, " Anti-Islam Rhetoric ", started from ....
  
Well They've Made ....            
A ... REALLY Good Start … !!!!!            
            
They've Shot A Brazilian ... ?!?            
Straight Through His Heart ... !!!            
            
Of Course Those Words ...            
Are ... NOT Quite Right … !!! ? !!!            
            
He Was SHOT FIVE TIMES ..... !!?!!            
At POINT BLANK RANGE … !!!!!            
            
They Got REAL CLOSE … !!!            
Putting Guns IN HIS FACE … !!!!!!            
            
They CLAIMED ...            
            
"He had a bomb !" …            
            
But Alas They Got It WRONG ... !?!            
            
They Made A ... " Slight Mistake " … !!!            
            
Well Apologies WON'T Mean a lot ...            
When Friends Are At ... HIS WAKE ... !!!!            
            
There Is A PROBLEM Here ... !!!            
            
They've Given The ALL CLEAR ...            
For Policemen To ... “ SHOOT TO **** ” … !?!            
            
SO Who Now Has To Fear ... !?!            
            
Is it ... " WHITES " ... ???            
            
It Would Seem ... NOT ... ?!?            
  
“It’s Muslims and the other lot !”            
            
The ... " OTHER LOT " ... !?!            
Means Those Like ME ... !!!            
            
Young Black Men On London Streets ...            
So Much For Us Being ... FREE ... ?!!!?            
            
FREEDOM NOW Is ... OBSOLETE ... !!!            
            
Those With COLOUR WILL Now See ...            
Much MORE of Those ... " NICE POLICE " ... !!!!!            
            
Those Who Work For These MP's ...            
Who Claim To REGRET Such TRAGEDIES ...            
            
But STILL WON’T CHANGE Their Policies ... ?!!!?              
            
This Is Now A HORRID Time ... !!!            
Cos' Words Like These ...            
May Be ... DEFINED ... ???            
As ….. ” INCITEMENT ” …..            
  
When It's Just Rhyme ...            
            
This It Seems ...            
Is Their Design ...            
            
Pay CLOSE ATTENTION …            
To The ... Following Lines ... !!!            
  
“We wil imprison, or, deport !            
anyone attacking, the values of The West !"            
            
That's ... " Lord FALCONER "...            
Our Lord Chancellor …            
            
He'll Bring DISTRESS … !!!            
To Me I Guess .... ?            
            
For Things I Say ...            
AGAINST THE WEST … !!!            
            
Like ...  
  
Freedom of Speech ...  
Will Soon Be .... " DEAD " .....            
            
Now I DON'T Own ...            
A ... Bullet-Proof Vest ... !!!            
            
But Who Needs One ... ?            
When They're Aiming At HEADS ... !?!            
            
Instead of ... ARMS ...            
Or BETTER STILL ... " Legs " ... !!!            
            
These People Are ...            
Humanity's DREGS … !!!!!            
            
Their TERROR LAWS ...            
Are Like FISH NETS  .… !?!            
With ..... NO FISH ..… !!!!?!!!!            
            
But ….. ” HUMAN DEAD ” ….. !!!            
            
What They Say ...            
Makes Me UPSET … !!!            
            
Muslim THIS … !!!            
And Muslim THAT … !!!            
            
I’m NO MUSLIM ... !!!            
That's A FACT ... !!!            
            
Of Course It's WRONG ... !!!            
To ... " SUICIDE BOMB " .... !!!            
            
But ... " TWO WRONGS " ...            
DON'T Make Things Right ... !!!            
            
We're In DARK TIMES …            
WITHOUT ... Much Light … !!!            
When ALL WE DO Is Incite Fights ... ?!?            
            
Just Because of ... " STEREOTYPES ” … !?!            
            
This Is Why Innocents Will Die ... !!!            
Tears Will Flow While Many CRY … !!!            
            
Tears of SADNESS From This MADNESS ... !!!            
            
MADNESS On ...            
Your TV Screens ...            
            
MADNESS On ...            
Our City Streets ...            
            
Madness That ...            
Will Slowly ... " Creep " ...            
            
YES …..            
Close To YOU ... !!!            
            
And Close To Me ... !!!!            
            
DON'T DISMISS ...            
Cos' You've Been ... " Missed " ...            
            
At ANY TIME You Could Get HIT … !!!!            
            
By A Policeman ...            
Who Holds A GUN ... !!!            
  
And Has The ... " OK " ...            
To ... Make You RUN ... !!!!!            
            
Just Like REDNECKS ...            
Run From ..... “ SUN ” ….. !!!!!            
            
Or ... I Do From ...            
            
..... ” RACISM ” ..... !!!!!!            
            
That's Something .....            
I’ve Always SHUNNED … !!!!!            
            
Because I Like ...            
This Word HUMAN ... !!!!!            
            
If You Shoot Me With A Gun ...            
When I Bleed It's BLOOD That Runs ... !!!            
            
KILLING Is NO SOLUTION … !!!!!!            
            
They've Just KILLED Somebody's SON ... !!!!!            
            
That's What Comes From ...  
Using .... GUNS .... !!!!!            
            
NEEDLESS DEATHS …          
Rise Like The Sun ...            
While Peace Now Sinks ...            
Into ... " OCEANS " ... !!!            
            
This AIN'T Making Life Much Fun ... !!!            
            
Actually I'm Getting VEX ... !!!            
Cos' I’m Thinking ...            
            
Maaaaannnnnnnnnnn ……..            
            
... " WHO’S NEXT ?!? " ...
People, as much as it seems,
disconnected from, the 7/7 attacks.
One should recognise,
  
The ****** of Jean Charles De Menezes ...
  
Yeah ... Remember Him !!!
  
R.I.P.
  
It's CLEAR.
  
whether you believe, 7/7 was a Muslim,
Islamist attack, or not ?
  
What  has transpired since,
has shown that Terrorist actions,
are not something that, Muslims
have total ownership of ...............
  
Hate, leads to terror, and
******, is an act of ... TERRORISM.
Chew the water, and don't breathe the air
You weave Apocalypse in your loom
You paint Armageddon on your easel
Black watercolour
Made from human ash
Bombing in the microwave
The embers will die, and the winds will cease
Like the fingernails of a corpse
Trudge into malevolent oblivion
Convinced by the impotent fallacy of happiness;
Generation Nuclear Apathy
Generation Destiny Liquidation
...And the minute counter ticks away...
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock

Eliot was wrong
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
Not with a whimper
But a bang.
The Crimea-situation and military mobilization has the doomsday clock ticking down to World War III, and a slight tingling fear creeps up my spine.
RAJ NANDY Jul 2015
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR
            BY RAJ NANDY: PART ONE

                   INTRODUCTION
  “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
         Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
        Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.”
      -by Wilfred Owen, British Army Lt. killed in
        action in France on 04th Nov 1918.

The Socialists called it the ‘Imperialist’s War’,
and it was the ‘Trench War’ for the soldiers;
But Europe hailed it as ‘The War to End All Wars’,                
Expecting it to end prior to 1914’s Christmas!
But alas, it soon became a mighty global war
fueled by national and ethnic aspirations and
territorial lust!
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir
to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, -
On the 28thof June 1914 at Sarajevo, was the
spark which triggered off this great catastrophe!
During 1876 when German Chancellor Bismarck
was asked about chances of an European War at
a future date;
He felt that Europe was like a big store house of
gunpowder keg!
While pointing to the volatile BALKANS he had said,
That European leaders were smoking in an arsenal,
where a small spark could cause a mighty explosion!
And 38 years later the world had witnessed,
Bismarck’s unfortunate prediction!
This war ended on 11th of November 1918, after a
four and half year’s long duration;
With 16.5 million military and civilian deaths, and
many more wounded and missing in action!
For the War had spread beyond the traditional
killing fields,
Killing many innocent civilians following the
bombing raids by German Zeppelins!
Now, before proceeding further some background
information here becomes necessary,
To understand the socio-political events leading
to the unfolding of this Great War Story!

         PRELUDE TO THE GREAT WAR
The Nationalistic fervor aroused by Napoleon,
And the February Revolution of 1848 in France,
Inspired Europe’s inhabitants to preserve their
ethnic and racial identities, without leaving
things to chance!
The Italian and German unification, and the
Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian polarization,
Aroused the expectations of the Slavic people,
Who remained spread all over Central and
Eastern Europe!
The various ethnic groups forming the Slavic race,
Always dreamt of an independent Balkan State!

         CAUSES FOR ‘THE GREAT WAR’
Imperialism, Nationalism, Militarization, Alliances,
and finally the assassination of the Archduke
Ferdinand,
Are the five main causes for this war, which is
generally mentioned by our Historians!
However, I shall now try to acquaint you briefly,  
With some relevant events from our recorded
History.

BRITISH IMPERIALISM:
Towards the turn of the 20th century Britain was
the dominant global imperial power;
And since the mid-19th Century it was seen that
the sun never set over the British Empire!
The British had a vast mercantile and a naval fleet,
To trade with, and administer their far flung colonies.
At the turn of the 20th Century the British Navy was
changing over from steam to oil power like other
big nations;
So the oil fields of the Middle East was important
for British militarization.
Also passage through the Suez Canal was vital for
maintaining their colonial possessions!
These facts will get linked up in Part Two of my
later composition!

GERMAN NATIONALISM:
The nationalistic fervor aroused in Germany
since Chancellor Bismarck’s days,
Made the Germans try to outstrip the British
in many ways!
This fervor was reflected in Goethe’s poetry and
through Richard Wagner’s musical notes;
Between 1898 and 1912 five Naval Laws were
passed in the German Reichstag, by majority
votes,
For building battleships, cruisers, and 96 torpedo
boats;
Which later became a scourge for Allied and
British shipping, known as the U-Boats!
The German nationalism and militarization went
hand in hand during those days,
While her industrialization also progressed at a
rapid pace.
Kaiser Wilhelm II had sought “a place in the sun”
by trying to outstrip the British in the arms race!
Statistic show more number of German scientists
had received the Noble Prize for their inventions,
Between this period and World War- II, when
compared with the combined winners of other
Western nations!

AUSTRIA-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY:
In 1867 by a comprising agreement between
Vienna and Budapest the capital cities,
The Austro-Hungarian kingdom became a Dual
Monarchy!
Many ethnic groups had composed this Monarchy
in those early days as we see;
With Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, and Slavic
people like the Czechs, Poles, Croats, Slovaks,
Serbs, and the Slovenes!
While the Austrian Officers of this Monarchy spoke
German, the majority of the soldiers were Hungarians,
Czechs, Slovaks, who never spoke German!
So the soldiers were taught 68 single-words of
German commands,
For the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army to function
collectively as one!
While Francis Joseph their sovereign and emperor,
aspired to become a strong centralized European
power.
But out of the 50 million people of this Monarchy
around 23 million were Slavs,
Who always dreamed of an independent Slavic
Kingdom in the Balkans!

