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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
Cedric McClester Apr 2015
By: Cedric McClester

Ya see the actual fact is
At times it’s not attractive
When we’re called to be proactive
Cos the atmosphere’s refractive
As if an insurmountable force
Things have suddenly changed course
And the protagonist has no remorse

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts

Don’t cha find it kinda strange
That we still argue climate change
After all those hurricanes
You’d think by now we’d use our brains
We’ve been shaken yet not stirred
Sumthin’ had to have occurred
Though silence is preferred
It should make us say my word

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts

And the argument’s been made
By the price already paid
For the groundwork to be laid
So our planet can be saved

And by now I think its clear
Just check out the atmosphere
Global warming would appear
To be already here
So it shouldn’t take much more
For the doubter to be sure
That the ozone layer’s core
Is sumthin we can’t ignore

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts

Ya see the actual fact is
At times it’s not attractive
When we’re called to be proactive
Cos the atmosphere’s refractive
As if an insurmountable force
Things have suddenly changed course
And the protagonist has no remorse




(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved.
Cedric McClester Nov 2016
By: Cedric McClester

Ya see the actual fact is
At times it’s not attractive
When we’re called to be proactive
Cos the atmosphere’s refractive
As if an insurmountable force
Things have suddenly changed course
And the protagonist has no remorse

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts

Don’t cha find it kinda strange
That we still argue climate change
After all those hurricanes
You’d think by now we’d use our brains
We’ve been shaken yet not stirred
Sumthin’ had to have occurred
Though silence is preferred
It should make us say my word

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts
And the argument’s been made
By the price already paid
For the groundwork to be laid
So our planet can be saved

So by now I think its clear
Just check out the atmosphere
Global warming would appear
To be already here
So it shouldn’t take much more
For the doubter to be sure
That the ozone layer’s core
Is sumthin we cannot ignore

Like the bullets a shooter packs
Or a freight train off the tracks
A reactionary reacts
Only to established facts

Ya see the actual fact is
At times it’s not attractive
When we’re called to be proactive
Cos the atmosphere’s refractive
As if an insurmountable force
Things have suddenly changed course
And the protagonist has no remorse




Cedric McClester, Copyright (c) 2016.  All rights reserved.
ConnectHook Sep 2015
[Infernal Dialectic of Ongoing Struggle]

Spoke Mao Zedong to Kim Jong Ill:
We languish here in deep red hell—
Let us confer and analyze
What factors revolutionize
The contradictions still.


Replied Lil’ Kim: The running dogs
Beguiled by class and capital
Have overdrawn and overspent.
They bank on debt, and make lament
And flounder in their fogs…


Kim chee does stink, but tastes so good
Do have some more, oh comrade Mao.
Fermented cabbage goes so well
With Hennessey and blondes (in hell)
when
Juche’s in da hood!

The Fearless Leader (now a shade)
Responded thus: Just give them time.
Our doctrines spread, their God is dead
Their sons shall sing ‘The East is Red’
Our party’s got it made.


Ill Kim displayed a wicked grin:
Our rocket-launches make them fear
They scold and cluck, and then they duck
While Hillary tries to pass the buck
I think we still could win…


The Chairman thought and sipped some fire
in communistic reverie, and feeling very clever, he
Replied to Ill: This place we’ll fill
with dead reactionaries still—
fifth columns to inspire.

Now let the thousand flowers bloom
And let one thousand thoughts contend.
Remember **? Remember ‘Nam?
We triumphed over Uncle Sam—
He’s limping toward his doom.


A wizened ghost now drifted in
Because his name had been proclaimed
A wispy beard (as yet unseared)
Revealed the mastermind once feared:
Old Uncle ** Chi Minh !

** **—old friend! Draw near! Draw near,
Spoke Mao: In solidarity
We hail your work upon the earth
You showed them what a war is worth
You’re always welcome here.


Ill Kim and I were wondering
How best to make the forward leap—
conspiring ******* their cow
and smoke their duck and drain their sow
while they are buying bling.

** Chi, old warrior, why the frown?
Upon your wisdom now we wait.
The forces red you bravely led
You staked your claim until they bled
And brought their nation down.


Old uncle **, the sage revered,
did smolder with his cigarette.
Viet Cong thought is hard to grasp
It slithers like a jungle asp…
** paused and stroked his beard:

You speak without the people’s light!
I criticize in strongest terms
Your revolutionary thought.
We need to ask our friend Pol ***
How best to steer this fight.

Such gradual change, a halfway measure
stalls the Bourgeoisie’s demise.
Our true Khmer Rouge was not a stooge
of Kapital. His fame was huge
for plundering their treasure.

True, he had to purge his nation
such is revolution, gents…
The traitor classes see the masses,
through reactionary  glasses.
Death or re-education!

We ought to sow his rural seed
for pure agrarian reform.
The bodies in the rice can rot
to fertilize the harvest plot—
the people’s mouths to feed.


When Pol *** heard his tactics lauded
he flew in to join the jabber:
Take a tip from Kampuchea!
Listen well and I will teach ya!

Kim and Mao applauded.

City folk are useless eaters
glasses-wearing foes and cheaters!
let them slave – and always save
their corpses for the fertile grave
Until they love their leaders.

From the barrel power grows—
(I don’t mean kim chee barrel, boys).
Now learn my way.We’ll have our say
Their weakened states will wither away.

The Red dictator rose.

Prepared to ramble on for hours
(the way Fidel so loves to do)
Pol ***’s harangue now fired the gang
like rockets falling on Da Nang
emitting sparks in showers.

Hell is known for lack of stasis—
Sudden throes of quaking fire;
fitful flares from from Satan’s lairs
and constant similar affairs
the population faces…

Thus Saint Pol ***, still naming names
along with Mao and Kim-Jong Il
while ** Chi screamed, and then blasphemed
were swept en masse, and unredeemed
into the surging flames.

Yet still they plotted in the blaze
with dialectic deviousness.
Philosophizing, strategizing
stinking sulphur brimstone rising;
ghosts in the yellow haze . . .

        ☭ END ☭
http://tinyurl.com/q6uyx34

Julie Grenness Oct 2016
An ode from a peaceful visionary.....
If Trump gets the Presidency,
He'll control nuclear weaponry,
Bombs for that reactionary,
Should we be nuking he?
All that negativity and misogyny,
Yes, let's nuke some reactionaries!
Imagine the peace there'd be,
There'd be nothing left on Earth, you see,
So much for democracy,
Let's nuke all those reactionaries!!!
But, hey, then we'd be the reactionaries!!!!!!
Feedback welcome.
A REACTIONARY TRACT FOR THE TIMES

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The **** Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
*** plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.
The curtain on the
CPAC convocation rolls back,

as the revolution
in Tahrir Square boils.

America’s theater
of deadly political

absurdity commences;
to witness demagogues

recite holy scripture to
evangelize a religion of war.

A heavily invested
audience marvels

at the marionettes
pirouetting on strings

jigged along by hands
of invisible puppet-masters

donning dark masks of
clever 503C llcs

disguised in self serving
hues of red, white and blue.

This grand folly of masquers
conceals a fatal pantomime,

a cast of reactionary characters,
Neo-Conmen auditioning for

the leading role in a lurid play
of a deadly nation projecting
a dying imperial preeminence.

