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Meghan O'Neill Aug 2014
There are more important things
Than the color of their eyes
And the missing puzzle piece that you feel in your heart
There is something brewing
Inside of us
The pent up rage
The bottled up frustration
Lent to us by the oppression
We face every day
So we ring it in with bells and bullhorns
And pray for the day when love is legal
And free speech is free
And middle schools are free from misoginy
And the police protect my rights based on laws and not skin tone
The balance has been thrown
The dynamics swaying in the breeze
It's well past time for a 180 degree turn
We'll let society burn
And ring in a new age
With bullhorns and bells
And we'll fight for our ******* freedom.
: a drunk collage: another "epic"*

Starting at the beginning,
letting the tilt of the backyard
lull me up then back down
in circles, to tell in turn
these stories. And so,
back as far as I know:

Story of My People
Tribes gathered and grew.
They counted the grains.
Depended on the seasons,
rejoiced, nay, transfigured.
Cults of the sun, of the earth
realized gods onto our plane,
they walked between
the beanrows.

Their features formed
and darkened, envisaged
in Our dark mirror mind.
And then faces had names
and they counted the grains.
Numerals and ocher lips
left pretty petroglyphs
but left the stone sculpted
in marble columns endraped–
Roman red over owl-blue–
but still the Bullhorns poke through!
That's me, the narrator among narrative.
Where my maternal starts
so far as I know, in the cult of Mythras,
a Taurus charging the boot of Europa.

Excuse me; I'm not a historian.

My father's people were barbarians,
I would think so.
They dispelled the civilized clout
and darkened the day and age.
Hail Mother Mary Hellen,
her whole family got burned.
A lesion across that continent,
filled with the church,
which took both my parents.
Then the American Dream.

My History
These gods and Names who guided and transfigured,
that framed my peoples, gave it to them,
I have forgotten.
Soon after seeing it all, I felt it all mundane.
Dismissed him as chaos,
left him so abundant
as to be given
not granted.
Now I sit and forget...
the enveloping leaves in the back,
the passerby from the front deck,
I remember yet!
But lost in adult perplexion
I fear that I've given up some ghost
who haunted my great journey
and leaves me on blank slates,
cyclical, again again, timelessly:
Myhistory:*

–First it was Death who so captivated me.
Like any friend, too, I shivered and cried secretly.
Literally. No thing really, nothing really.
–Then Love came swift, sharp,
unrecquitting, then unremitting, then spent.
–Then Earth spoke wonders and tremors
seemed God incarnate, Life this is,
gotrees growmy skull I don't know,
guess it don't come down to much more.
–Now music and the capture of the present:
Where am I? and what is this place?
let me sing you the questions!

But where is God in my voice?
I want rockn'roll and adventure
that can't be grace;
it's idolatry.
Maybe God really is dead,
you lose him like the holiday superheroes
or ancient mythoids,
age age into forget.
Four people asked me if I "was okay/alright?"
Thought it time to drink alone and compose a poem.
C J Baxter Aug 2014
The quirky wink of the laughing tortoise.
Too much silence, screaming loud noise
at the people so used to having bullhorns  
in their voice box. The tortoise talks of tickling
tongues with songs sung by an old irishman
after fishing for patience. Talking of whisky tasted,
and the faces of the woman who used to pull the
strings on his back.  The tortoise laughed and laughed
and the little lizards had little to say back.
Non-sense?
Joseph Childress Oct 2011
OccupyWallStreet : The First Front

The laborious efforts of Liberty
Will not go
Unnoticed
Untelevised revolution
Witnessed
By mute voices
Til the crowd joins in
The media’s immediate
Covering of the story
Takes on a new meaning
Internet live streaming
American Dreaming
Of the Awakening
The world’s been waiting for
Bullhorns blow
As the
The Bull’s horns
Are approached
With a silent crashing
The whole world
Will remember
The 17th of September
Backed against the wall
The public confronted the Wall
Streets filled with peace
Protesters who speak
For the rights of the peopl
The %99
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Speech of Freedom

I will listen – now tell me what you think
And tell me what you think, not what you feel
Not what you were commanded by bullhorns
Not chants beginning with “Hey! Hey!
     **! **!”