THE BALKANS & THE KINGDOM OF SERBIA
After the Iberian and the Italian peninsulas of
Europe, the BALKAN peninsular is seen to be
lying in Europe’s extreme south east, -
South of the Danube and Sava River, bounded
in the west by the Adriatic and Ionian Sea.
In the east is the Aegean and Black Sea,
With the Mediterranean Sea in the south, -
washing the tip formed by Greece with its many
islands around!
Now much of the Balkan areas were under the
Ottoman Empire since early 14th Century;
And here I cut across many centuries of past
European History!
Following a series of revolutions since 1804
against the Turks,
The Principality of Serbia was carved out in the
area of the Balkans!
A new constitution in 1869 defined it as an
independent State of Serbia;
Was internationally recognized at the Treaty
of Berlin in 1878, to later become the Kingdom
of Serbia!
This kingdom was located south adjoining the
Monarchy of Austro-Hungarians, much to their
annoyance those days,
Since the Kingdom of Serbia was looked upon
as a ‘beacon of liberty’ by the Southern Slavic
race!

THE BOSNIAN CRISIS (1908-1909)  
This dual provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina
in the Balkans,
Were formally under the control of the
Ottoman Sultan.
With permission of the Congress of Berlin in
1878, it was administered by Austria-Hungary;
Though the legal rights remained with Turkey!
But the Slavic population present there had
Nationalistic ambitions,
Aspired to join the Slavs in nearby Kingdom of
Serbia, to form a pan-Slavic nation!
The Slavic population in Austria-Hungary, also
entertained such dreams wistfully!
Now in 1908 a ‘Young Turk Movement’ based
at Macedonia,
Had planned to replace the absolute Turkish
rule in Bosnia!
And by modernizing the Constitution hoped
to rejuvenate the sick Ottoman Empire.
These developments set alarm bells ringing
in Austrian capital Vienna!
So on the 6th of October 1908 they quickly
annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina!
After having lost a war with Japan, and following
an internal Revolution of 1905 the Russians,
Prevented an escalation by staying out of the
Bosnian Crisis!
But the annexation of Bosnia had angered the
Serbs greatly,
So they started to train secret terrorist groups to
liberate Bosnia from Austria-Hungary!
These terrorist groups operated in small cells,
Under the leadership of Col. Dimitrijevic, also
known as the ‘Apis’ those days.
Now, a secret cell called the ‘Black Hand’ operated
in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo with Gavrilo
Princep as one of its members;
Who was trained and equipped in Serbia along
with other ‘Black Hand’ members.
The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had remained
distressed about these subversive activities by
the Slavic race!
So in Jan 1909 they obtained the unconditional
support from Germany, in the event of a war
with Serbia even if Austria was the aggressor!
And also secretly hoped in a war to annex
Serbian territory!
For in the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913,
Serbia had greatly extended its territory to
become a powerful adversary!
Serbia had also obtained an assurance from
its protector Russia, should a war break out with
Austria!
Now, as tension mounted upsetting the delicate
balance of power in the Balkans gradually,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife Sophie,
planned to visit Sarajevo from Austria-Hungary!
It was a God sent moment for the secret
organization the ‘Black Hand’,
To plan the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand!

THE ASSASSINATION: SARAJEVO 28TH JUNE 1914
Now when I look back in time I pause to wonder,
How such an amateurish assassination plot could
have ever succeeded,
Without the cruel hands of destiny and fate!
The 28th of June was a bright summer’s St. Vitus
Day and a holiday in Serbia;
And also the 14th marriage anniversary of Franz
Fernandez and his wife Sophia!
Several assassins were positioned along the route,
Which was to be taken by the Archduke!
While the motorcade proceeded to the Town Hall
a bomb was thrown,
Which bounced off the rear of Archduke’s car,
Injuring few bystanders and a passenger in the
rear car!
The Archduke however refused to cancel his trip,
Saying that it was the act of some lunatic!
After completion of the Town Hall ceremony, the
Archduke wanted a change of plan deviating from
the laid down route;
By wanting to visit the patients in the hospital,
Injured by the bomb which had struck his cars
rear hood!
But the Czech driver was not briefed and took
a wrong turn by mistake;
Reversed trying to correct himself, stalled the car
stoppling next to Gavrilo Princep!
Presenting Princep with a stationary target, a
cruel work of destiny and fate!
Prince pulled out his pistol and fired two shots  
at a point blank range, killing both Ferdinand
and  wife Sophie;
When Ferdinand cried out ‘’Sophie, Sophie,
don’t die, live for the children’’, - words which
now remain enshrined in History!

TRIAL OF PRINCEP & THE CONSPIRATORS
The trial began in a military court on 12th of
October at Sarajevo,
With three judges and no jury, when Princep
pleaded 'Not Guilty'!
Killing of Duchess Sophie was an unplanned
accident,
Since he wanted to **** the Governor instead!
He claimed to be a Serbian nationalist working
for the unification of the Slavic race,
and detested the annexation of Bosnia by the
Austo-Hungarians!
Along with 15 other accused, Princep was found
guilty of high treason;
But being underage, was sentenced to 20 years
labour in prison.
But died three year's later from tuberculosis!

           CONCLUDING PART ONE
  ''Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
   There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
   But dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold."
      -Rupert Brook, part of the British Naval Expeditionary
       Force, buried in Skyros, Greece 1914.
Now, looking back over a hundred years in
hindsight I do realize,
That this assassination was not the immediate
cause or the spark which triggered this War,
But only an excuse and a pretext for the
Austro-Hungarians to carve up Serbia,
And distribute those territories between
Allies and friends of Austria;
Also enhance the prestige of their Empire!
Since the war had commenced almost two
months after the Archduke’s assassination,
Austria had lost the high moral ground for
vengeance with righteous indignation!
It was a cynical and a predetermined plan
of Austria in connivance with Germany,
To destroy Serbia and squash the hopes of
Slavic people for a pan-Slavic State, - as we
now get to see!
This war ended with the dissolution of four old
Empires of the Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans,
Tsarist Russians, and the Germans!
While new nations of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,
Austria, and Hungary, got created from the
dissolved Empire of Austria-Hungary.
Russia gave up lands creating Finland, Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania.
The Ottomans gave up lands in SW Asia and the
Middle East, and in Europe retained only Turkey!
Thus this Great War had creating new nation states,
And gave Europe its new revamped face!
Composed by Raj Nandy of New Delhi,
Thanks for reading patiently!
   TO BE CONTINUED LATER AS PART TWO
**ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR
Dear Readers, this is a product of three weeks of my research work, put across in simplified verse! Hope to compose Part Two at a later date, and tell you about trench warfare & the poems composed about this War! On the 28th of June 2015, 101 years of this First World War was completed! Kindly give Comments only after reading in your spare time, for this Great War  took place during our grandfather's time! Thanks! -Raj
Build in a very humble way
Its architecture redolent of Europe,
Plain and honest in structure,
The vestibule at the entrance
Replete with old hardbound books
Dust covering the jackets
In their agony of human oblivion,
Every section has shelves under lock
Only to be open on permitted access.

Located in the desert like an oases,
But the desert of readers not waters,
But like any other oasis, it is useful,
At most to the genuine users.

There are books and books all over,
Windows only open after adjustment,
You start at the door step with classics,
Indian, European, American and global classics,
I pumped into Leo Tolstoy at the first glance,
Finely juxtaposed; Anne Karenina after War and peace.

I opened war and peace and I chanced on Napoleon
Then thrill of intellect and bliss of art
Began flowing into my guts like a river
I kept on wandering why Leo Tolstoy
Never became a Christian sub religion,
To be added to the two testaments,
For it to begat the post-modern holy Bible.

My physical peregrination of the hand
Led me to a vase of rosy wine
Its intellectual whiff surpassing all,
The psalms of David and songs of songs
This was nothing but precious discovery;
A thousand Rubiyats of Omar Khayyam
The shoulder of wisdom and love of God
The hero of Sufism and demystifier of heaven,
When in fact I came unto his 69th Rubiyat;
I have heard people say
that those who love wine are ******.
That can't be true, that clearly is a lie.
For if lovers of wine and love are bound for hell,
heaven would be quite empty!

I chewed and chewed fortune out of Rubiyats,
I went through all the thousand Rubiyats,
Only hot Sun and desert sand storms of Lodwar
Are my witnesses among the myriads of bystanders
As life of a reader is similar to the life a writer,
They both derive energy from solitude’s power.

I moved on again to Alfred Jarren
The son of France, the father of mystery;
Pataphysics the science of fantasy
It has the realm beyond metaphysics,
His survey of pataphorical world
Has remained witchcraft
Beyond my simple soul’s grasp.

Paradox is one other worldwide wonder
As I look at an illiterate Turkana Man,
Guarding the library, club in his hand,
His ever week from stubborn hunger,
His sires never go to school, perhaps culture
I looked at him often in my pause for muse,
Why guard knowledge that you can’t use?

I again came upon the Quran
I read it voraciously over and again,
In expectation of great knowledge
Always making Muslims to be noisy,
I have found nothing great in the Quran,
Only regular subversions of Biblical grammar,
Let Muslims sober up to respect Jesus Christ,
His sermon on the Mountain is perfectly enough
as an impeachment to crazed pataphoricals
That Muslims often dare the world with.

I read the Bible again in repetition
Of what I had did ten years ago,
I read psalms, Job and Isaiah,
Gospels and epistles are more nice,
Chronicles and Habakkuk are so dull,
Lamentations are somber poems,
Revelations are esoteric lies,
Kings and Samuel full of chauvinism,
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are mere clichés
My idea is; mankind can fear God
Minus Jewish intervention.

Now I chanced upon The synagogue of Satan,
A book written by one other crazy American,
His name is Andrew Hitchcock Crichton,
The book is long and spellbinding,
Having historical facts from early centuries,
Chronicling mysterious growth of Jewish empire,
Arranging facts one after another
Dismissing Bush’s anger against Arabs,
Over the bombing of the twin towers
When they are the Jews who Bombed America
As a decoy to induce American wrath,
Thus twin towers bombing was Jewish war ploy
To put Arabs into a rat’s corner.

I came across one funny book
Written by a Indian sage
Its title was Secrets of ***
From male perspective,
I don’t liked the book
For its prurient content,
But to my sad chagrin it was the most read
Its leaves were dog eared and use worn
I spied into the rumour about its tearing,
T it was a hot cake among nuns and priests
Presently living at Lodwar cathedral.

You could also wonder my dear brother
Why a Christian library has works of Marx?
This was my muse as I read Karl Marx,
I mean everything written by Karl Marx,
From Das Kapita to Germany Philosophy,
Selected works to Poverty of philosophy,
18th Brumaire to Integral calculus,
The Manifesto to the letters,
I read Karl Marx as if I was in Russia,
I wondered why Catholics are Liberal
They fear not those who contradict them.

The Holy Grail is visibly placed
In fact at right hand corner,
At the far end on your entrance
I chose to read it
Because of its voluminousity,
The book is about ****** life
Of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene,
This book shares out that;
One time Jesus was found hiding,
Kissing Mary Magdalene, the Grail
In the most affectionate manner ever.