The martinets engage zero
sum games where the victor
belongs to the despoilers,

and the merchants of death
richly confer multimillion dollar
reasons for being, underwriting
the gilded egos of candidates

and their infatuation with the
vanity of feigned power.

These master rhetoricians
skillfully lather up the crowd

by pandering to basest
xenophobic nationalist
instincts and fantasies
of laissez-faire proclivities.  

Slathering on the partisan
pretense in layers so thick

a master chef, armed
with the sharpest Ginsu Knife

couldn't slice a hock tip
of blood red meat

hurled into the crowd of
gobbling Republicons

howling and yodeling
it’s derisive acclaim.

The rankled party line,
gibberish talking points

are hammer blows of
incessant propaganda,

so cocksure that any room for
doubt is crowded out by the

phantasmagorical McMansions
of hyperbole they ***** in

the pliant minds of their
gibbering minions.

The candidates preening for
president show off their

falangist affectations
in eager duels of oratorical

one upmanship; constantly
jockeying to outflank their

other Neo-Conmen opponents,
always concluding their brutish

diatribes with a solemn
denouement of a Republicon

psalm ending with a
Holy Hosanna Hallelujah

to the Ronald Reagan
Heavenly Buddha.

Punchline of the holy Amen
“what would Reagan do?”

to remind the faithful
to remain the faithful

bearers to the fiction
of dead Reaganism.

Evoking anything
Ron and Nancy

induces sanctioned
comportment of a

slow simmering
******* eubellence

providing a welcomed
relief of repressed
libidinal energy.

The mention of Goldwater
sends GOP acolytes to

pause in reverence,
envisioning Barry and

Ronnie looking down
from heaven upon the gathered,

inciting immediate ruminations
of falling dominos and

the viability of a
tactical nuke strike

against Ayatollah’s
underground
uranium factories.

The host of Neo-Conmen,
new age Falangist pitchmen

belch from the dais,
in ever increasing alacrity,

the stirring drum beats
and slick videos,

of glorious warriors
winning the battlefield

with the rippling glory
of the Stars and Stripes

flowing in a continual
loop behind them.

Romney,
Bachmann

Gingrich
take center stage,

goose stepping
to the roll of piercing timpanis.

Words slither
out of their mouths
like poisonous snakes.

Lies, hiss through
their teeth.

Open mouths
expose Black Mamba
fangs, dripping with venom.

Eyes squint
as their reptilian brains

implore the besieged
to flee from the
light of truth.

Seeking refuge in fear;
yet on the ready

to coil and strike;
while trembling

in ignorance,
exalting loathsomeness

worshiping violence;
they remain

poised to unleash
first strike armies;

boastfully evoking moral
platitudes of Bush Doctrine
prerogatives.

Trembling in ignorance
worshiping violence

exalting fear,
these dogs of war bay

to unleash armies
against the

Godless apostates
that threaten

to expose the
stasis of their

Capitalismo-Judeo-Christian
view of the world.

They have hijacked
the great faith traditions

to serve a narrow
political aim

and relish any
opportunity to

demonize Islam
in service to their lies.

Watch as they
they crouch down

on the dais to
open the nest

of vipers welling
deep within the
bowels of their souls.

They find relief
by excreting their

spawn of deadly asps
into the veins of

cable news networks;
scoring political points

with the terrorized
children of Faux News

capturing battalions
of straw men villains

to rise atop meaningless
straw polls.

They agitate for a second
American revolution

by injecting the venom
of fear and lies

into the body
politic.

Ron Paul
stands alone,

perplexed why
American's love

war as much as
they hate civil liberties?

Cheney and
Rumsfeld brood.

The people of
Iraq and Afghanistan

fail to embrace their armies
of liberation that run up

unfortunate collateral damage
body counts required to sustain
the American way of life.

Ever the defender of
democracy and liberty,

Gingrich slams Obama's
condemnation of Suleiman

"hes an able diplomat."
Gingrich  forgot to add

that Suleiman is a
skilled torturer and

an able tyrant any self
serving democracy would
be proud to call ally and friend.

Cheney and Rumsfeld
remain flummoxed.

Their armies of liberation bogged
down in the marshy Blackwaters

of intractability;  trying to solve
the conundrum of the diminished

equity returns of asymmetrical
warfare.  Spinning the math

to justify building aircraft carriers
to **** a gnat.

The families of dead soldiers
surround them and wave dime

store flags hoping the plastic
eagle remains fixed atop the pole.

Perpetually smiling
Michele Bachmann
raises the specter
of Muslim Brotherhoods
taking over Egypt.

The persecution of Christians
and the escalating war on

Christianity have the Crusaders
up on their seats waving Excalibur
once again.

Gingrich pink cheeks
flush with the cash

of a Zionist casino
entrepreneur

doubles down, stacks
his chips high.

“The Israeli Embassy
in Cairo was overrun
by angry mobs.”  

“Is this a precursor of
cancelling the peace treaty
signed with Sadat?”

“The pullout in Iraq hands the country to
radical Shiites effectively handing our
hard won victory to Iran.”

“Israel is threatened and will not
permit Iran to acquire nuclear

weapons. A nuclear empowered Iran
will not stand!”

“We mustn't let do nothing Obama
threaten the safety of our good ally
Israel.”

CPAC willingly holds the deadly asp
to the breast of a proud nation.

Urging, coaxing it to gently sink
its teeth into the sacred heart
of our dear republic...

John Lee ******
Crawlin King Snake

CPAC 2011

Matthew 23
Brood of Vipers


jbm
Oakland
2/10/11
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
.i'm "sorry"... in a muslim society i'd be asked to only read one book, by a camel jockey by the name of muhammad, one camel jockey... 72 virgni experienced, that's worth celebration? you ever 2 walk into about 9 prostitutes giving you the "eye"?! 72 rottweilers: that would be fun! you know why i stopped liking western societies? they started to become very much islamic... in islam you have one man, and his one book: bibliothekvoneinbuch... the mantra speaks: i am expected to angst diese mann... what hope if western society? they also have their: einvereinheitlichendbuch... what is the quran to neunzehn-achtzig-vier?! weltlichblaupausen: secular blueprints... 1984... another ******* mantra... akin to the quran... secular: weltlichblödsinn! how many books does it take to create an islamic, or a western secular society? apparently! the ratio 1 / 1 (one to one)... the quran / 1984... *******... i'm not even bothered by the politico youtube commentators being censored... they only read one secular book... i don't like the sort of minds associated with only one book, these pretend not to be, but being, pseudo-muslims... wow! what worth of choice! either the quran, or 1984! spaghetti tangled junkies can have their way... sorry... what speech is there to be worth defending? i don't like either the quran, or the secular bible of 1984... zombies... either side of the "argument"...  i honestly hate the sort of people that only allow themselves 1984 commentary... one culturally relevant book they ever read, and it seems: the only book they ever read: or will read... (red / reed)... so it seems... the world pivots on only three books being digested by the general public... the bible, the quran, 1984... i've read too many books to have to succumb to this "cool" secular narrative of modern prophesy.. let's see english, a language, at its most flamboyant! british grenadiers' fife & drum... the sort of english not ready to invite immigrants! 1984 commentator zombies... **** me... **** unius libri... hardly an islamic quote, e when attributed to st. thomas aquinas... oh i'm shaking at the knees! as far as i am concerned muhammad is rolling in his grave when the arabs "discovered" oil... as is Khadija, rolling in her grave, scolding muhammad... i should attain the **** unius libri fear... but then i find... religion... predated the scientific concept of cloning... muslims were cloned, cognitively... obviously not physically... antithesis of dialectics... cloned... mind-bribes... i should fear a man with only one book, esp. if he wrote it himself... but then again, i fear that sort of man for all the wrong reasons... such company... eh... when looking up to someone akin to king ecgberht... yeah... i fear a man with only one book... what boring company they must have and must be.

