(for Nietzche, who cowers behind art.)

The world calls the conquered ******
to remember that the sun every night yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

when there is no guarantee, no promise, no sure thing.
Yet still it yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise.

The world called Canaanites ******
while they traded and toiled along the shores
of land promised to the aged heretic of Sumer,
whose wife could give only love.

The world called Hebrews ******
while they raised Pharoah tombs
Provided respite from the eastern chariots
Stubborn in refusal of the living gods
Drinking only Eloheim's bitter grape
That provides brief respite from his decrees
When delving deep in one's cups.

The world called Britons ******
When flogged Boudicea fought and fought and finally fell
To Roman spear and gladius
When Angles and Saxons raided then stayed
When Cromwell climbed the pale cliffs

The world called the Iberians, Gauls and Teutons ******
when Caesar crossed the Rubicon
Pax Romana for Citizens born
Land for the wealthy, voting rights too
Taxes and tithes from their toil.

The world called the Khoikhoi of South Africa ******
From the VOC to fatal Apartheid
Up rose a man
The heart of the land
A man named Nelson Mandela.

The world called the Viet Minh ******
from Can Vong to Dien Bien Phu
'till they slogged howitzers above
to reign Napoleonic terror below.
And to them it was just
The American War
After the world called them
Vietnamese.

The world calls the conquered ******
to remember that the sun every day yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

When there is no guarantee, no promise, no sure thing
yet still it yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

'though it never watches its own rising
undoing raiment of fading embers
swimming naked in the royal blue
bathing all with daily newborn naked glory
chasing the celestial tidal tease
that seems to wander where it please
reminding that all are born free
but can grow into ignorance
and be called ******.

Seek truths
that hold in unity;
that provide nourishment
beneath the lash
allowing one

to rise, to rise, to rise.

it became a perpetual motion
a dance
someone hands the card, another lights
the amount of aching discolored grazed fingers was immense
put your finger on the flint wheel
press it down

karen thought we should make a sign
the scrambles of bruised fingers for a piece of cardboard
my fingers throbbed as i scratched our message on the board
i kept the pink flower locked in the crease of my hand
and threw them in air
“draft card burning here”

it was 7 00 in the morning
october 21 1967
i was only 17
my brother jeffrey was flying a plane over dien bien phu
a friend richard was screaming in the trenches of xuan loc
a lover michael treading through a swamp in mui bai ****

i stepped up to The Police.
The. Men. In. Suits. Stared. At. Me
Blank. Faces. And. No. Expression.
I picked up my Pink Daisy, and brought it up to their bayonets
this is for Jeffrey, for Richard, and for Michael

the men in suits stared at me
in a world of chaos and confusion
all I heard was
Silence.

he slammed his cup on the counter  
not to get anyone’s attention
though his cup was empty  
I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes  
of course they were bloodshot  
and of course he stank of nicotine
and of truth that he said could not be found
in the bottom of that coffee cup or bottle of gin  
though he ****** up both  like…
hell, I can’t compare it to anything  
and he would think a simile was a waste of words
he told me of a lover he once had, Elisa  
with hair so long she sat on it  
and a thirst as ravenous as his  
which led her to an alley in South Chicago
where the ***** or the H put her to sleep
for good, and how he buried her in Peoria
in a hard freeze, beside her brother
who got killed in Phu Bai, by “friendly fire”
but Bukowski laughed through his tears
when he heard that ****, “friendly fire”
and he filled his glass again,
with Bourbon I guess--I wasn’t at  Elisa’s
numb mother’s house that day
and when he lost another ****** lover
to a drunk driver, he didn’t say anything about irony  
just said, ****, it hurts to be close  
and he didn’t trust this happiness ****
because it didn’t last, but pain, hell,
you can count on that ******* and if he leaves,
you can make some up on your own…  
the waitress filled our cups to the top
so there was no space for the cream  
I sipped slowly to make room
he took a swig that had to scald his tongue
but I could not tell, for he was already on the death
of lover number three, sitting there with me  
waiting for him to stop the foul flow of truth