The catholic Library at Lodwar is bad news
It swallowed me like waters of Indian Ocean,
It is located at place called Lokiriama,
It was established by Bishop Mahoni
One other man deserving my respect
He was humble and catholically wise,
Very intelligent and consciously bookish,
His mission was to make the Turkana people
A modern community, but he failed,
He was so disappointed to his hilt
He transferred to the Archdioceses of New-York
Where he began facing problems of the law
On allegations of him being a *******,
I curse the devil for such temptations.

I did meet Yan Martel in this dome of books
His famous book; Life of Mr. Pi
It was my eye opener?
It transformed me from a village bumpkin
To a modern reader of global literature,
I read this book amid my fear of Tigre
But I was thrilled, to my bone marrow
When the main character drunk the blood,
Warm salty blood of the sea turtle.

I got another book with folded pages,
At its mid was the red book marker
Baring the name of the respected priest,
The book was entitled; How to excel as
A ****-******, chapter one focused on gays
Chapter two  focused on lesbians,
But the rest of the book was all homosexuality,
In nothing else, but rosiest terms.

On such encounters I once again went back,
To re-read 89th Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam
It has the following quatrain to echo;
Looking for peace on earth? Foolishness.
Believing in eternal calm? Foolishness.
Once dead your sleep will be short. You may
be reborn as a clump of weeds that will be
trodden underfoot, or as a flower that
will wither in the sun's heat.

African writers were stuffed on one shelve
Labeled African books of English expressions,
But on my request to the project manager,
His name was Peter Kebo, he was Flamboyant
And physically indifferent to Turkana poverty,
We agreed with him to rename the shelves
As; African literature in English Language,
Nobel Laureates are in this section;
Soyinka, Lessing, Coatze and Gordimer
Not forgetting the Egyptian literary tiger
In the name of Mahfouz or Maguiz
I clearly don’t know,
Sembene Ousmane is also here
I read him again for the fourth time,
It’s when I found out the simple truth,
That God’s bits of wood, translates as;
The wretched of the earth,
I read Lessing’s Grass is singing,
She likes ***,
I read Gordimer’s July’s people,
She likes menstrual blood,
I read everything here
As published by James Currey
In his Africa writes back,
I also read the White African Nobelite
Joshua Maxwell Coetzee
He is a wizard of Narrative literature,
I read his life of Mr. K.
I found amusing plots and amusing themes,
I also read Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow
It is nice; Ngugi is still fighting dictatorship,
Not physically but in a metaphysical manner.

I was again lucky enough
To chance on Caribbean literature,
Is when I read Vitian S Naipaul
The humourist Marxist of Marxists,
I read his Mr. Biswas’s house,
With avidness of an aphrodisiac cur,
His characters like taking a long time
In the toilets, Naipaul is good,
I again chanced on George Flamming
In the Castle of my skin
Caribbean literature stinks of slavery
And counter-slavery.

My landing to the shelve of Latin America,
Was a total blessing; Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Stood out like tor of literature among others,
I began with his Big Maria’s Funeral,
Then I moved on to Love in Times of Cholera,
And then You Can’t Write to the Colonel,
As I spiced my intellect with Melancholic *****,
Then finally I revisited his Stories from Africa
And the Hundred Years of Solitude,
The following morning when I came back,
I read in the newspaper that;
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is dead!
It was sad and poor of me, I mourned him
With long essays and somber poetry,
Then I fell in love with the literatures
of Spanish origin in language sense,
I read Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda
From Octavio I enjoyed coda,
Between Coming and Going and so on,
Neruda thrilled me with his sense of Marx
Especially his poem; on burying the dog.

European classics section arrested me
I never easily moved out of there,
I chanced on ****** and annals of Goebbels,
Reading Russians like Tolstoy,Chenkov,
Gorky, Gogol and Shelynetsyn was lively,
Chewing Shakespeare from cover to cover
Not spearing Pushkin nor Homer,
Victor Hugo was a relish. Emile Zola
And Maugham, I too enjoyed…

Then my holiday in Lodwar was finally over,
But I am soon going back for my Xmas,
I will directly go back to the European section,
I also remember having come by;
The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie,
I will have to  re-read it with passion,
It is my prayer that this time comes
For I to resume my holy duty
In the Catholic Library at Lokiriama
In Lodwar Dioceses of Turkana County
In the Savannah desert in North West
Regions of my country Kenya.
As I stand before the mountain of confidence called hope, I see a clear path up, not too steep, not too straight, but this path is embodied with rewards to the top.

At the top, there is a magnificent tree made of gold, silver leaves and Copper roots. Hope mountain held a perfect prize awaiting me, a Tree called Faith.
This sight to behold was everything I wanted, everything before me was so clear, but at the bottom where I was, there was a River.

This River was called Shame.
This river was filthy, the water was calm where I was, but looking downstream I could see the rapids of rage, the ripples of conditioning before the raging rapids were inviting.

The dreary stonewalling fortification on the banks allowed no light through, downstream was scary and looked impossible, why would I go that way? why even look?
I looked upstream and saw a blinding light, what could this be? I was so curious, so I waited, a true gentleman always waits.

Two days later the light took shape, as it came closer I could finally see, I could see a lifeboat with a caring nurturing beautiful woman.

As this beautiful woman came closer, I could see the river was being supplied by this woman, I could see she was the source.

The river of Shame was being fed by this woman, this filth in front of me was coming from her, but the beauty was something I've never seen, this beauty had me curious.

This beauty made me forget of the supply to the river.
  What I saw wasn't real all the sudden, what I believed was now real.
She came close enough for my heart to be heard, since she had no heart she was envious, she hated what others admired.

She wanted my wholesome heart, so she used her falsehood love bombing to create one, dreamingly admiring the mountain, we were planning different paths right then.
As I stared at the golden Tree of Faith glowing upon Hope mountain, I didn't notice the river was rising, as the numbing waters were rising it covered my feet, I didn't notice she also took a piece of my heart to claim as her own.

She used toxic gas and light to create a projection that this heart was hers to give back to me.

I didn't know any better so I accepted this ambient abused heart, this unfelt abuse gave me amnesia, this hidden poison of my cognitive dissonance gave her all of me.

Since she had nothing and that's what she craves, I had everything so she wanted to enslave.
I forget about the mountain with the tree even being there. I forgot I was here.

Her lifeboat was awkward, it was shaky,
it has imperfections, it has holes,
   her lifeboat is sinking,
     her heart is missing.
my knightly kind hearted empathy,
   my buffering and nurturing sympathy         pick this beautiful woman up
      I pick this gem up because of her idealization of me.
I can clean this insidious gem because she makes me believe, but through the veil I cannot see.
I throw her over my shoulder to carry all her weight, it's hard to move, hard to breathe, building a new boat was extremely hard, carrying her pain was extremely hard.

Everyone thought it was impossible to do it, my shear will power to commit ****** one foot in front of the other, I just didn't know that going downstream was impossible.

What about the mountain?

I couldn't remember from the amnesia, the dark night blinded my sight of the mountain, the drug in me was you and it consumed, i fell in love with misery and misery loves it's companies.

I stared the snake behind the veil in the eyes, standing tall on her pedastool made of spackle it breaks, I fall onto piercing confusion, I pull out shrapnel's of dissolution, I'm covered in her blood of invalidation.

I'm already floating in the boat with her, this wasn't my plan, this wasn't my reality.
I gaze upon this woman, sun shining behind her, no clouds in the sky.
floating downstream she tells me it's faster, that we'll end up behind the mountain higher.

I'm not worried now, I'm now contempt with shame.
I already forgot reality, I already forgot i'm going downstream, I forgot the searing pain, I forgot what I believe.

I'm relaxed, I'm tired, I'm still happy in love with this spellbound misery.

As we drift slowly through the stonewalls, no light shines through, I ask her for assurance, it's getting dark, I'm getting scared.

That's when the veil comes off, that's when the unnatural beauty grows quiet, that's when my voice screams silently within these stone walls.

This isn't her, this isn't real,
I know there's love I can feel, that was our bond, that was our deal, not to steal.

I fall over board and the water is cold, there's leaches, the debris is so random, the shameful water is moving faster, the all consuming cold confusion, random gaslighting and triangulations moving in around me faster.

I immediately can't bear it. My heart pulsates hard, my mind misfires my flight mode, i cannot intake the overbearingly unowned toxic Shame, her coldness activated my fawn mode, I froze, I start to doze.

luckily she had my leg, luckily she knew excessive admiration CPR, just as my body went limp in the agonizing River of Shame, she pulls me out. luckily she got me just in time, luckily she saved my life.

I awoke away from the stonewalls, it's sunny and safe again, we're together through impossible odds, we built this boat and she saved my life.

The abuse amnesia made me forget, the cognitive dissonance was real, I am not.

The mountain was now farther away, I was worried, I grew fearful, what I wanted looked farther away, that's when everything became gloomy, my goal was no longer there, but she didn't care, she knew where the river went, I believed her, I still do.

The ambient abuse made me anxious, the atmosphere was maddening of fear, it carried anxiety, I couldn't see it, but I was breathing it in.

Her eyes were so incapacitating, her heart disorienting, her soul captivating, she had a better plan, for us to press on and build another boat, to add another life, to believe in her, to not stare at the knife.

We build another boat, were out of the shame waters finally, she's helping me, were soon to be a real family, but the only thing real here was me.

Everything is better on the land, were dry, it's sunny, it's better to feel the nirvanic sand. It's here we bring our new seed, to be sprouted downstream.

I now believe in this new mountain downstream, I don't even remember the mountain I seen, were pressing on downstream past a levy, were now in the River of Grief, we're off to the end of make believe.

This river is really turbulent with rapids of devaluation, the splashes make me irrelevant, the dinigrating actions around make me small, I feel lost and confused, nothing makes sense anymore at all.

At the mouth of the River of Grief it opens up into a valley. She jumped onto a rock of vanity and pushed the tree of disloyalty upon the boat.

This throws me out head first, but luckily I have our seed safe and sound, luckily I learned how to drown.

I turn around falling and see her at the top staring down, she smirked and throws enormously heavy anvils of bereavement to make me fall harder, to keep me down longer.

Evil is real, but only if you believe, I crave the flattery of illusionary love, I still had amnesia, I love misery, the feeling reminds me I can feel, I love my slow death so I say I'll find you, I have the seed, I'll wait for you.

As I fall the thorns of numbing premeditation pierce, the pain is searing, as I fall i'm locked on her, my falsehood of love is still enduring, I don't feel the discard, I ignore the distaste.

I land in a field of hopium still protecting the seed, my amnesia is now worse, I can't remember her smirk, I can't remember the weighted anvils of bereavement, I can't remember the tree of disloyalty, I still can't remember the mountain.

My movement is heavy like concrete, my heart sits down at my feet, my mind is nowhere to be found, my spirit is fading on this ground.

I gather everyone from a nearby village to find her, it's impossible, they can't see her, she never existed, my amnesia was now delusional, the hopium mixed realities, nothing was real, there was nothing I could truly feel because everything was wrong, but I believe misery needs me and I yearned.