completely: unpalatable...
   there's funny,
there's a punchline...
but then...
       "****" just becomes annoying...
i have learned that
the anglo-ßaß sense of humour
is fine...
          until it becomes excessive...
then...
well...
        then it becomes annoying...
really... annoying...
not, akin to, something,
i'd welcome to match:
host-it
    (samnaðr-den)
          ᛋᚨᛗᚾᚨᚦᚱ ᛞᛖᚾ
to account for a selb
                      (self)...

or
           minn thungr hjarta
            ᛗᛁᚾᚾ ᚦᚢᚾᚷᚱ ᚻᛅᚨᚱᛏᚨ
                     (my ... heart)...

i'm not english, but i do understand
extending the notion
of black humour...
up to, and including the point
of cutting-off
this strain of wit,
of intelligence
playing baron of status...
for the little man of
ridicule,
            i don't like overtly
intelligent comedy,
but the anglo-ßaß have pushed
have pushed the wrong buttons,
at the right time,
english comedy cannot achieve
a rekindled status
of being export material,
it has, devolved,
into a geographic idiosyncrasy...
i live in england,
and even i,
am not in on the "insider's"
take on a joke...

                    if i don't understand it,
you won't understand it...
           it's funny when it's plain
dumb, of slacking the intelligence
quotient,
  but not when its plain,
outright cipher logistics...
        
surely the english should be paying
less attention to me,
and more to...
those 300 or so illegal schools
set up by Pakistani muslims,
yes, no, maybe?

                     there's funny funny...
there's sort of funny...
and there's funny...
but i don't want to think too much
about it, either being,
or not being funny...
   laughter like tears is
highly impulsive,
   subsequently highly
spontanoeus, and...
                          uncontrollable...

black humour is one thing,
but telling jokes
to the point where you reach
a per se crucible?
and the jokes are so,
so, so "intelligent" that they become
"unfathomable"?
i think that's the time you take
a break from being "comedy arbiters"...

oh... unless this is...
where you let me peer into
the "antibiotic" /
  "xenophobic" reactionary
tactic?
  no wonder i'm not
"in" on the "in-joke" of
the demographic!
     **** me!
              of course i'm not
supposed to get it!
  it's not funny to me,
simply because the in-group
mentality is so sophisticated
that i would never be
in on the "in-group" giggles!

         good! good!
at least thanks to this,
we will not be seeing
much of comedy, "comedy"
being exported outside of england
akin to monty python!
good!

           it's good that the crown
of comedy was taken off the head
of the english...
and given to someone else...
i liked "intelligent" comedy
up to a point...
   then "too much" thinking
became involved...
and i lost both the plot and a sense
for giggles...

     point being,
what was the best joke i ever heard?
only last night...
i was unable to think...
but i laughed...
     it wasn't exactly
the aeons of the sea before me...
it was the void in my mind
that was the joke...
         an existence...
with a ******'s worth of
"thought": albeit bound to:
not thinking...

that's the best joke
i've ever heard,
  hence my painting of
the hebrew definite article,
i.e.:
                         HA,

e.g. ha-stanley:  
                              the-satan.

*and why wouldn't the persians
rebel against the orthodoxy driven
camel-jockeys?
the persians would bow before
the arabs?!
                   really?!
fly a ******* kite, eat a mango...
*******
   donning a glove filled
with ice-cubes...
     i gather, that, islam,
was, the monotheism,
that found itself,
hopeful, to be immune to
a schism...
       and what's so true about islam
if it has succumbed
to the ontological reality
of all religions, except judaism,
namely, a schism?
      islam is lucky though...
unlike christianity,
with its late initial schism...
then the  
polytheistic-esque schism
past the orthodox / catholic /
protestant "debate"....
                 islam was lucky...
only one schism...
persians not happy being ruled
by camel jockey arabs...
   so... is it a "true" religion?
oh sure, sure...
i'd convert...
      but there was a schism in islam...
so it's no longer a "true" religion,
is it?
          why would it be?
the religion encountered a schism...
what if, and if i would...
i would... i would convert
to the shia branch of islam...
i wouldn't convert
to the sunni faction...
        what then?!

            true as in unifying as in:
rebel iran?!
  oops!
                   to hell with this world...
the bible, the quran,
the secular bible known as 1984...
if there's no afterlife...
well...
          i'm already bored, stiff, dead,
whatever comes next...
m'eh...
                whatever comes comes
and that's just another whatever
with no justification
or a fixation of a consequential
purpose.
she's a
woman of
entirely tattooed
*** that
she waxes
in bed
on their
narrowly white
sheets only
this show  
with zest
which virtue
she abstain
a reactionary
mood in
saxophone to
proceed clarity
clarity
'
CATERPILLAR recognize me

BUTTERFLY (turning away glances over shoulder) excuse me

CATERPILLAR i’m you before you transformed

BUTTERFLY get away you ****** worm

CATERPILLAR you can’t be serious look at me i’m you

BUTTERFLY look at you? euwwwh you’re a sticky slug with too many legs (pause) i’m exquisite fluttering colorful poetry a celebrity with huge fan base wherever i fly people recognize admire me

CATERPILLAR (creases brow) what happened to you did you forget your past where you come from

BUTTERFLY my past is fiction i’ve always been this lovely luminary (turns profile to audience in exaggerated manner) can’t you see i’m busy go away please leave

CATERPILLAR (bluntly) you’re consumed in vanity drunk on yourself spectacle without substance you make me question my own growing will i become like you

BUTTERFLY stop talking i’m calling 911

CATERPILLAR (sharply) you’re a sickening disappointment another Paris Hilton spin-off i hope to die in the cocoon and be spared the sham of you

BUTTERFLY (speaking into cell phone) yes operator i’m being accosted violated attack in progress please dispatch police immediately

CATERPILLAR you’re pitiful over-reactionary spineless decadent

BUTTERFLY i have nothing more to say law enforcement will be here soon

CATERPILLAR quit fretting i’m out of here i need to find and warn other caterpillars this meeting is a bleak awakening

BUTTERFLY think what you like greasy maggot i’m late for a performance and need to skirt paparazzi

caterpillar trudges off stage left as butterfly ascends over audience
Julia Burden Jul 2010
He wouldn't laugh
if he knew
how much of
me
still belonged
to him.

He would close his eyes
(almost -
is that -
regret?
desire?
disappointment?)
if he understood
how my inspiration
is all
derived
from stolen glimpses
of that
stupid smirk.

He would ****
his head -
say my name
(reproachfully?
regretfully?
desperately?)
if he could
feel
himself in
every word
I write.