I will listen – now tell me that you think
You, not a crowd, a hive, a swarm, a shoal
You, not a mood, a whim, a committee
You, not a photocopied manifesto

Because I want to hear you – you, not echoes
I will listen – now tell me what you think
Freedom of Speech
peculiarities Mar 2015
you were my world
you were my showers of confetti
my honking of bullhorns
my grand release of doves and balloons
every message, every notification from you would excite every cell in my body
my bones would turn into a gelatinous mess
leaving me vulnerable and weak
leaving me breathless to whatever you had to say

you were my favorite kind of night
unexpected phone calls from you would leave my heart racing
would leave a gigantic grin on my face
hearing your deep, echoic voice
talk about your favorite things, your passions just made me fall in love with you more
and your smile
oh God, that smile
(But that smile is for a different story...)

i knew it was a trap, that it wasn't real
i knew i shouldn't have fallen for it
but you knew exactly what to say
to make me fall in love with you

you were my blanket of reality
made of faux leather
fragrant lies and sweet drops of poison
were your main themes
one by one you feed me with your poison
one by one you bless me with your
lies
and i was falling for it

no string of words could ever express how hurt i was to find out that
it
wasn't
just
me

i was hurt
but i wasn't surprised

you, were my happiness
and i was just one of your sweet escapes
I'm sorry it's so long, I just got really hurt really recently and I thought this was a pretty reasonable action. Sorry for not posting in over a year, too.
Robert C Howard Apr 2016
It wasn't supposed to go like this!
Julian and cousin Henry
fled breathless down the alley
Henry turned and fired two shots
toward their uniformed pursuers.

                             "Late breaking news:
                              Police interrupted a burglary
                              in the 300 block of Hastings.
                              An officer is down and has been taken to
                              Blessed Sacrament Hospital."


Henry and Julian raced in
through his Mom's front door
scrambling for the basement.
Henry mad beyond himself said.
"I know I hit him, man, I saw him drop!"
"Get a grip you fool,
you winged him and we got away

                             "The slain officer's name has been released.
                              Brad Kravcik leaves a wife, a grown daughter
                              and two teen-aged sons.
                              Witnesses identified two youths and police
                              expect an arrest at any minute."


Julian's mother exploded
down the stairs. "Your pictures
are on the tube. You idiots
killed a ******* cop.
Get the hell out of my house!"
The two boys tried for the door
but bullhorns, lights
and a forest of rifles barred their exit.

                             "This just in: two suspects have been arrested
                              in the shooting death of officer Kravcik.
                              Julian Lewis and Henry Behrens
                              are believe to be responsible
                              for a string of north side break-ins.
                              The whole community is
                              breathing a huge sigh of relief."


The governor made no eleventh hour call,
so Henry banished all thoughts
of the plastic tube silently
dripping terminal liquid into his vein
He felt the world go hazy
then felt nothing - nothing at all.
In the silt
the milt
the making of man,
the coming of dawn
the morning begun,
the run through the trees,
the taking,
invoking the spirits to please,
smoking a peace pipe
wearing a second stripe
we're all in the war of what went before and
what's not here yet.

In ten thousand years they will dig up my bones
professors will view me and talk in hushed tones.
I'll be in the museum, some, will come down to see me,the fragrance of history etched in the memory of lines scratched by bullhorns,when the lawman kicked in the door man and that can't be right man.

And for now we will take it,we get used to the *******,we
were brought up on horseshit,in the spitting my way through the saliva today,
I walk upon tainted water, turned to ice, think i oughta use a ****** to slaughter the unborn of the daughters of the devil who sort of knows exactly where I'm at.

In the vat where the system is rising unbidden to fall and be hidden
I stir and stare at reflections.
“You wanna go to the crystal shop with me?
  Maybe some coffee?”

First things we said

Buying matching bullhorns
for later


I’ll show you how to wrap sage
leaves
You can show me how to build
a fire

Lucky
Blessed
Charmed
Happy

We didn’t have to wait
long


We’ll make a pact


We’ll promise to grow old
Side by side
We know we’re already
Dead

This was the first time
We understood


Oui



© Christopher F. Brown 2017
Robin Carretti Jun 2018
Two I apple they split not to sit ***-light lit
              Ms.Viviette by-set
              Her heart age-set
              A whole sip mug-wet

She is working on her salvation the whole-love
ready -set
The mission right body flow 2 beat-heat
the heart fit
Smiles a bit a mysterious ((AppleJack))
Wholeheartedly--------*
Comeback playing the Violin teacher's pet
The apple a day he was not amused
Didn't light my heart fuse

That weak heart 1/2 the right spot,
the heart love cure another shot
My whole life he deserted me red-tangy tea
That Madame Curie how she pleads
My heart stopped the Island he was falling
out of my coconut hands

How I smothered his love hands
On the Bali Hut, I felt smashed by his lips
of Applesauce scrumptious pork roast on
the internet hearts was the post
Hearts of the earthquake trembler