I say she's at the top, we have to throw her a rope,
they say it won't reach what isn't there,
I say we need a ladder to throw the rope, they say the ladder isn't safe that high.
  
I say everyone can hold the ladder while I climb perilously to the top, they say it will never work, but since they can see me, since they see a part of me is still real, everyone holds the ladder for me.
      
While I acend with my broken dignity, I acend with a fatigued heart, I acend to find what I believe, no matter how hard I try, I will be taking my destined decent.

The top of the ladder is shaky, I spent forever getting there, it's scary, the heights bring great fear over me, more than I've ever felt, but my knighthood makes me overcome anything.

I suppress, the seed is safe down below, I'm here to impress, I can see her now, only much less.

Her snake skin is peeling, the sun scorched blistering skin shows immense pain, witnessing this releases empathy, the caring knighthood in me naturally wanted to save her again.

So I wrap what's left of my discarded soul upon my broken fatigued heart and I use my trauma bonded mind as bait.

I throw her the rope,
she catches the rope,
I tell her to tie off the rope,
she ties a noose with the rope,
her neck is now wrapped with this rope.

If she falls I can't stop the tightening of the rope, if she falls I already know I'll jump for her and release from her neck this rope.

We jump together and I release the rope around her neck, I see the ground coming fast, but I love this snake, I'll die for this snake because I believe, false beauty inside is all I see.

I grab her and turn her away from the rushing ground, I fell once, I can take the fall again.

She is already hurt, immense pain, she will not feel no more pain, because I'm not hurting for I'm with misery again, I believe I can take all the pain for her, the hopium was numbing everything I consumed.

I awoke to a distressed angel, flawed personality, beautiful nightmare, mirroring the devil, but what I saw was a veil over the snake eyes, what I saw was what I believed before.

What I had wasn't real, who I am is no longer there, for I had ambience amnesia, nothing around me fit, nothing around me was grounded, nothing around me was divine.

The eyes that gazed upon me were captivating, spriling, time froze and only she was moving, the feeling was there, a drug within me, the drug was her and I longed for the misery, I yearned for the pain to remember what was real, I needed the intermittent reinforcement, I wanted my all bets in investment back and I risked a short sale.

We faded into the black, into a new boat, she made this boat, she had plugs in  holes of the boat I couldn't see, I believed it was perfect, I didn't know what awaited was a life long anguish.

I still didn't know what was downstream is impossible, I didn't know this new River of Anguish has piranhas of triangulation, I didn't know the rapids were of oppression, I didn't know the rocks causing these rapids she already put in place, I didn't know it was so black around me in this place, I didn't know my seed would become two, I didn't know I would have to choose.

I didn't know true love was in front of me in my hands and not behind the veil, I thought it was her, all the villagers knew, but as I drew closer to the snake the darkness only grew and the seeds too.

The feeling of my lingering mortality reverberates, she built me a coffin and chained it to my ankles, with this immense weight, I carry it with me just in case.

We floated very fast down this River of Anguish, everything seemed fine to all others including me, the darkened skies covered the evil, the cold waters made my body numb, the seeds were held up high to be be safe from the tormenting waters.

As I held them up high, I didn't realize she was still holding the schraded butcher knife in the water, I didn't believe she would hurt me, I didn't conceive the possibility that knife I didn't see was there all along for me.

The waters of Anguish smothered me, the triangulating piranhas slowly nibbled on my feet in the water, the rapids of oppression kept me gazing in the water, the rocks of malice in the water tried to tip me over, but my balance was true and the seeds were safe from harm, but I am not safe, I'm dying inside.

I don't know why, but after every agonizing stab from this knife when I'm not looking, it hurts, but the numbing knife only helped me when it was pulled out, it has holes in the knife so she could pull it out without me knowing.

I always turned around and cleaned the knife covered in my blood, I always gave it back to her, but every wipe upon this blade made it grow, and every wipe made the label on the handle more clear.

I find out in the end this knife is called narcissistic rage, the brand of this knife is called gaslighting and my blood is the supply.

I didn't know any of this until it was too late to save myself, my reality wasn't real, my dreams are gone, my nightmare is all consuming and existent, my seeds are still safe, but I am not.

When I start to notice the knife exists, I forgive her, the conditioning made the skies darker, I wipe the blood off and give it back, the knife is now a sword, it's name is discard.

The waters are uneven, the piranhas of triangulation feel like strangulation, my clothes are still soaking wet with anguish, my hair is slimy and covered in Shame, my feet are cold and numb from the grief.

I can't understand why I'm here,
  I can't understand why I'm actually meant to be here.
  
Every turbulence has thrown me down, she pushes me over head first, as I try to lean up to breathe she has her foot on my neck in the cold numbing river, but this river does not affect her, this river is warmer than her, the warmth from anguish pleased her, the piranhas followed her commands to bite, she smirked as the rocks she placed crushed against my head.

She waited until I went limp every time, but she knew idealization CPR, her deceit was without compassion, her rage was without sympathy, but I had severe ambience abuse amnesia, I still couldn't remember the mountain, I am now trauma bonded from the stabs she's counting.

I only saw her veil, her gaze convinced me I placed these rocks here, her gaze made me ignore the stonewalls around me, her pure hatred was covered in false intentions, her illusion was my isolation.

As everything was becoming clearly dangerous, as everything went pitch black, I look back and see the light from the mountain glowing, I see there is something wrong where I'm at, I see the seeds are not growing, I start to see the pain all around me.

Non the wiser, I keep coming back from drowning, I keep falling for misery, I keep wiping my blood off the blade, I keep isolated, but now I feel there is something painfully wrong, the reason abates me but I feel it, it hurts, it's camouflaged by deceit, it's all in my head, my coffin is soon to be my bed.

I look to the shores, there are other villagers worried, they are waving frantically, they're pointing at a waterfall ahead, this waterfall is called Doom, this fall would be death, the sound is raging, the mouth all consuming.

I see the stream to the side that the villagers are pointing to, I see the calm waters awaiting our safety, but the boat will not fit.

Only me and the seeds are real, everything else around me is illusional, the trauma delusional, the possible harm to the seeds was not refutable, my love for misery was unsuitable.

I could see my life was in danger, I could see the stream nearby screaming safety, I knew the seeds needed me, now I can't stop shaking.

Without her knowing what I was doing, I turned my back towards her facing the water, I knew she was going to stab me over and over again until I turned around, I now see the hypnotic eyes behind the veil. Not turning around only enraged her, the blood on the knife was condesating.

  The safety of the stream for my seeds was a new found glory in my exodus.
  
I paddled with my small hands this large weighted boat towards the stream, her knife was venomous, the water was echoless, the air imparted dreadfulness, all of this was dimensionless, all of this was not real, unless I let it be, now I can see, now I can finally flee.

As I came closer to the stream the waterfall grew stronger, the pain larger, the sound louder, I knew we were closer to the end, I knew I needed to jump off with my seeds, but I know the torment will end.

I melted my enduring pain inside with molten lava heartache to mold anew, I compartmentalize because I have to choose.

I had a vision that if I jump, the seeds will be safe, the climb to the mountain can still happen, I knew I was right about how I felt all along, I realized the veil couldn't cover the true self, I now believed In me.

I now know the water air and land were not what she made me believe, I knew I didn't choose this path, I knew I could survive, I know the seeds are going to be safe now. I know because I manifested instead of throwing in the towel.

Once close enough I finally looked at her and smiled I love you, jumping into the river I could feel the bitter cold agonizing tormenting river smash me with bereavement and disillusion by dissociation, I felt the coma of trauma surround, for I am now trauma bound.

I hold my seeds up high, I kept them safe because they don't feel the water, they're starting to sprout already, no more decay.

As I climb out of the frigid waters and still dripping wet, the drops are red, my feeling is coming back, my back is full of knives, I'm scared but I survived.
Knowing the worst is over I look back to her, she is consuming the river because she was the source, everything dark folds in on itself because the light cannot touch here, for this black hole is collapsing in on itself, I cover the seeds to shield them of this exorcist, they're safe here because my love is relentless.

The tormenting pain makes it hard to stand tall, still going through bereavement of a false reality where I lost it all, the answers we're all lost in the waterfall
"" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" ”"" "" "" "”" "" ""
Jordan Rowan Nov 2015
Send my dreams to the paper press
I've got too much to confess
This whole mind is a mess
And it's mine
It's all I could find
As I was spending too much time
Screaming and crying

**** my brothers in the Middle East
Let their souls be released
As the mongrel dogs have a peaceful feast
On our blood
Down in the mud
When it's someone you don't love
You don't even shrug

Break my bones over color pride
Don't you see what I have inside?
For my thoughts, I must die
Or else I'm a joke
Lost within the smoke
If I'm not rich then I must be broke
A dying man unknown

Make the streets a place of peace
Instead of hate and bombing grease
Power only makes us weak
To ourselves
To you and myself
Take a long look at yourself
And you can tell

The morning comes and someone's gone
Sent away to a funeral song
They lost their life being young
And still bright
Now they only see the night
As their mother tries to sleep at night
Without life