Though I wonder
would the
disapproval
be for my feelings?
Or simply
for the way I
romanticize them?
Meg B Aug 2015
The breath in my chest
Scraped against my esophagus
As the preacher read his
Introductory scripture and a
Mourning loved one doubled over
In grief and despair as she
Struggled to bid adieu;

The hairs on the back of my neck
Stood horizontally and
Perpendicular to my concrete floor
As I heard the sweetest soul I know
Choke on her sobs on the
Other end of the receiver,
As she struggled to understand
The onset of pain and finality
She was forced to swallow;

My stomach hollowed and
Acidic anger bubbled and carved out my insides
When I read my best friend's texts,
A series of words
That seemed too cruel to be true,
A riffraff of  interrogatories and
Unsettled punctuation,
Summarizing the momentary suspension
Of her resiliency
As she processed the
Breaking of her heart;

And now I lay motionless
On my mattress,
Hot tears masquerading behind my
Tightened eyelids as I writhe in
Empathy,
Alone in my incapability
To end the pains and the woes of
Those around me,
As my body thus must then grieve
For me.
Najwa Kareem Dec 2017
US President Trump declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.

How brazen.
He dare not hide his allegiance with thugs, war criminals, terrorists, thieves, heartless creatures, shall I go on.
He corrupt enough to give ownership of a capital rightfully belonging to Palestine to blood thirsty Zionists.

People all over the world protesting, demonstrating, showing their resistance to Trump's nonsense for more than a week now.
Most of the protests reactionary.
Although the protests are purposeful and necessary, ongoing consistent proactive resistance is what is needed.
Regretfully is what is lacking.

Keffiyah, donned by many following Trump's wicked declaration. The garment of solidarity with an oppressed land and oppressed people & a resistance to ongoing Zionist colonialism & criminality.
Buy One, Wear One, Speak up with One. Educate with One. Avoid being reactionary with One. Be proactive with One.  

Long live Al-Quds. Long live Palestine. May God always protect the Holy Land.

by Najwa Kareem
Imam Muhammad Asi's Friday 12/15/17 Khutbah (Sermon) elicited a desire in me to write this poem. His words were mind stimulating, thought provoking, beautiful, inspiring; a wake up call for all who listens and ponders.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
i tried to assimilate, oh wait, i did, and i speak better native sprechen than the actual natives, and for that? you get the boot, because some camel jockey egyptian mongrel mixed with iranian blood gets the better of you... i guess the "natives" were fans of the eastern european *******, but not the eastern european males, **** it, i'm coming for the ride; can just see the ****** shouting: ooh ooh! their male counterparts are a'coming! and next thing you know, i'll be asking you to play the ******* banjo, with a toothpick!*

and it was always going to be torrential rain,
suspended in a prelude crescendo
of soulfly's song prophecy...
oh all the hoes come from eastern europe,
just like all didlo moulds come from africa,
gotta perfect that "pleasing of the white
******* honey cougar in plastic too, yo, bro..."
black people don't speak the current
lexicon, they are hyper-evolutionary
with their slang impromptus,
gets annoying after a while,
when you stop keeping track of their
ghettosprechen...
      ******* could have said custard,
meant margarine, but i'd still think of
jungle...
                     ghetto *****, get-a-go!
next time you mention all women of
eastern europe as ******, i'll mention
you in my charcoal wish-yo-were-edible
roasts... **** me... i'd prefer eating a leg
of lamb than a ******; shank.
oh, the word offends you,
but doesn't offend you in a rap limerick?
i.e. ***** ***** bab bab *****?
black people invent too much slang,
too much degenerate use of language,
      i try to keep it straight and universal,
off the orangutans go, talking orange is
the new black...
           i still find it hard to fathom
darwinism, who would be mad to begin
in africa, and end up in the arctic circle,
and no china?! common origins *******...
  tried looking for an eskimo in china,
all i found was, a ******* icecube!
      post-existentialism does exists,
it exists in the form of anglo-existentialism,
i.e. a darwinistic blackmailing...
    21st century existentialism is blackmail,
plain dumb & simple...
   and yes, i have a girlfriend, i call her...
sophia...
       and nietzsche was right:
the ugliest of the ugliest? atheists,
intellectually speaking.
       and why would you ever consider
the pristine sophia / ****** mary if not considering
aspasia, phryne, rahab, theodora,
   to counter philosophy,
   why not craft a:
    philospasy, a philophryny,
       a philorahabu, a philothedorum?
guess what, of the most famous prostitutes,
the contestants are philorahabu,
                     and philothedorum,
and all are famous prostitutes;
then the pristine sophia, my "girlfriend";
philosophy has a deity, that although
deemed pristine, has been touched by
many hands, and many strangleholds of ego,
time to turn this princess into a *****;
and the ones that visited a *******,
will look at those that haven't with curious
eyes.
let's not forget the siamese twin prostitutes
safa & marwa, and the matriarch
and true founder of islam ha-gar -
      the concubine of abraham,
  that ******* mother of islam.... hagar...
you really think men invented the islamic
attire for women?
              who's at the chanel catwalk,
straight men, or gays and women?
       you blame anyone, you blame: hagar...
running between the mounts safa & marwa...
islam, that totalitarian reinvention of
"repentant" / "revised" mode of prostitution...
and as i once overheard an englishman speak,
the niqab? satan's postbox.
- the craft began with treating the world as
solely inanimate, to make it as inanimate as
possible, and interact in it,
   as the sole animate agent, obviously with
the obvious hurdles of animate expressions,
nonetheless, these expressions being
outside the vicinity of integrated animate
actors, working around in inanimate surroundings,
conclusively,
  the "supposed" animate expression regain
their inanimate stratum by a repeatedly
predictable observation of
a prior re similis ad infinitum
  (prior to, again, similar toward infinity).
the point was always to make the world
as inanimate as possible,
    collecting books is a starter,
  collecting cooking utensils another,
the point being, to surround yourself with as
much inanimate reality, as to prove yourself
the animate, the "actor"...
             or more expressively: the puppeteer...
it still bothers me, grinding two prefixes...
the penta-      vs.        the tetra-...
   why? well, we are embodied with five sense,
but there are only four elements...

    vision
audition
gustation                       yes, but there's only
  olfaction
     somatosensation

                    air, fire, earth, water...
      this is almost gagging a schematic,
  we can see fire, earth and water,
  we can hear fire, air, water and earth,
      we can taste...
      we can smell fire, air, water, earth,
we can touch fire, water, earth...

this, by the way is crude...
   and is limited by not adding particular
observations...
   but the ratio 5:4 is in place, akin to
the mad hatter's 10/6 = 0.666...
         and that missing one is: ad infinitum,
might as well call it the lazy eight with 4:5...
since the elements came prior to the senses.

i'm guessing the "fifth element" to compliment
the five senses is a far greater posit than
a sixth sense, in that, this "fifth element"
is a plagiarism of kierkegaard,
  i.e. the "changelessness of god",
namely the eternally immovable object,
an object of constantly perpetuated friction,
so stationary that it moves all things,
which also precipitates into an eternally
recurrent subject matter,
immovable, ergo, inexhaustible.

- and i will die believing that anglo-existentialism
is an argument from the perspective
of blackmail, esp. since it's overtly-repetitive
and unoriginal,
  and if the english found continental
existentialism boring, a continental european
like myself, will find some hidden interest
in this "boring" artefact of time,
   but nothing can redeem repetition,
not even a boring artefact of writing,
   since when reading a boring "effort" of
writing, you can actually wake up,
and yawn...
  but when the same "effort" is repetitive,
you never get a chance to yawn,
you're still asleep, "apparently" enthralled.