Biting the Apple
but what is____?
Inside the heart Sobriquet
The flower floret evergreen apple
Made her heart  selling her soul out
The intenseness of drinking
Cabernet Sauvignon In France
Mediterranian tropics
Louis Vuitton
Heart tripping sandals
In Italy, he read her heart waist handles
poem sonnet but his heart was
stronger and more of a fret

The heart of soul came with his challenge
The whole in his head like bullhorns
My hill-halfway their body
was torn my heart was spinning
my whole right side felt like a baby born
Nonstop crying she felt so high like a
banana split no timeshare
Not to share my heart
New York token of love fair

Not the whole heart of truth
Glory the half of the stick don't you
hate eating chocolate crunch muscles
Of the  barmen from  way out in Mars
All my heart stickers the best times
of my star was gone
Hearts Gym he wouldn't give one flicker
  The half timeout what a showdown
2- hearts almost shut down

Tasting his stick so woodsy
The trees were talking topsy-turvy
Please take some heart I'm curvier
My dreams have no demeanor
Putting 1/2 of an eyeliner I am not finished in
Angelic nymphs on my ceiling
   The bathroom hearts were dripping
My lips got separate like they
ran away walking I was curved
Last heart to play Atlantic City
We saw them again (Rodeway) fresh
**** wasn't so pretty the parade day
What an odd pair of card pitiful
Their bizarre smiles
21/2 heart shaped pills I'm home at last
My whole watermelon those black pits
she so lazy
always on her computer what a putz
He is the heartless man
of the felon, not the fancy hotel
of the Ritz Carlton
Having a girly blast

I phone lanes they won't last
Louis Lane Superhighway
Men met Evil Stan
The armory like the
American Band Stand
Singing hearts got a low hand
Burning fires surgery heart
The whole road hearts
were dripping coffee relapsing
But inseparable screws out,
Rocky road ice cream hugging
I see someone falling asleep
Hearts on the job line
You will get fired out ruled
There will be no time to be mine

Yummy body measurable
Love Doves*

Equally 2 planes,
meeting together
distance
Equal lush resistance
½ creature ******
Her better half is ****** pleasure
his be heart plate
Two loves hear pancakes syrup lightly
Seduced heart’s fit tightly
The other side needs, balance 2 guided

We're two loves, heart divided?
Gothic kiss darkens the doves
Two half’s of hearts, infinite flame
Red heart cheating, hot rod game
Uncertainty Guilty reassurance

Love handholds, heart allegiance
This is  all about people that have hearts so whoever doesn't you can go to another station  the love the pain something so heartless or be a heart and start over fresh we love the fresh smell of grass and champagne is waiting so please stay let us have fun our own way
Vyiirt'aan Nov 2017
Thousands of generations,
Spoiled by the copious luxurious commodities
Corrupted as, per say, the hollow mass embraces - no, conceals
Their will to live - the pure essence

As comes to mourning in grief, wallowing for the lunistice
Devouring their last sliver of animation they contained

Thus bring in the artillery - what purpose has armistice
When the last threads of humanity are dictated
By bullhorns ridden with shards of bone, in enamel coating
Cavities open gaping wide as they drill their song through your cranium

The hypocrisy of the social hivemind
Intellect seeping through luminescent containers
Stacks of pixels draining the vivacity from your hollow casts

In its infancy, it was decorated as revolutionary and beneficial
In status quo, replacing the primitive necessities
Disguising them as enhancements
As they absorb the rotting cells in the marionettes
Indulging themselves indefinitely, erratically
Resembling maggot infesting their corpses

The fallacy of its concept governing the output
In alacrity, the symbiosis of computerized machinery
Ad interim, I remain shackled in my own habitat,
Demonising the occasion, disjoint from the remainder of whatever humanity
Remains in the soulless remnants of a man
Reciting the soliloquy of the hypocrisy of humanity
I should really contemplate my life
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       The Elections of 2024

                     How sharply our children will be ashamed…
                     remembering how in so strange a time
                     common integrity could look like courage

                                     -Yevtushenko, “Talk”

                    1. Thesis (of a sort)

The nation shamble-shuffles erratically
Erratically to a lectern and microphone
A microphone on a Potemkin stage
While a bewildered audience feebly applauds

                    2. Antithesis (of a sort)

The nation lemming-marches along the streets
Lemming-marches along with bullhorns and flags
Bullhorns bellowing in 5.56
The Gospel according to Saint QAnon

                    3. Recusancy instead of synthesis

But I am an American, not a D, an R, a Q
My faith is in the Constitution, and maybe
                                                       In you
Lawrence Hall Oct 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                   But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide!