I'm dead and gone someday soon
But still I love each sun and moon
As they pass over my room
I kneel down
I start to look around
I start to love everything I've found
And I'm proud
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
they day finishes with: at last! a schoth reserve
for highlands nomads!
     long gone is the fatamorgana of soberness
coupled with a very softcore soviet sleep
experiment: i chance you to also say:
the soviet sleep experiment is a way to censor
dreams, **** it: another paul mccartney
can write another yesterday into the repertoire,
you can hear of marathon-men who did over
100 hours without sleep, and when it came to
sleeping: hour-long interludes...
as all the p.o.w's realised was the case:
stop this dream-industry of disney! stop it!
nearing 36 hours is nothing,
when i'm going to do a hiatus in Poland visiting
my grandparents i'm planning to top that,
perhaps 48... just to get the glory days of Jews
in ancient Egypt and Joseph the adviser to
the pharaoh: 7 lean years, followed by 7 years
of starvation: what we otherwise carpe diem
over-indulgence - Moses wrote the book
of disgrace... when things turned sour,
obviously he was *******, just a little bit,
from a Jew becoming an adviser to the pharaoh
by interpreting his dreams which were always
in abundance given his lavish lifestyle...
dreams come to people who aspire to lavish
lifestyle, dreams come to people who take no
pleasure from the simplest prospects of a peaceful
hermitic life... they need both the lavish life
and the lavish hope of an afterlife with abundant
dreams... they can't master the opposite:
from simple pleasures that life has to offer:
one forsakes the capacity to the need to dream...
yet those who attain a comfortable Buddhist /
bourgeoisie / middle life: through the ethic of hard
labour find dreams nonsense... only
aristocrats find meaning in dreams, because
they have enough life insurance to guarantee them
the very unentertaining life, hence the Freudian
cinema, and here is their seeking of meaning,
because outside of their sleep nod,
their meaning is already akin to a predatory creature
kept in a zoological confinement, rather than
beckoned to attest the prime element beyond
the classical elements of fire and: where was the
Japanese army bombing the hell out of that
****** tsunami to make the orca-surf shrapnel?
where? nowhere! the reporters were there prior,
i'd swear you could have done the reverse Aleppo
with that tsunami wave by bombing it and
saving lives... but no... atoms bombs were never
intended for warfare as such, they're non-profitable...
all the arms-dealers across the world make more
money from millions of bullets and thousands upon
thousands of guns being sold: atom bombs make
no economic sense... atom bombs make
no economic sense in terms of dealing arms...
the soviet sleep experiment was one of the topics
at the end of today... the other was feline pavarotti
in a cattery: i swear to god that ginger is acting
too much like a bloodhound... moans all the ******
time, i've heard every kind of Tosca, but a cat's Tosca?
never in my life has a cat so many variable versions
of meow... animals really do possess their owners,
but in a way that shows the owners to themselves...
a poem a day: keeps the psychiatrist away.
and back to the soviets, who discovered Yiddish
dream-factory ******* that only applies to
aristocrats akin to Wilhelm Oedipus II,
    i never understood why people desired so much
from dreams, pure unconscious doesn't allow it,
it's shallow dreaming that becomes easily swayed
by a decreasing poignancy of the senses that
creates dreams, and as we've already been told:
they're bound to millisecond intervals -
snoring can be seen as a prompt for dreaming,
but then pure unconscious that's beyond the sensual
realm of pulverising you with everything external
          doesn't allow dreams, because it allows rest...
the subconscious makes more sense in terms of dreams
than what it currently prescribed,
             on the fully-waking hour of what people call
reverse-psychology (popularly), or who people can
influence you and treat you as a pawn...
   in the waking hour the theory of the subconscious
is that it's somehow there, and it's brimming with
theories ranging from the unitary stealth workings
of a superego, to advertisers competing for your
attention, as in: how can this person be manipulated?
that's the strain of thought working from consciousness
where you are said to have: no free will,
no critical approach toward the world with thought,
that you are naive and gullible...
  such people do exist, because they're not working
on the subconscious from the unconscious position,
hence they are most probably highly-developed dream-machines,
they probably even dream in colour and remember
dreams vividly... but take all the things i said
about the subconscious from a conscious pinpoint
and invert the starting point from an unconscious
pinpoint, and all that manipulating dynamic that
the subconscious is supposedly is fed fades
   to simply expose the subconscious as the medium
of dreams, whereby dreams appear from a sensory
hush of all external factors... a few days back i dreamed
i woke in a bed covered in cobwebs and spiders crawling
in them... the last thing i remember looking at?
my pet incy-wincy hanging on a silken web in
the corner of my room... for this to be true,
and for all that pompous subconscious theoretical *******
to go away, to actually work on the subconscious
having a dream reality rather than a reality of
being easily swayed by superego or advertisement
and willingly giving up your will to external factors
that go beyond mere senses... you have to acknowledge
at least 36 hours of the soviet sleep experiment, clock:
no nodding.m i've set the threshold,
the junkies did over 100 hours without sleep,
but they were army material, i'm... dunno.
              a break with an article on melanie martinez,
and then back into today's end...
    it's pouring cats & dogs outside, and will so
throughout tomorrow, one of the street lamps has
turned itself into solitary disco strobe...
   e.e.m. (epileptic eye movement)
           vs. r.e.m. (rapid eye movement) -
the difference? the latter invokes the theatrical curtain
of the eyelids... the former invokes your eyes
having rolled to the back of your head so you only
see the sclera...
but a real life problem too!
in these pseudo-capitalistic societies, companies
have started to do the Pontius Pilate tactic,
they are companies without employees,
what they want are subcontractors, people who
are self-employed, because actually employing
employees is bad business for them: you have to
have a pension fund... and what capitalist wasn't
old people getting money for doing nothing?
most construction companies are following this trend...
but the problem with that is that these companies
are employing useless managers, construction
site managers that should be on a site for at least 2
days a week... even 3... so they can get the knitty-gritty
of organisation done and the project runs smoothly...
but as i've already known for months,
say a roofing company from Gloucester is given
a London-based contract... it has employed a
project manager... who 1st of all doesn't have the right
credentials to be a manager... and this pleb travels
to London from the village of Gloucester
and is on a construction site for about half an hour,
doesn't make any notes,
and spends the rest of the time being a ******* tourist
in and around London, a day like this happens,
an authentic waterproofing problem...
   so you have these flats near the city airport,
and they're connected with walkways and have planters
too... you lay the concrete, then do the waterproofing:
primer, hotmelt, fleece, hotmelt, felt.
                  now the problem, why impose self-employment
and also employ parasitical managers who know
jack **** or are interested in selfies on tower bridge?
only because they can get a cheap train ticket back
to the village of Gloucester before the rush-hour commute?
the problem is simple, or hard, depends whether
there's an actual plan and someone is bothered..
four elements...
       1. drainage matt,
             2. pebbles,              3. filter layer
and 4. ~artificial turf... plastic-like, not asphalt,
     i grant it a status of artificial asphalt,
  or turf coloured copper...
the debate ranged about where the filter layer should go,
but there was no manager with the appropriate
method statement to give... the ******* crane arrives
at 8am, and he texts the day before that he might have
an answer by noon... or that some other manager should
be consulted to the method statement...
i suggested that first: the drainage matt, then the pebbles,
then the filter layer and then the artificial asphalt...
   the other suggestion was: drainage matt,
filter layer, pebbles and then the artificial asphalt
        given that pebbles will never be spread like
a plateau of concrete, meaning there will be pockets
beneath the artificial asphalt to soften the walk
and give more spring to the step...
                  and then i read a newspaper in england
and start to think: are these the only people on an actual
payroll? with safety in retirement schemes?
          i used to think of journalists as daring...
Watergate journalism that did something...
               then you turn on the 24 news channels
and state media is no different to free-enterprise media...
     as people my age say: television is really
a piece of 20th century antiquity... who gives a ****
that millions watched a man walk on a moon
on it... at least a billion people watched the cinnamon
spoon challenge from some ******* on the internet!
     or that guy who gave his cat l.s.d.,
or that guy who jumped off tower bridge and caught
pneumonia and had to be rescued...
still, the rain is ******* down, i've got my headphones
on, and that rebel street-lamp has turned into
a discoteque strobe's of needy rhythmic epileptics -
as every: i count most psychiatric terms in popular
use as undercover poetics, people who don't read
poetry, nonetheless apply psychiatric terms
   an unilateral transcript of denoting them as metaphor(s)
in everyday sprechen; and yes,
our informal vocabulary usually suffers for the fact
that we have chosen a fixed (courteous, hierarchical)
formal vocabulary, that erodes any chanced deviation
akin to a cat-stretching: e.g. (a) so and so died,
(b) oh, i'm sorry,        (c) and you're the one who
brought back the resentful Lazarus?
(d) as if you could have, prevented the inevitable;
a conversation between four strangers.
brandon nagley Jul 2015
The irony of mankind,
They maketh technology to better their lives
And yet,
Their technology
Is ruining their lives....
The irony...
As tis they couldst use that wired technology for healing
They use it for bombing and killing..
As tis they couldst use it for connecting
The fact is
They've all gone unconnected!!!!!!
Hiding behind some screen,
Forgetting what an old fashioned phone call is.....
Connection, man thought this technological advance wouldst do.
Disconnection is what is hast really brought them......

The irony.....


©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Silence Screamz Nov 2014
I heard the bullets scream
Smashed by the moment
Silence as the pin dropped
His head had hit the pavement

****** in the window
Blood spattered wall
Brother taken before me
Intrepid moment takes us all

Held his hand within mine
Closed his open eyes
Angered by the second
Said my final goodbyes

Bombing in the distance
Death cuts through the air
War is such a *****
and life isn't fair

Ribbons fill the trees
Markers field the green
Memories not forgotten
Brothers forever seen
Thinking of all veterans!!
mEb Jun 2010
I glanced fancily upward, taking quick notice at the 5 bladed ceiling fan that had always resembled the most crooked demeanor. Dust had been caking on her old worn blades for decades, building towers of particles of all sorts on the oak finish wood she was given at the factory she was produced in. Without the slightest mince of doubt, I would confirm China to plead the fifth. Shaking, this fan has never shook it had not been used since last summer. I heard ear splitting low toned roars as if boulders were forming an army only to be dropped from high jacks in the clouds. As I figure, these trains that run through this nearly vacant ghost town were shifting from one track, to one of the other six sets. Young, lying amongst my spring filled bed, the roars should have terrified most kids, but for me that signified life in a lifeless, sub-cultured society. Those roars had put me soundly to sleep.

My dark brown, small gritty eyes received a bit of that ceiling in them on the average August day of trains and mirages down the road. Determined to productively put this tired body of mine to good use I begin to scramble around the house for handy-man looking objects. Hammers, wrenches, nails, these things are hard to come by with two females under one roof alone. A ******* child I am, but ever long have accepted that. Luck had struck my view as I finally found myself in the parasitic garage infested with cobwebs, and every insect relevant to Kingdom Animalia. Running with all of these essentials may not have been the smartest decision, but hesitantly, in abrupt nature, I stopped. The roaring had been a continuous cycle of low blows against the hot sona air. It seemed like pendulums gaining momentum the closer it rose. I thought so keenly at the fact that a single human pair of ear drums should not rightfully pick up such low, non chromatic scale frequencies without crouching helplessly in fetal position.

Running to the front gate, mounted and bound by wires and steel, setting foot on the end of the premises of my humble abode, I felt utter desperation for everyone around me. The neighbors, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, all our town’s elders that had been scornfully slothful over the years, were shifting about frantically. Leaping in panic-like modes into there vehicles. Into other neighbors vehicles. My mother, that had been off working four towns west, away from the commotion, makes the predicament that I will do just the same. But I boycott her judgment…as always.

The day had come. Finally, a vacant ghost town of my very own for merely minutes seemed like the longest, most eventful lifetime I had fulfilled. How badly the urge set upon my mind to grab wooden spoons and the biggest stew *** in the pantry I could possibly find. Just to gain and take name of my own sound while the calm was at its most content. For that piece in time, I would cherish every second. To warn no living thing, just me and the atmosphere, that I am here. I am the only one here. I am every characterized town in one. I am the law, I am the doctor, I am the city inspector. I blink as I erase my silhouette from this illusion. The roars are now visible. I can see how white and violent there pitches are. I see every color in the nearing explosions because the whitened bomb bends and blends them all together, and holds them firm. They begin to paint the sky gracefully on its pale blue canvas on the mid-august summer day.

I grab my essentials of handy-man objects that I almost lost feel of. Slowly returning to the home I know best, I intended on removing that dust covered fan and I did. Without ever knowing any father figure I would give him that fan, the only token of my existence he would submerge over. I own up to the simplicity and humorous thought of doing everything without him.