- and to give a conclusion...
if an irishman thinks you write akin to
the psychiatric slang of "word salad",
ask him if he has read any james joyce,
if the answer is no, and he replies that he prefers
video game narratives, and has ambitions of
writing a book citing the cliche moonlight sonata
of beethoven... it's one of those times
you can't even laugh, internally, or externally.

- eventuality vs. actuality -
whereby actuality is a reactionary stance
that drags past events into present and future
events...
   whereby eventuality is a liberal stance
that drags past events into a wall,
   the present into a status quo,
  and the future into a snooze button phase
of a clockwork orange.

- no, i don't like this darwinistic blackmail of
continental existentialism,
  this monochromatic monolith...

- better start calling philosophy by its proper name,
philorahabu / philothedorum
(were not underlined on the pixel canvas,
thereby bypassing the oxford dictionary panel
for nuo-verbum acceptance) -
      keep that ****** of yours sophia
in a cage, because your thinking,
like your body, will become contaminated;
but one thing is for sure,
that concubine hagar running between
safa & marwa looking for water...
    can't imagine any other grander matriarch...
a reformed *** slave, who gave birth
to the niqab...
            i really can't imagine jannah
that way... i think it looks like:
1 man + 72 prostitutes,
              and 1 woman + 3 holes stuffed.
John F McCullagh Jul 2013
If you want to make a profit
(and the morality is grey)
Dehumanize the victim
and you'll be well on your way.
In a country that's divided,
and declining by the hour.
Your sins will be forgiven
by the Autocrats in power.

As, once upon a time,
in our then divided land
Slavery was acceptable
because a black was not a man.
Then black people were possessions
and very few were free.
They knew the lash, they knew the rod,
They knew not dignity.

Now fetuses are parasites-
not considered human beings
Abortion is big business
the cash cow of their dreams
Fifty million have been murdered
with no end on the horizon.
(******, it appears, is acceptable
as long as it's not you dying.)

Someday you'll be old and gray-
and have an awful cough
Please don't be surprised or shocked
if they opt to write you off.

The weak and the disabled,
those feeble minded or not spry
can blame our liberality
when it comes their turn to die.

Eighty years its been since
Adolf ****** rose to power
Little children sang his praises too-
and darkness had it's hour.

Note:**** eugenics were **** Germany's racially based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of Nazis ideology. Those humans were targeted who were identified as "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed under Action T4, a "euthanasia" program.[1][2]
(They will call it choice until the choice is there's alone)

Funny but many will call me a reactionary racist for my position against abortion but there have been millions of black Americans aborted, just as planned parenthood's founder intended.I would not make all abortions illegal as I believe that I shouldn't legislate morality. I think they should be rare, legal and safe.
Moon Humor Apr 2014
Glass is cheaper than the stone skin
tattooed on their foreheads. The palace, a splendid fantasy,
half built when the idea will be abandoned.

Freedom is a powerful nuisance! Their only
sin is looking at the world through rose-colored
glasses, make people feel at ease despite distress and disease.

The right wing redneck reactionary republicans continue
religious slaughtering. This nightmare scenario should
be nixed,
said with a sneer, I hope they’re wearing warm socks.

Still, I couldn’t crack the code. Changed envy to admiration
to cultivate mystery rare as it is rewarding. The weird thing
is the high-end whiskey collecting dust on the on the shelves.

Nothing short of astonishing, like the space farers gazing back
at the home planet. Distant. They fascinate people.
Animate the inanimate environment. Isolation above.

Looking back I am ashamed of the mess we are leaving
our children and grandchildren. How to allocate these limited
resources? The key is to engage. No easy fixes.
A poem made out of lines found in various newspapers.
Aztec Warrior Nov 2015
POEM 94**
The Sky Melted Its Blue
(This poem is dedicated to the lives lost in Paris,
along with the several million lives lost in the wars
the U.S. and its allies have caused since the invasion
of Afghanistan; as well as the millions, whose lives have
become horror stories in seeking refuge from these wars)

The shy melted its blue
into angry red.
Dark piercing shades of night bled
as a desperately needed hospital blew
in Afghanistan.
Doctors, volunteers, sick and wounded patients
gave their blood to the night sky.
October 3rd, U.S. state sponsored terror
added to the tens of thousands
who have already died.
~~~
The sky melted its darkness
into angry red.
Everyday people, eating in cafes,
going to see a soccer game,
going to concert halls
or just walking down the street enjoying life.
November 13th, ISIS terror
and bodies bled into the Paris sky.
~~~
Where is the difference
in these acts of societal horrors?
How can anyone claim
a moral high ground?
~~~
Two reactionary, outmoded systems
face off against each other.
One, claiming to be enlightened,
democratic, “the greatest society to ever be”;
built on genocide and slavery
that down to today murders
black and brown youth,
incarcerates 2.5 million in dungeons,
attacks women on every front,
and savagely destroys the Earth’s very life.
The other, reactionary, feudal
with harshly enforced ignorance
and superstition,
and the brutal oppression of women.
Two poles of exploitation and oppression.
MacWorld or Jihad?
Are we supposed to choose?
While choosing either, strengthens both!
NEVER, should be our resistance cry.
~~~
This cycle of terror, horror
and wars of aggression
must be broken through and stopped.
With conscious, visible resistance against
ALL oppression, continued invasions,
drone attacks and bombings
done by the ‘West’.
As we also call out against
the reactionary terror
of the Jihadists.
This is up to us,
the everyday people, world wide.
This system of imperialism
has gotten us into this mess,
and through revolution, nothing less
we can find our way out
and build a world free from all this!!

Aztec Warrior 11.18.15
(See http://www.revcom.us)
Side note: An historical reference: The people of Germany, who lived in the village around the Dachau death camp could see the trains loaded with human beings; could smell the burning flesh coming from the ovens and yet did nothing to stop this horror. When our great great grandchildren look back at what is happening in the Middle East by our government, what will they see?
Will they see that we did everything we could to stop these wars of
aggression for empire and imperialism? Or will they look back with contempt and see people who looked away with the excuse of just “wanting to be safe”??
mother died today or maybe yesterday i can’t be sure  the telegram from the home says your mother passed away funeral tomorrow deep sympathy which leaves the matter doubtful it could have been yesterday - “the Stranger” Albert Camus

a misguided partiality exists inside me i feel safer around women maybe i’m fooling myself and women are equally capable of the brutal cruelties i associate with men i don’t know i guess i believe women hold themselves to a higher behavioral standard gentler more nurturing there’s another aspect to my belief women floor me i am totally vulnerable to a pretty woman but it must be stated my tastes run quite peculiar i prefer alternative looks and am put off by classic American glamour i guess the real deal is i’m a guy most comfortable among men watching World Series Sunday Monday Night Football despite the fact that if i were with a woman would be my greatest craving who cares what i think i apologize for opening my mouth

we are stranded by the side of road from out of nowhere a beat up gray truck pulls along side in a cloud of dust we cannot see driver from passenger side stubbly shaven mustached man wearing red bandana under tattered western hat in accented hoarse voice hollers out how much for the girl with terrified expression in her face her hand reaches for my arm i peer coldly into man’s eyes then glance away answering