                       “Students! Be the Fuhrer’s Propagandists!”

          **** poster ca. 1933, per Library of Congress: [Studenten seid
          Propagandisten des Führers Hoch-u. Fachschulen bekennen
          sich am 29. März zur Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung /
          (loc.gov)]

All the cool kids are into genocide
Slogans and posters and bullhorns and cries
Abandoning their studies to march outside
And scream the same 2,000-year-old lies

The InterGossip commands, and they obey
Blocking the streets and clenching each fist
Waving misspelt signs and yelling all day
Never pausing to ask if there’s something they’ve missed

Am I a hollow echo for some sycophant’s squall?
Will I fail to think for myself at all?
Think. Don't obey. Think.
Lawrence Hall Jul 2023
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Keyboard Combatants

                     “H* hath no fury like a non-combatant”

                -anonymous; dates as early as the American Civil War

Pitching war metaphors toward a people
Who don’t understand metaphors or war
Does not promote prudent self-government
Or peace
                 Only bullhorns and misspelt signs
Lawrence Hall Apr 19
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate
Anti-Semitism
Lawrence Hall Feb 10
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             The Disinterment of Neruda

      Qui sine peccato est vestrum, primus in aliam lapidem mittat

This Neruda - the Fascists murdered him
This Neruda - let us ****** him again
The people read and love his poems too much
And they ignore ours – let us dig him up

This Neruda – we will dig him up
And subject him to our Inquisition
We now will tell you what each fragment means
Each fragment of each word, his flesh, his bone

We have our bullhorns and our three-beat chants
His poems will mean what we tell you they mean

Shut up
Sue Collins Jul 2019
Both doors are black with metal trim. They are roughly the same dimensions. Easily mistaken.
I keep trying to discern any difference. I must choose. My life depends upon it.
Notice that the left one is ever so slightly crooked.  Should it be perfectly aligned?
The door on the right seems to emanate an unworldly glow that must be considered.

Lightning, thunder, the explosions all over the city, the people running for their lives.
Armed militias surrounding parts of the city, capturing those who don’t belong.
Air raids, screaming bullhorns, no power, no food or water, no first aid, no escape.
The taste of  fear, the smell of defeat, the touch of the inevitable, the view of the end.

The second-hand has almost achieved its final resting place. It’s now or never. I reach out.
Imperfection? A light that might deceive? Where will I end up once I go through the door?
I open the door on the right, as I am mesmerized by its powerful attraction and bidding.
It is coal-dark and very cool in this long corridor that I now walk through to the end.

An arched doorway welcomes me at the end of my trip through the door that I chose.
I step through to an expanse of sand and ocean, feeling a tingling wind on my face.
Up ahead I see only empty makeshift tents touching one another. I hear not a sound.
No creatures of any kind. No humans inside the tents. No weapons, no life. The End.


Inspired by Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West”
Lawrence Hall Sep 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Joining the Class Struggle

                              “Yuri, what splendid words!”

                                  -Anna in Doctor Zhivago

Lift high the red banner, comrades and comradettes!
Lift high the made-in-China bullhorns against the rich
Make crudely misspelt signs and block the streets
(How dare the workers work while we’re yelling at them)

Pull down the statue of St. Joan of Arc!
Because she was, like, you know, a Confederate general
And smash the windows of the corporate coffee shops
(Make mine a decolonized double decaf)

Liberate the people’s goods! To arms! To arms!
(But who will stay behind to work the farms?)
Sue Collins Aug 2019
We laughed, we danced, we ate and drank until dawn, then blinded by the fiery sunrise.
We slept little and ordered a car to drive us to the opening of something or other.
The notice was on our phone, our selfies from last night still making us silly again.
And the band plays on.

The trade winds are ominous, the plutocrats reign supreme, the riches trump the rags.
Bully pulpits abound with demagogic appeals to the ancient terrors of the other.
Countries dissolving, oceans rising, fires unabated, and glaciers disappearing.
And the band plays on.

My friends, we have only this moment in time. Why waste it on anything we can’t fix?
Life was made to savor and enjoy, not to worry and fret about anything beyond ourselves.
We can’t change other people; we can’t fight the battles of good and evil; we must just breathe.
And the band plays on.

The mobs are at the wall, bellicose signs at the ready. The defenders of freedom look the other way.
The intellectual, the artist, the different among us are trampled into conformity. No one is spared.
The lights dim, the bullhorns blare, the flames erupt, the crystal night begins yet again.
And the band plays on.

— The End —