Reminiscing back to when I was young, lying amongst my spring filled bed, just as I am now. I thought, the roars should have terrified me like the town, but for me that signified life in a lifeless, sub-cultured society. The roars had put me soundly to sleep.
Craig Harrison Jun 2014
We live in a time of uncertainty
No jobs
Climate change
Mass killings
warnings of pandemics
Where is our utopia
where is our heaven on Earth

1900's we had
San Fransisco's earthquake
McKinley was assassinated
First Nobel prize
The Tunguska Event
nothing as changed in my eyes

1910's we had
Spanish flu
The sinking of the unsinkable ship, the Titanic
and World War 1
What else is needed to say about this decade
nothing changed as the human race lived on

1920's we had
Discovery of penicillin
The great depression
and prohibition

1930's we had
Bonnie and Clyde
Hindenburg disaster
Discovery of Pluto
Al Capone imprisoned

1940's we had
World War 2
Mount Rushmore completed
Big bang theory formulated
Israel founded
Nothing changed but who knew

1950's we had
Castro becomes Dictator of Cuba
Laika the dog goes into space
Korean War began
History never changed and neither will the Human Race

1960's we had
The rise of the Berlin wall
First man on the moon
Vietnam War
Nothing changed and won't any time soon

1970's we had
First test tube baby
Tangshan Earthquake
Kent state shootings
Elvis died

1980's we had
Chernobyl
Tiananmen square massacre
Exxon oil spill
Nothing changed and never will

1990's we had
Oklahoma city bombing
Princess Diana died
Columbine massacre
World Trade Center bombed
End of the Cold War

2000's we had
Hurricane Katrina
Pluto reclassified
Obama elected
September 11th

2010's we had
Haiti Earthquake
Japan Earthquake
Bin Laden killed
BP oil spill
England riots
Brazil riots
China banned time travel.
We're only 4 years in.


**** sapiens are nearly 200,000 years old
nothing changed
and never will
Hope you like
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Let’s bomb Dresden
with the black fire
of thousands
of bookmarks
with poetry
of poets
far and
wide

-so it
goes-

and
each
side is
printed
with verse;
flip flopping
through the air
each to land on
Dresden’s ghosts.
Matt Feb 2015
1 million Afghans and 15,000 Soviet conscripts died
Fought with American guns

Foreign nations had tried for centuries to conquer Afghanistan
In the 1970's it became a focus for the superpowers

To Moscow, a friendly Afghanistan was important

Afghanistan's new leader looked to the Soviet Union for support
The Soviet Union sent advisors to advance socialism

Land was taken from large owners
And handed to the peasants who worked it

Women were encouraged to stop wearing veils
And were put into literacy classes with men

The reforms were seen to threaten ancient customs
And the authority of the Mullahs

The Mullah says,
"God has decided who is rich and who is poor,
It can't be changed by communists."

Opponents of the reforms
Burned down schools and universities
Resistant grew throughout the country

Iranians joined in
Calling for a Jihad
Against the communists

The U.S. thought
That the Soviets might use the Afghan crisis
To move south
And seize the oil of the Persian Gulf

Meanwhile the Shah of Iran was overthrown
The U.S. lost its most important ally in the region
The U.S. considered the possibility of a Soviet controlled Iran

Carter sent the Mujahideen equipment,
Mostly communication equipment
They were mostly peasants

Recruits for the Jihad walked for days
Across the mountains to reach the fighting

Soviet trained Afghan army
Thousands of men deserted
Kabul requested Soviet troops

Afghan president met with Soviet leader

The Soviets feared the spread of Islamic fundamentalism
Into Afghanistan from Iran
The Soviets felt they had to send troops to stabilize the region
Moscow hoped they could complete their mission in weeks

Moscow had Amin assassinated
They didn't like him talking with the Americans

At the United Nations
The invasion of the Soviet Union was condemned

The Soviets began with large sweeps
Their approach was a disaster
Mujahideen remained in the villages
Guerilla fighters remained in the mountains

Reagan stepped up aid to the Mujahideen

The Mujahideen were spilt along tribal lines
They sometimes fought each other

A war fought with our gold
And their blood
According to CIA man

The U.S. viewed the conflict in Afghanistan as an internal
Cold War struggle
The U.S. provided assistance to anti-Soviet forces
Through the Pakistani intelligent services

The Red Army changed tactics
And took to the air
Soviet commandos
Dropped in by helicopters

Soviet aircraft bombing indiscriminantly
Village after village pummeled into oblivion
Then overrun by Soviet troops
The village men who refused to join the Afghan army were murdered

Thousands of civilians killed in Soviet atrocities

The mujahideen attacked Soviet convoys
2,000 Soviets died each year
The war seemed pointless to the Soviet soldiers

The mujahideen favored sabotage operations and assassinations
The Stinger missiles were effective for them as well

Reagan said,
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters
Battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom."

The war lasted almost a decade
The early foundations of al-Qaeda
Were allegedly built on relationships
And weaponry that came from billions
Of dollars in U.S. support for the Mujahideen

Scholars have argued that Bin laden was outside
Of CIA eyesight
And that there is no support for the claim
That the CIA funded Bin Laden
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3m95FosmTw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls ***** & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions   Families walk
Stunted boys    big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls   & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged    like elderly nuns
small bodied    hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food    since they settled there

on one floor mat   with small empty ***
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together    in palmroof shade
Stare at me   no word is said
Rice ration, lentils   one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days    eat while they can
Then children starve    three days in a row
and ***** their next food   unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road    Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue    cried mister Please
Identity card    torn up on the floor
Husband still waits    at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play    our death curse

Two policemen surrounded     by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting    their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles    & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line    They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line   and jumping in front
Into the circle    sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward    on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles    & chase them in rage

Why are these infants    massed in this place
Laughing in play    & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful   & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door   Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls    Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer?    "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children  at once scream "Hooray!"

Run home to tents    where elders await
Messenger children   with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick **** he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains    bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card    Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting    or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps    in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked    on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old    Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison    thousands must die

September Jessore    Road rickshaw
50,000 souls   in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo    huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine   please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies    merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine    food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam    and causing more grief?

Where are our tears?  Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this **** flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--

Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet ****-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve    in their mother's arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my *****?

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?

How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and   asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams--

Finish the war in your breast    with a sigh
Come tast the tears    in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara   on planet TV

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast    the children they've killed?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes    in illusory pain?
How many families   hollow eyed  lost?
How many grandmothers    turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers   make no more sound?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons   nowhere to go?
How many daughters    nothing to eat?
How many uncles   with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children    nowhere to go

                                        New York, November 14-16, 1971
I said, "God, I hurt."
And God said, I know."

I said, "God, I cry a lot."
And God said, "That is why I gave you tears."

I said, "God, I am so depressed."
And God said, "That is why I gave you Sunshine."

I said, "God, life is so hard."
And God said, "That is why I gave you loved ones."

I said, "God, my loved one died."
And God said, "So did mine."

I said, "God, it is such a loss."
And God said, I saw mine nailed to a cross."

I said, "God, but your loved one lives."
And God said, "So does yours."

I said, "God, where are they now?"
And God said, "Mine is on My right and yours is in the Light."

I said, "God, it hurts."
And God said, I know."

~ Posted on the wall at the Oklahoma City bombing site.
April 19, 1995 "May they be with god"
Margaret Apr 2014
“I parked my car in the Harvard Yard”
People ask me to say.
My state was a
Paper
T o  r     n
by terrorists
This day.

7th grade, April vacation
on a cruise ship, I was excited
To get out of that cold
New England weather

Laying on the twin bed
Stomach churning
From the sea, Like butter that never thickens

TV said,
“Boston Marathon Bombing”
My face turned red.
I willed my friends to stay out of Boston.
Jill was in Boston
Thank god she’s alright

What kind of fame did they want?
What kind of pride comes with this?

The worst part:
We could not do anything about it.

Aged 13, 7th grade.
Nothing we could do.
Cruising past Virginia in a stark lit cabin room
I couldn't do anything.

In these months passed since the attack
I have taken the live and dead and held them like a closed fist in my heart.



They will cease to remain a number
of a statistic
of an event
5 dead
It said.

5 dead means nothing
They had lives, families, people knew them.
People knew them as more than the “5 dead”
So when you say 5 dead. Think about what lies behind the number,
1 was 1 to many.
No time for regrets.
Could we of changed what happened?
Could we of taken more precautions?
No one knows.

We can’t change what happened that day.
So if we can’t change our past,
Lets start by changing
Our
Future
CH Gorrie Oct 2012
Mutilated chains of flowers
delineate where schoolboys cowered;
sixteen brick houses on St. James Street
reduced to red dust under homeless feet;
photographers pause, catching their breath,
spellbound by the neutrality of death;
clearing haze where the white chapel stood
reveals ever-dismantling wood;
the market's one register on a charred-black stand,
nearby derges lilt from a funeral band:

*...oh and as, and as
they're lain in silk and white ashes...
the town broken apart, flattened...

...in marble graves and mahogany
under skeletal laurel branches...
...on down to sleep, to sleep...

...we may walk with weathered ease...
...oh we may consider, may remember,
a granted time, an affirming love...
Julie Grenness Apr 2017
They're bombing Syria tonight,
For chemical weapons, out of sight,
Whose democracy is at work here?
It'll all end in tragic tears,
Yes, they're bombing Syria tonight, no cheers,
Biggest losers are the civilians, dears,
We pray for liberty once held so dear,
A song for freedom needed, hear, hear!
Feedback welcome.
Who was the person in  Colonel Muammar Gaddafi
Was he a deadly Libyan tyrant as the west put
and dictator as the Western media and press
oftenly portrayed him  , here and there
as power voracios bent on assuming the leadership
of the Arab world and super sahara socialite
in the stamapede  of Gamal Abdul Nasser?
That Gaddafi was a driven and desperate man,
what a cruxificative tribe  of  question,

he gloriusly deposed King Idris
from the then rotting  Libyan throne,
President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia
omenously  warned him that he had to stretch
  miles and whatever to go before he could claim,
to be un fettered  successor to Nasser's sceptre,


Gaddafi was a wildly and spotlessly  popular
among the Libyan masses,the earth's wretched,  
and even those in the rest of the revolutionary  world,
till the eyesore of his brutal ******,
  the tragics and haunting episodes,
of his life points clearly to the   truth of  truth:
  Gaddafi was a reasonless  hunted man
they way bin Laden was labbelled to be hunted,
for so he was a hunted man.

Gaddafi never had the time or the leisure
to do anything but run, but run and run
as an escape to hell, a clear testament
in his classical poetic, quilled properly
behind the dunes of the sahara desert,
His parting shots were true essence
of his compassion and generosity  to humanity,
a humongous  gift of a soccer stadium to Pakistan,
a plan to gift thousands of computers and laptops
to schoolchildren in  idyllic poor African countries,
and dollops of oil aid to poor Arab countries.

were these not totally dispassionate acts
For the Colonel was trying to build a support ,
and network throughout the  revolutionary world
because he was actively tracked and pursued
by the English and French dogs of ******,
tacitly supported by the United States.