a. what exactly do you have in mind

b. how much cash do you got on you

c. she’s not for sale

d. we need a ride

e. we’re lost do you have a cell phone

f. please leave us alone

g. all of the above

an extraordinarily attractive member of opposite *** runs into you on street in familiar tone of voice greets you speaking your name it’s been ages you look terrific i was just thinking about you the other day it’s such a wonderful surprise to see you do you have time to stop chat over coffee or drink i live quite near here please come over to my place let’s catch up i’d really love that this person then looks at you in a flirtatious seductive way yet you cannot place or remember where you know them or if you’ve ever known them you answer

a. yes

b. this is embarrassing i’ve forgotten your name

c. how do you know my name where do we know each other from

d. is it possible you’re confusing me with someone else

e. i have no idea who you are or what you want from me

f. all of the above

these are dark times every one acknowledges post-modernism post-911 is bleak jobless homeless callous frightful kali yuga no one nothing nowhere  is safe wars gruesome atrocities piracy blood diamonds **** mutilation theft deceit betrayal school yard bullying assassinations cyber espionage anti-depression drugs vicious video games why aren’t people making positive video games referencing cooperation affection happiness instead of Grand Theft Auto Vice City Call of Duty World at War Mortal Kombat what kind of world are we creating for future generations why does violence sell more than *** why is *** so unkind what kind of people are we better off dead they shoot horses don’t they what happened what’s happening why are we making this hell why aren’t we making better wiser more loving choices i don’t understand

in the late 1960’s early 70’s parents didn’t have money to buy their kids high school graduation gifts or perhaps the notion was not invented yet nobody had cars maybe a few guys i knew owned cars they bought with their own hard earned money everybody i knew who lived off campus and too far to bicycle hitch-hiked to school then hitch-hiked home every day for 4 or more years that’s how we all did it in Hartford i remember sitting in different adult’s cars indebted grateful looking thinking wondering will i grow up to be like him or her projecting connections

when i grew up it was a different time turn on tune in drop out in a way hippies were reactionary to all the modern progress atomic age we winged it by inexact methods that time is gone it is crucial at present to be coherent sober accurate mindful wakeful vigilant wary prepared 24/7 this history being written how will it be told i’ve been around long enough to know how these deceptions work we are all using feeding ripping off each other we give in to whoever wants us become whoever seeks to destroy us we disgust ourselves i’m astonished dumbfounded talk with me who are we please explain i beg you

who if i cried who would hear me among the angels even if one of them pressed me against heart i would be consumed in overwhelming existence for beauty is nothing but beginning of terror we are still just able to bear we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us every angel is terrifying – “2nd Elegy” Rainer Maria Rilke
PJ Poesy Sep 2016
If charged particles are not guilty of existence, why would anyone be? Man who holds book or man who holds gun, the choice is neither obvious or attenuated. Reactionary causes rash tactlessness. Still, proof must be exposed. Who will avenge a payback unpunished? How to take satisfaction in evening the score, when so many more will fall before any justice will cure the lure to revenge? It depends, on how charged particles defend, or how you decipher foe from friend. Call upon prudence, or we shall see no end. Precaution is canniness in your own circumspection. Please use forethought for neither the neutron or proton are happy with these electrons.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.the moral obligation, to be cognitively dissident; which has to align with Heiddeger's da-sein at some point... a piquant fervor for reality as: static, yet at the same time moving in the realm of the Titans / orbs - time, is a concept that has to match up to the orbs... otherwise all this space... whatever the wind, the clouds... is just static... inanimate... time could only be derived from animate objects, which became subjects which became momentum... the rest, the rest is just space, and its excesses of the vacuous night... space became a probing mechanism, an investigative vector, posit, charge.

now you call me a germanophile...
like a Caligula or some
odd ****...

kennts ihr selbst:

    know your self...

which is a reflective form of
the reflexive Anglo
counterpart: yourself.

so i noticed...
whenever i become, really,
and i mean really reactionary
(not angry)
i tend to drift into
writing in my native tongue...

funny...
mother tongue,
fatherland...

   but it's the opposite in Moscow...
motherland...
   and the epitome
of the Cyrillic?

                well... there was
a St. Cyrill...
            but father-tongue just
sounds so ****** stupid
in English...

maybe in German?
   vaterzunge...
              well... sure as **** that
sounds better than mutterzunge...
but hey,
preferences preference preferences,
not everyone says: om, om,
ooh, chocolate,
       when taking a bite of a ****.
Marshal Gebbie Oct 2012
The regions’ magic carpets are a-beckoning
The brassware in the back bazaars aglow,
Exotic spice is nice
For a very reasonable price
And the camel market’s just the place to go.


But…


Afghanistan’s dark Muslims are scheming
The women folk are sharpening their knives,
When foreign troops depart
The bloodletting will start
With collaborators screaming for their lives.


The children of the Ottoman are smarting
For their neighbours are showing them disdain
By peppering with bombs
Along with Syria’s pogroms
And I wonder why the local folk complain?


Oh the sun comes up with glory in old Egypt
As another national leader meets demise
And old Nasser’s bile will burn
As from his grave he will return
To try to rectify his children’s Holy lies.


There are whispers of  a strike at the reactor.
There are reactionary reactions from Iran
With annulment of the bomb
The region should resume aplomb
But I have my doubts this mixture really can.


And it never rains on dear old dusty Cairo,
Here, you never feel the chill of falling snow,
You may stalk the back bazaars
For the rare blue water jars
But you should really buy protection when you go.



And they whinge that all the tourists here are dwindling
That the middle Eastern charm is all but spent,
When the red blood flows like wine
In the good old Bhyzantine
As the peace of night, with gunfire, is wrent.


But…


The dates are really sweet
And the carpetry so neat
And the music is exotic in the night,
And with the flash of Asian eyes
I can guarantee surprise
As you flee for very life…with ****** fright!


Marshalg
From the dark Bazaar
23 October 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2017
basic arithmetic in terms of punctuation, otherwise? simply the arithmetic of punctuation: what does (,) equal? what does (.) equal? what does (:) equal? what does (-) equal? what does (;) equal? come on, quick! quick! give me a number!

to *think
, is to not narrate,
                               much of what is regarded as
   "thinking", simply becomes as art
of narration
       that is sofa-bound, i.e. so comfortable
that it feels it has no inclination
toward the use of hands as ever
being idle, it simply replaces
  hands with a tongue...
                    hence: idle speech,
                hence political speech;
so if the "devil" has work for idle hands,
then "god" has work for the idle zunge
                                       (tongue)...
but most people don't think,
   because their thinkling is solely about
narrating,
                  their day-to-day...
               and i appreciate this custom,
in the cognitive realm...
         i really do...
              how many jokes ushered into
the void of one's silence, neither whisphers,
nor hummings, nor whistling...
        wiser still, essentially unchanged...
but heidegger's aphorism no. 285
   really bothers me...
            the reader looking into the narrator
given the existentialist inverted commas
   (iberian inverted questioning
   ¿   ?          that's the first step toward
   an iberian existentialism)
                        said the third person,
    with third party sources, the middle man,
the second person, and then the reader
  of the writer's original testimony?
   if northern existentialism (french / german...
  the english were too reactionary, and
too easily bored by the continental drift)
       encompasses the tool that's "      "
   then the iberian tool has to be the inverted
question mark, i.e.       ¿   ?,
sitting comfortably? no? how about a wheelchair...
let me just break your legs and your spine.
       but aphorism 285: "worldview",
     "grounding", "configuring"...
       i don't understand this allocation of ambiguity,
and an italic stress on da-sein / da-sein...
   aren't all the three descriptive elements /
   adjectives the purposive sentiments for
                   originating the concept of dasein?
i had to counter with an iberian existential tool...
   after all i said, 'he said', "we said"...
                                  it's a third party medium
of supposed ambiguity...
         if there's a santa claus (satan's clause),
then there's pontius pilate's clause,
  found in the existential tool of     double-ditto "     "
  or as the english like to say: inverted commas;
   or the ritual: of washing your hands clean
   from passing the judgement...
   they're citation marks to be honest, come on,
let's be pompous, they donned 19th top-hats
     at ascot's horse races! who's fooling who?
Marched in step
Toting a little red wagon
Stride carried pep
Dragging that little red wagon