i don't understand the seeking of the vantage point in poetry,
as i never did in prose, this shadowy sociably acceptable
voyeurism, this need to weave a spiderweb, and all you're
weaving is a trap that isn't yours... now seeking a vantage point
from a prosaic perspective makes sense, because you're akin
to someone working in a factory or being the lumberjack...
oddly enough the phrase: jack of all trades doesn't fit the best
description of the job entitled: chopping wood jack.
but when i see poetry i see it, people establishing the voyeurism,
the need to pretend to be spies... that's what countering spying
involves: writing fiction: writing fiction isn't about elaborating
lying... it's about solidifying it, perpetuating it... after a while
the stamina asks: how many more to come? i don't have it in me...
stop treating me like a hot-rod **** english gentleman,
i'm slouched in a room and tired, *******. but you see these
unnatural poems, where people write on purpose,
they haven't made the grade to automate voyeurism,
they're still at the stage of wanting the gift of narration,
but they can't get it up to the heights of an air balloon...
it's there for the grasping, but that would mean something
more difficult than relinquishing abstract narration,
it would involve giving up their characteristics
to make characters, and they as such have very lessened
probing mechanisms to create artefacts: they have
a generic beauty about them... no hook nose, no BFG ears.
- just like Malachi wrote to only later plagiarise Moses...
in the end it just became a plagiarism:
a cat in the box, Schrödinger is expected:
but never the bunny and the top-hat and the magician;
so you see these poems, these contemporary efforts,
and you start thinking: why all this
voyeurism intention in the background? why are they trying to
purposively stage  a voyeurism? is there any decency left in man?
poets don't perform the art of voyeurism, in that they don't even
have the tact / capacity to create the actual ****** / narrator /
puppeteer... at least my attention span ascribes a care
for punctuation marks... as it turns out, the righteous
psychiatrists plagued the poets rightfully: too much emotion gave
birth to the miscarriage of a lack of decency when respectable
attire was necessary, or one's own interpretation on how
comma, dot, hyphen, semi-colon and colon
ought to be allocated timing
     1mm,     1cm,     1km,    1nm          1Ly respectively?
sophism should be teaching us this prop...
sophism should be teaching us this attire, but it isn't.
as along with English slang from Latin: (verb) to grass, rat out,
alt. voyeurism: de anabaptismo grassante adhuc in multis
germaniae, poloniae, etc. variably: to spread the word / truth...
to rat on the Nazarene... preserve unholy things, and make attempts
at missionary positioning, weak knees, lacking the bendy parts
on the church floor; 21st century Russia? orthodoxy still teaches
the priest: face toward the altar, *** to the throng... keep them
dim-witted... 50% of Bangladeshis are  illiterate in Dhaka...
and even if they taught them this sound-encoding, they'd
never prosper given the established powers...
they're bankers in the realm of sun and moon,
tide and mountain and the unexplained joy of
a life in urban slums that's deemed monastic by
those glorifying the mysteries of EL LE PHU THU TUTU P PI POO E -
and look where we have literacy in western society?
game shows... obscure knowledge lessons, crosswords...
anyone mention spelling tests? let me just tell you, i've found
a new way of banking, i've seen the paupers, i've
seen the riches from nought to bought to not bought to nine,
might as well let the priests take the Sunday
off from Monday to Saturday and leave us
with the dyslexic investors to mind how they
didn't plainly explain the dividends...
still, the lack of decency of poets to put on clothes
in the guise of a narrator; some say indecency, some would then
argue: abstract! abstract! cleaner manoeuvre from neither narrator
nor a character... poet: chandelier... just hanging in
the air. in the end... ars poetica (art of poetry)? ars voyeurism.

Phu Donal Truh !
Phu Donal Truh !
We gone burn this
Mufugga DOWN.

Fo JUSTICE !!