The Western powers were committed to teeth,
to removing Gaddafi from his genuine power
lest he prove troublesome to currents of avarice
in furthering their interests in the oil imperialism,
for his daring rhetoric and outlandish capers
were sharp pedagogies to the oppressed.

western powers moaned and yelled doggishily,
for cheap Libyan oil well and item markets,
for  construction and drilling projects,
English and French origin companies
as well as American multinationals,
moaned daily  like female hyenas
when they  stood to lose  monetary gain,
if  Gaddafi remained entrenched in holy life
and  in power as the arbiter of Libya's destiny.

but that indeed was the holy  mandate
he had from the Libyan masses of peasants
even though it was imperially  questioned
by those of his cowardly enemies
moving in tandem  with cosmetics
of capitalism and burgeosie  development.

Gaddafi ****** the French presence in Chad,
as he did roundly criticize the United States
over its foreign policy of Bullish syndrome,
as he gloriously  shielded  the two Libyans
who were  accused without forgiveness
of plotting  and carrying out vietnam like bombing
of an American passenger jet over Lockerbie
in Scotland that led to Kissinger like  killings,
of hundreds of innocent civilians like in Vietnam.

History is yet to absolve Gaddaffi,
to glorify the dreamer with poetry in his eyes
who composed escape to hell in a desertly week,
exculpating him off false accussations,
of committing a crime of such magnitude,
good consicence must question the role of Jews.

It was only the status and stature
of Nelson Mandela as  a fellow comrade,
that managed to implore  the Colonel
to hand over the two accused Libyans
to the International Court of Justice
to face trial or even forgiveness,
The whole sordid drama of the Lockerbie bombing
is an enigma wrapped in mystery, jewish tricks center stage,
Sooner or later, posterity will  absolve out
with the truth and  save Gaddafi's name
and honor as leader of  the voiceless.

President Ronald Reagan did not even wait a little
before he launched those deadly missile strikes
against Libya,  against Gaddafi's private quarters,
to **** Gaddaffi's beggotten  daughter.

Was this not a base and cowardly
act unworthy of America and its great traditions,
Gaddafi, like Saddam, was a victim of labbelling
by  Western media who had painted his character
with satanic evil and malice , as if evil is alien to them,
even when there was no genuine evidence
to justify such a heinous depiction
  Gaddafi was seen to act irrationally,
was supposed to have mental delusions
why not  being mentally unstable!

Gaddafi's antics inspired acts of conscience
and a genuine and fitting response to a life
lived under mortal fear and terror  of terror
the fear of being tracked and hunted down
by Western agents who were out to eliminate him
with full backing from their governments.

Gaddafi, like Saddam  was not a criminal
although all sorts of demonic tendencies
were attributed to both leaders by the Western press,
All sorts of media scoops were ceaslessly  hatched
and all kinds of media blitzes  were  mercilesly launched
to create Muslim helots who overthrew Gaddafi,
and pursued him in armored cars and trucks
to his hometown Sirte deep in the Libyan Desert,
That he was killed with such horrible cruelty
with bayonets and gunshots,
pumped into his royal  head
such  is evidence that his assailants,
were  not  true Muslims whatsoever !

These enemies were petty paid murderers
and butchers who after the dastardly act,
proudly displayed Gaddafi's body
in a meat shop kept open for public viewing,
By committing these very desecrations
Gaddafi's foes had unwittingly revealed
their true un-Islamic and butcherous natures .

And what were Gaddafi's last pearlish words
to his assailants when he lay writhing in pain of death
on the ground unable to move because of the mayhems
of his injuries and wounds: WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?
Gaddafi had died like a Muslim Christ
on the American  cross with no words of abuse
or blame for his enemies, as they knew not
whatever the folly the were executing.

History will have to wait for generations
before another soldier and such a  leader
of Qaddafi's ilk and human  mettle surfaces
again  in the poor man's  world
to bravely  taunt the West
for its imperial perfidy and cowardice.
Valo Salo Aug 2015
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Thomas Newlove Feb 2011
The pick
All the stress that an orange has caused is painful.
It is painful for the tree from which it came.
Snatched away with promises of sweetness.
A tree mostly green, engulfing
Small speckles of that deceptive orange.
It was such a bright colour – high hopes!
Handpicked by a man only looking for the best,
Choosing poorly not for the first time.
The green leaves frantically try to reclaim what’s theirs.
Branch after branch reaching out, trying to uproot him.
Close, so close. But they are a sea apart,
At least an apple has a core, a heart.

The peel
Now it is pilfered, the painful process begins,
Never quite ending: disappointment beckons.
To try and taste these orange juices
You soldiers must bear the burden.
Each soldier, a finger digging themselves
Into the tough stressful shell.
Fingernails stained with orange blood,
Eyes blinded by the same tangy juices.
It never slips off in one go
Like a roomy balaclava,
But crumbles like the remnants of a bombing.
Brick by brick, orange by orange it crumbles.
Now it is finally undone
But neither tree nor man has won.

The preparation
The crust collapsed, but now
It is time to untangle the web the mantle holds.
First, a division – the separation of brothers
Who served side by side at birth.
Dissected by these soldiers
Acting as a bomb squad,
Searching for those hidden pips.
Found, but not without casualties –
Sticky fingers with no taps in sight.
Once removed the web is untangled.
Tired, he hopes that the stress will swiftly end
Unaware that the sweetness was just pretend.

The pain*
Finally the moment has arrived
And illogical ceremonies commence.
I fear the celebration is far too soon,
For as white touches orange and tries
So desperately to unite,
The tartly taste slays the poor man’s buds:
Igniting like petrol on his burning tongue.
He wishes he could return that orange
To the green tree to which it belongs,
To return a bullet-sprayed windscreen is not an option.
The orange, once bitten, enjoys its trance
Latching on to those pained tingling taste buds.
His orange, a disaster to undress:
Bad taste – a foolish price for such a mess.
Hint: I am English. I have lived in Ireland for most of my life. The colours are Green, White and Orange.... To sum it up in one sentence:
"What a complete mess the man made of things!"
Big Virge Aug 2014
After the 7/7 bombing ...
This is part of a Trilogy of poems to remind people about  
where some of their, " Anti-Islam Rhetoric ", started from ....
  
(BTW ... I am NOT, Pro-Islam)
  
What Happened Yesterday ...
Left Many Folks ... AMAZED ... !!!!!
  
To See The London Underground ...
  
BLOWN UP And Ablaze ... !!!  
  
Of Course We've Heard ... REACTIONS ...
From The ... Usual Political Factions ...  
  
But ...
While Things Were ... COLLAPSING ... !!!
  
Where Were They ...  
" G8 " ... Protracting ... ?!?
  
It's ... NEVER Them ... ?!?
That ... Feel The STING ...
But People Who ...
WON'T Be The Same AGAIN ... !!!!!  
  
SOME Have Died ...
While Some ... " Survived " ...  
  
But They May Wish ...  
They'd ... Lost Their Life ... ?  
  
What We ... "HEAR" ...
Is ... " So Contrived " ...  
  
It's AL QAEDA ...
ALL THE TIME ... !!!!!!!!!!
  
Let's Not Keep ...
THE TRUTH ... " dIsGuisED " ...
They Have Got ... Western Allies ... !!!
  
So .....
Where's The Proof  ... ???
To Dispel ... " LIES " ...  
  
That ... Will Be Fed ...
To ... "CONTROLLED Minds" ...  
  
I Haven't Got A Clue ... ?
Try ... MI5 ... !!!  
  
Aren't They The Ones ... ???
Who ... PROTECT LIVES ... !?!
  
They Seemed To Be ... " LOST " ... !?!?!
Did They Need A Guide ... ???
  
It's ... Cars They Drive ...
While Some Have ... DIED ... !!!
  
On ... GUESS WHAT YES ... !!?!!
A ... Double Decker Ride ...
  
But ... " It's Okay ! "
Is What They Say ...  

"Security measures are now in place !"
  
Okay That's Great ... !!!
But The Fact Is THIS ...
  
IT'S A LITTLE TOO LATE ... !!!
  
When MANY NOW ...
Have Met Their Fate ... !!!
  
Isn't  ... PREVENTION ...
Better Than .... " Cure " ... ?!?
  
You'd Better Ask Bob ... ?
Or Try ... Midge Ure ... !!!!
  
LIVE AID Worked ... !!!
It Got A .... REACTION ....  
  
Yeah .....
  
George Bush AIN'T ...
Removing ... SANCTIONS ... !!!
  
Fair Trade Is A Better Way ...  
Than Giving Pop Stars ...  
  
The ... " Political Stage " ...  
  
They Just Want ...
Some More ... AIRPLAY ... !!!
  
Those Who Believe ...
What The Media say ...  
Are ... VEXING ME ... !!! ...
In ... Different Ways ... !!!!!
  
People I Work With ...  
Make Me ... " Laugh " ...  
  
"Virgil, this thing ain't a joke !
Someone in here may have had their heart broke !"
  
That ... May Be True ... ?
  
But Here's MY VIEW ...  

People Laugh ...
Every ******* Day ... !!!
While ... " Many DIE " ...  
In ... " DIFFERENT Ways " ...  
  
NOT ... NATURALLY ... !!!
They're ... " CASUALTIES " ...  
of Things We All See ...
In ... " Societies " ...  
  
Come On Folks ... !!!
You ... Must Agree ... ?!?
  
So ... Don't You Point ...
Fingers ... At Me ... !!!
  
Cos' You ... Like Me ...
Are ... ALL GUILTY ...  
of Making Jokes ...
While Others ... BLEED ... !!!
  
Look At Those ...
Who Had To Sleep ...
In London Hotels ...
  
Beds .....  
DIDN'T COME CHEAP ... !!!!!!
  
These Are The Acts ...
of The ... GREEDY BREED ... !!!
  
I'll Laugh OUT LOUD ...  
Cos' That ... AIN'T ME ... !!!!!!!  
  
People Have ... " Died " ...
  
Yeah It's A  ... TRAGEDY ... !!!
  
But ... How Many Care ... ???
About ... " Those in NEED " ... !!!
  
In Places ... Here ...
In This Country ...  
And Those Who SUFFER ...
..... " Overseas " .... ?!?!?
  
How Many Can Say ... ?

" They think of them ! "
  
Those Living A Life ...
WITHOUT ... " Freedom " ...  
  
It's TRUTH I Talk ...
While You Build Forts ...
To Save ... Yourself ...
From ... " Conscious Thoughts " ...  
  
And Then Want To Act ...
Like ... " You're A GOOD SPORT " ... ?!?  
  
And Think About Those ...
With LESS ... NOT More ... ???
  
Check YOURSELF ...
In The ... Baggage Hall ... !!!!!
  
This FOR SURE ...
I DO ... " IMPLORE " ... !!!!!
  
I DON'T Know Everything ... !!!  
I DON'T Claim To ... !!!
  
But Nowadays ...
  
My Views Are ... " Shrewd " ...  
  
I'm Searching For ... TRUTH ... !!!
NOT .... " Fraudulent News " .... !!!

" It's a power surge ! "
  
REMEMBER Those Words ... ???
  
Cos' Now WE KNOW ...
That Message Was ... BlUrReD ... !!!
  
YES ... With These Words ...
You Must ... CONCUR ... !!!
  