Weathered in rust
Creaking in the sun
Covered in dust
It weighs a ton

Overburdened by basic trinkets
Remnants of Christmas 05
Macaroni made cumulonimbus
From school days off winchester drive

Photo of family for evidence
Not that it means a thing
Victim of malevolence
Thrown out in early spring

Winter brought about the cough
Toting a little red wagon
His whole system seems off
Dragging that little red wagon

He's feeling old
Went and turned lethargic
Held onto the cold
Wallowing in hardship

Deterioration apparent
There's something horribly wrong
Behavior aberrant
His strength is gone

Innocence in tow
Holding onto reactionary bliss
Writing name in snow
...Blood marked abyss

Death encroaches.
He falls before his little red wagon
A young boy approaches
And steals that little red wagon
Sally A Bayan Mar 2015
It's like a habit, done unconsciously
Do we even know, it is reactionary?
This breathing out with varying intensities
Could itself, be a tendency
Says a lot---it could mean anything, 
It could mean everything...
Speaking becomes a choice,
To hear, or not to hear one's voice. 

There's a sigh of admission
Or agreement...a signal of an ensuing confession,
Rarely comes with a nod or a smile...
We admire with a sigh
Our eyes, a sparkle it could never hide,
We give out a sigh of despair
When hopelessness permeates the air.
From disappointment, we frown
Our shoulders are down,
And when one is anxious, and wait-less
Limbs are so restless
Mind is unruly, followed usually 
By a sigh of anxiety.
When heart and mind have conceded
A sigh of surrender has succeeded
When what we see is beyond comprehension
And we.....have run out of options...

When the air is laced with sorrow
We sigh, and then tears follow
Because words refuse to flow
A sigh is all that we can let go.

We sense disrespect
A snort, we usually expect
As things, people, sometimes stray
And we sigh in dismay.

When what we feel we cannot utter
We exhale...it feels so much better
Sometimes, it is gentle...other times, violent
Could be like a shout...or one so fervent...

I ventured...thought of a lot more sighs,
They could fill my page...I could run out of rhymes
So I'm ending this poem with one...prolonged and high
Acknowledging...that a sigh is not just a sigh,
it holds words, actions suppressed, even ****** expressions,
Confusing....at times, giving wrong impressions,
Because...the true reason for the sigh 
Is known, only to the one who sighs.


Sally

Copyright March 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Mao
wrote a
Little Red Book

an
at the ready

inexhaustible
arsenal

of
quotations

instant ammo

for bandoleros
of correctness

flinging barbs

more deadly
then a cocked
AK

virulent
vanguards

of screaming
proletarian
heroes

whippin em out

to shout down

the running dogs
of capitalism

sprouting
reactionary
bourgeois
schemes

a
sure
quive­r

of razor
sharp

ideological
stilettos

appropriate
weapons

of
respo­nse

for the
heated
struggle

against
incorrect
ideas

instant
revelations­

of carefully
selected
corrections

uncovered

by fevered
thumbs

*******
dog eared
pages

the
indexed
platitudes

uphold
the sacred

holy
dogmas

of convicted
minds

firmly
convinced

in the
comfortable
certitude

of their
derangement

In college
we carried

our
Red Books

in frayed
pockets
of dingy
flannel shirts

but
Lennon
unlike
Warhol
didn't
like
Mao

so we
dropped
Lenin
and
listened
to
Dylan
tracks

hysterically
laugh­ing
tickled
to death

with
Marx Brothers
Horse Feathers

Down
on
funky
Broadway

we
traded
our
Dashikis

for
coo­l

Che
emblazoned
tees

a weekly
special

at the
Silk City
boutique

whom
the
capitalists

cleverly
omitted

breast
poc­kets.

leading us
to displace
our Red Books

forcing us
to adopt

the
revolutionary
logos

of store front
entrepreneurs

Teabagger's
have

a little
red, white and
blue book.

They call it
the Constitution.

Its more of a
totem

a convenient
fetish

the Koch
Brothers
believe

empowers
them

to
pursue

the liberty
of

an unbridled
id

and the
freedom

of banksters
and oil companies

to swallow
anything

that they

can sink

their

insatiable
fangs

into

laissez faire
tolerance

for their
gluttony

is codified

by the grand
celestial
ledgers

of a greedy
God

down with
capitalism

Qadhafi,
has a
Green Book

he holds
it like
hand
mirror

peering into
his vanities

infatuated
with the
beauty
of terror

the
perfect
reflection

of his heinous
malevolence

the fiat
of his
ad hocracy

the
repressive
rules
of totalitarianism

are all
spelled out

the gory
details of

corporal rule
and capital
punishment

suggestively
enforced with

the stern
mutterings

of dictatorial
diatribes

the certain
cruelty

of whip
and stick


Morning Joe
has a book

the incessant
suggestions

of righteous
Reaganisms

a self serving
rhetoric

a stirring
oratory

of narcissistic
prattle

the banal hum

of feigned
wisdom

egoistic
affectations

cuddled and
encouraged

by star stricken
Mika

the critical
thesis

its first rule

thou shall not speak
ill of any other
republicon

the infallibility
of potentates

is always
self evident



Oakland
2/27/11
jbm
It harassed free fall, it was affected by the friction force in the absence of the tefillah, the walls became more taxed and accelerated with gravity that exceeded the acceleration of time, gravity triggered the rest that was in the outside walls and made different kilometers apart, with the free fall at more than 9.8 km per second. Beneath the ground the dimension was made lower than the intake embankment, creating placements in revealing swaps in the solar position, for anyone trying to level the force of fall and its acceleration versus gravity around bodies that were moving accelerated and scattered. The earth constantly hurried its mass to preponderate and go where something or someone could rescue it, the air was inked with an offer in the cases of the imprisoned airs, which from the graves adjoining the valley of Kedron kidnapped its areas of lavender physiognomies to link it to the mantles of the Tallit, which in some cases arose with thousands of souls from their graves, to receive the cushioned rubble between which they were electro-magnetized with the blankets, and the wiring they generated, conceiving that they would gather them in the naive and demiurgical plates, for the holistic retransmission of the tract to Patmos, starting from the Cyclades all the way to the Dodecanese.