So These Last Words ...
Go To ... " Fake Factions " ...  
  
EVERY Action ...
Provokes A ...
  
... " Reaction " ...
7/7 was a day where things changed dramatically in the UK, and gave artists plenty to say ! .... So, here a few of my immediate views, and indeed reactions to what was fed to the public, by the government, and media news crews !
Bob B Oct 2018
As the wind blows across the fiery desert,
The desperate people of Yemen sigh.
How many more will suffer today?
How many more children will cry?
A Saudi-led coalition
Strikes with a heartless disregard,
Leaving behind misery--
Death and destruction its calling card.

Choking the poor country, the Saudis
Organized a major blockade,
Cutting off vital medicine,
Food, and water, and stopping all trade.
Cluster bombs have fallen on cities.
Thousands of innocent people have died.
Hospitals and schools have been hit.
How can such horror be justified?

Millions of people risk starvation
If all the bombing does not end.
The Saudis hunger for more and more weapons,
And they have billions of dollars to spend.
A bomb made by Lockheed Martin
Hit a Yemeni school bus
Killing fifty-one people, and hurting
Many more, thanks to us.

A U.S. bomb hit funeral mourners;
One destroyed a marketplace.
That our support causes such
Atrocities is a disgrace.
The people suffer from cholera--
Something that is hard to avoid
When a country's sanitation
Facilities are being destroyed.

A massive humanitarian crisis
Plagues the country despite appeals
To end the conflict by caring nations,
While major players dig in their heels.
Sunni-Shiite conflicts continue
With innocent citizens caught in between.
Callous leaders turn their heads,
Afraid to speak up or intervene.

-by Bob B (10-17-18)
Alicia R Apr 2013
i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.
I wrote this before I learned the name and *** of the victim.
Aaron LaLux Jul 2016
America’s Got Presidents


Lights camera action,
who’s up next,
politician,
or dumbsh!t pundit?

Oh I see,
everybody’s an expert,
man these candidates have switched sides so many times,
watching them flip-flop this much makes my neck hurt!

Candidate’s wearing make-up,
if you ask me it’s all a cover-up,
blemishes on their records,
when’s enough actually enough,

on stages,
synthetic sages make up stories,
while the police keep stuffing us into cages,
and the politicians keep talking about reclaiming America’s lost glory.

America’s lost glory what glory,
the one about us bombing innocents or the one about slaves,
well if that’s the glory then it’s not lost,
because the US still bombs innocents and pays most people a slave wage.

It’s fckn depressing,
these pop-star presidents,
jockeying for position,
just for a chance at a White House residence.

On a stage,
it’s a sad charade,
all these bad actors,
pointing fingers trying to shift the blame,

laaaaaame!

All they do is talk different when in front of a mic,
but behind closed doors they all act the same,
different costumes different connotations maybe,
but really there’s no significant difference because there’s no significant change.

It’s an act a sham a show,
pop star presidents hip hop rock and roll,
Barack stars sing about change without any evidence,
if you ask me they’ve all gotta go,

and this election year is no better,
if anything it’s worse,
you’ve got Hillary Clinton AKA Barack Light,
and of course running is another Bush,
then there’s Donald Trump,
who’s legitimately probably the Anti-Christ,
he’s a racist sexist selfish sociopathic narcissist,
he doesn’t want to debate anything he just wants to fight.

But what about Bernie Sanders,
people ask, “Are you feeling the Bern?”,
I mean the guy’s a 74 year old career politician socialist,
he’s gonna try and take half of everything I earn.

Sure,
I’d vote for him I guess,
outta desperation only,
because maybe it’d take someone that extreme to get us outta this mess,
but honestly he’s a bumble bee,
poking at the hornet’s nest,
I’d bet if he becomes a real threat to the one Corporate Establishent want’s to elect,
that the speech where he accepts ends with one of his last breaths.

Yup.

America the beautiful,
when’d you become such a bully,
you used to be my best friend,
but now you act like you don’t even know me,
you’re blood lust is revolting,
why’s your answer to everything violence,
and how can you say you speak for the people,
when most of the people are so fed up they just shut up and stay silent,

and even if we do get out and vote,
these days our votes aren’t even counted what gives,
what you think it’s just a coincidence,
that almost every state Hilary won was accused of being rigged?

I feel sick.

This political pile of tricks politics seems like a pile of ****t,
and the media’s forcing it down our throat,
I mean really what are we supposed to do,
when those that feel outcasted can’t even get the system to count their cast votes.

So I take notes.

And I write.

I write,
all of this with typing hands and a shaking head,
because I want a leader I can truly trust and believe in,
instead of some actor that can’t be trusted no matter what they’ve said.

Red,
state,
blue,
state,
red,
fish,
blue,
fish,

I’m not a Jew,
I’m only half so I’m Jew-ish,
and I’m not trying to be rude,
or to sound too prudish,
it’s just,
the history of half my people,
is filled with those that want to ***** us,
so the bait and switch poli-tricks these politicians politic,
well they’re Grand Old Party is nothing new to us.

Who to trust,
who to trust,
we’re tired of feeling like Lewinsky,
giving oral to the Oval Office and getting nothing back but fckt.

Fck.

When is enough enough,
no is supposed to mean no,
but we get it no **** on the ****** tube,
***; Slave & Master we’re all Lady Liberty’s ******* so on with the show!

Lights camera action,
who’s up next,
politician,
or dumbsh!t pundit?

Oh I see,
everybody’s an expert,
man these candidates have switched sides so many times,
watching them flip-flop this much makes my neck hurt.

Candidate’s wearing make-up,
if you ask me it’s all a cover-up,
blemishes on their records,
when’s enough actually enough?

∆ Aaron La Lux ∆

Volume 1
The H Trilogy:
The City of Angels
Just published on 7/7/16.
Somehow it was #1 worldwide today.
If you could take a moment to check it out,
and even write a review it'd be most appreciated.
All profits go to a charity that prevents child abuse and ****** assault.
So not only are you getting an epic book of poetry,
but you're also supporting a good cause.
Thank you SO much!

https://www.amazon.com/Trilogy-City-Angels-Aaron-Lux/dp/1535054328
I'm a bit frustrated.....
bear Jul 2014
All is calm.
relaxing and re-energizing in the sun.
enjoying the sweet sugar-rich liquid.
With no time to spare,
Enemies zoom by in a flash!
Faster than a bullet
But still able to see its distinct wings.
Flying over again,
Dive bombing, trying to take over.
Both take off into the air soaring all around!
whizzing faster than the speed of light!
Racing high up to the heavens
then plunging to the ground at full force!
but able to pull back at the last second!
gliding swiftly across earth.
shrieks condescend between the two!
As they fight flying over the land
They don't even notice what has happened.
another hummingbird lands
and enjoys the sweet victorious nectar.
saw hummingbirds fight while outside and it reminded me of fighter jets
Listen my dear daughter, to my first song of caution
Earmarked for you my wonderful sire, come and listen,
That tall old man with white hair all over his head
Standing over there is not good; he is gnomish in the mind
Be careful with him, he is not human in the heart
But a mermaid of Yoruba poetry, just like Thespis of Greece
Even the pecuniary psychopomp of Sweden gave him an accolade
His heart is selfishly full of avarice; he wants everything for himself,
Don’t recite him any of your poetry, lest he spells an abyss
Against your juvenile poetic talent, he will fool you with a gift;
A white sheep or a scarlet goat for your birth day anniversary
Please don’t take it or anything else from him, as nothing from him is genuine
But only machinations of evil spell aimed at mahyeming your talent
Finally to decimate your girlhood and life, this is my caution
For you dear little African girl.

Listen my dear little daughter, to my second song of caution
That short man in a Muslim gear loafing yonder, is suspect
The Muslim beret on his head is merely a smokescreen to aghastly behaviour
He is in no way an avatar of god of love and humane piety
He is a terrorist working with Boko Haram and Algaeda
He is an Alshabab that is bombing young girls in Mombasa and Nairobi
All over Kenya he has killed the young people; his long egret-white sari is not for holiness,
It is merely a nefarious sanctum of grenades, other tools of work in terrorism trade
His loudly prayers, body movements and pocket bursting monies are only a stunt
To have you kidnapped into death conduit, once you goof to join his courts,
His sanctimony is a total picaresque film, (s)heroes of terror the centerpiece
And thus, this is my caution for you dear little African girl.

Listen my dear daughter, to my third song of caution
Those tourists thronging our streets are deadly *** pets, they also skulk ****
Their handsome outlook is not a stamp to any good conscientiousness
They derive pleasure from poverty and *** tourism; they yearn to see a girl in poverty,
Often rarely will they help an African girl, out of milieu of beggarly squalorism,
Instead they go straight for the purse between your thighs,  
Regardless of the legacy they leave out of this lewdness, they are showy,
They regret not in their Byronic broadcast of *** and fatherless urchins in the poor streets
Foundation for their further poverty tourism, this is my caution for you dear little African girl.
Zulu Samperfas Jul 2012
At Bookshop Santa Cruz
I look at a book about the East Bay then and now
One picture strikes me: 1969 Sproul Plaza
Govener Ronald Reagan has the National Guard spray
tear gas on protesters on the steps of this Berkeley Administration Building
People run in black and white
they look like my parents
The helicopter is so close to the ground, like the Vietnam War

I was three
In the backseat of our VW Bug
My mother was driving me to Strawberry Canyon
for a swim
Then she got scared--something on the radio
We turned around
I didn't understand
She had to protect us from tear gas
We lived in a war zone
Everyone was very upset
We were attacked by our own government
Even children were fair game

An innocent frog is placed in water
If the water temperature is raised gradually
the frog will sit there until it dies

In 1980 Ronald Reagan became our President
Much to our dismay
"70% of pollution comes from trees" he had announced
as Governer, he was obviously a man of science

The vice grip clenched, the water temperature raised
as we felt around us the world becoming more
difficult as a middle class
we were supposed to wait for crumbs to fall
from the table of the rich folks
fighting over the bits like starving animals

Budgets were cut
Prices rose, wages fell or disappeared completely
We were at war

1985: I took a class in Economics in college, a UC
I learned that Supply Side Economics was
a silly idea written on a napkin at a fancy restaurant
where the fat ones eat
and the crumbs are thrown away

It was all a sham
An excuse
The vice grip tightened, the world became
more difficult
not the American Dream my parents grew up in
To be middle class was to struggle and struggle and still
not have anything

The frog began to die
Somehow we saw that
Reagan drifted away, but his ghost
remained, a respite in the 90's

Then we were at war again
Not just tear gas, but carpet bombing
Guerilla warfare in the streets of a hot arid country
Oil companies, already saturating our ground and our air with their products
Cashed in

The frog is near death
We struggle, and nothing gets better
Only a respite

At a fancy restaurant
on a napkin someone wrote
a new theory of Economics
that became like Scientology
Outgrew it's ridiculous inception
And became real

Ronald Reagan dropped tear gas
from helicopters on Sproul Plaza
and it drifted to Strawberry Canyon
where children learned to swim

But that is child's play now
the frog is about to die
I want to pull it out.

— The End —