The sensitive ex-karst plates of Patmos trembled through the passageways of the Cyclades, which permeated in a ratio of the first reflection in the distance vision that approached between both physical episodes, but the second axis of reflection was made aware in an unknown perspective close to the underwater elevation of the Profitis Ilias, close to the entrance sinkhole, between the variables of the inter plates that were assigned to the reflective tapes of the Beit Hamikdash that mutated to the Megaron Áullos Kósmos. Here the omega will resume a minimum of constant forces, emphasizing the friction that bellowed by the hands of the pro-zealots who had left those sarcophagi in the Kidron Valley, in the average anchor values of the great leaks of the friction with the falling water by millions from the inexorable wind that aided the indivisible objects in the Kidron valley ratio, as a reflection of free fall hitting the friction between the Bern Olives, with torrential rains that were made periodic for an esplanade near Mount Scopus. This seat suffered from the force of friction in the fall of the wall, appreciating the burials that were and will be the reactionary phases of the Hellenistic degree. Objects faded to the state of rest and gravity that cavorted through the valleys, replicating distances more than periods of Elijah in the Judah desert itself and in the Dead Sea. From the depth of the valley, aqueous elements emerged with the proportional speed of the falls of the material and immaterial bodies, outlining the second Newtonian law, as the holy water submerged into the flow of the super-atomized savory, which was reconverted into the same Beit Hamikdash, to materialize in the submerged and hidden effects of the pagan force, hinting at the analogy of the equinoctial of the Dyticá that pushed the wave of the Kaitelka whale, in the constant of speed, tensing the force of the rocks that never stopped moving until his body igneous was quintupled in the fifth dimension beyond the consciousness of those who do not understand immaterial physical abstraction, in fractional microseconds.

The density of the rain filter that had been volumized from the submerged interstices, created the gravity of the horizontal movement that subdued the equation in kinetics that gave the differential in the unresolved expectation of the cessation of movement. Where the amount of reaction is more than what would go to Patmos, disproportionate to the macro pulleys that oscillated in the meridians, speed, and acceleration. Prior to the decoupling of the forces of fall in the already submerged bodies that were counterbalanced to give rise to the volume cords that detached from the largest chamber of the wall, to record the final sequence of wear generated by the reconversion and balance points of their masses, then the starting pedestal accumulates and is reconnected with this phenomenon of the Invisible Eclectic Portal of Patmos, being aware that they would have to enter the cavern, after having ceased their work for this mass retransmission of the reinverted wall to propel the Megaron uprising. Within three months after the Hellenistic Full Moon, the colors of the Tefilah will become mathematical, fascinating the spiritual intensity that inspired Saint John to build the temple near his cave of the Apocalypse on the reef of Patmos. The sanctity will count the astragali in front of the cyclamen for the delicate advances, wearing the blue-green of the quadrinomial that represented geodesy in its points of order and of its evangelist faction. Confusions were overwhelmed not to stop the movements of splendor in the effusions of the storms in sacred prayers in the room, which takes refuge from Kímolos bringing the souls of Helenikká, for the offices that made the trend of Katapausis after the subsequent full moon. Discounting the three months that never elapsed since Vernarth arrived on the Eurydice.


Kaitelka and the judgment of her abode would determine the corpus and the psyche of the irascible necromances of Borker and Leiak, subordinated to Zefian so that the torrential rains on Patmos are perceived by the colder of condensed water of Cassandra that Beit Hamikdash had been bringing with two anthropomorphic shadows that had been supporting him, that of a Cohen, Levita and a Samaritan, they were the guardians that came from Jerusalem to Patmos to assimilate the enthronement spectrum of free fall converted into free ascent were the fourth arrow that spectrum for the first column to be erected. The breath of all of them became more entropic each time that would be concentrated in a certain haze that was released by its titanic whale snout; Rather, I say of her presence that she was raised by some larvae, which came from certain Zeus dresses that he had expelled to free the larvae that were from her immortal garb, looking like bait for those who stalked him with necromancy. . But this time he would be very contemplative for the construction of the Megaron de Vernarth, because amphitheater was a cause of low politics for his Olympic spectrum. The energy or Evegeia, was primed for objects that took forms of papyri covered with invisible enzymes tried from Qumram, but the cause of Mortis revived the larvae making the oblivion of the era that continued after the Mortis of all legions multiplied by the phrases that were sinister from the true matter of physical remanence.
Helleniká Souls
Geno Cattouse Sep 2014
Considerably penalties
For early withdrawal.

Sending more advisors.
Vietnam redux 1954.

Reactionary by poll #s.

Afghan half stand.

Unemployment

Slow Redeployment.

You pick.
Jeremy Betts Jul 2023
I wish I could wish I was more in the moment and less in the haze of a memory
Find me in a nonregulation tankless sensory deprivation simulation to deep dive into why my history grips so tightly
It's not lost on me that it feeds off of the litany of my bad energy, a never ending supply and still greedy
Can't say it's a mystery, not completely, hesitation is hard wired in on the heals of every lesson in misery
Honestly it's never a surprise, not really, the first complication to arise naturally is my own reactionary jurk of the knee
Even though that's never worked out for me, never seem to benefit any, quite the contrary actually
It's entertainment for my inner dialogue, continuously laughing menacingly as it nurtures this three-ring calamity
And I'm left to recite a sorry apology with the conviction of a hostage on VHS tape through a grainy TV
So why do I do it? Clearly it's not a chosen journey but rather some hopeless, helpless destiny
One I prayed would never find me but it was as timely as untimely could be
And now, this is me

©2023
it’s spring world growing into something different iceland volcano ash interrupting european flights dream of new worlds better life happiness new architecture language love everyone wants something different god’s eyes see through gazillion eyes each center of universe why do i cry so easy flinch at sight of blood violence what is love happiness sunday morning volcanic ash persists we are all inter-connected sweet little freezing cold iceland dominates world life is crazy too crazy where is bjork this morning drinking grog coffee laughing i’m so different from you unaccountable chemistry go away it’s hot i’m sweating stink i wish for your smell so bad jasmine basil lavender female scent ticket home to nowhere we are all such liars over-reactionary sensationalists well on my way yes i choose horse with wings house-boat floating up river mountain top glass conservatory filled with plants clouds girlfriend i wish for way back wiser choices more content result
Joseph Martinez Apr 2016
Don’t you want to
Achieve the vision
He said with eyes
So crystal blue
We can see it
Written on your
Face I sense
No connection
To these people
We can all be
Top performers
If we elevate
One another
Hey your onions
Cut too small
This is me
Elevating you
I smell onions
And tortillas
And vegetables
Oil dishwater
Carbon on the
Grill top scrapings
She has got some
Vague expectation
Written on her smear
Life is like a
Postage stamp
Her makeup is
Too thick crossing
Over leopard print
Tattoo underneath
Her left arm
Message managers
Are wondering what’s
Wrong with you
My gentle restaurateur
You and your wife
Are wondering why
A child this June
Another restaurateur
A new store opens
Every two days
Like a virus spreading
Smiles of cold blue skin
I dreamt last night
My breathless image
Of being caught
Inside an elevator
Of an old casino
I was parked on the
28th floor security
Was out to get me
I want to be
The tired reason
Your brand new magic
Realization
The dream you
Don’t wake up from
I want to fall into
Flesh disappearing
From the white spots
Of your eyes
No sounds heard
Settling in your head
Spread out among
The cold far reaches
Of your yesses
Coagulate like
Hot black venom
In your fingers
Be drawn into
The cracked corners
Of your lips like
Raised beds of
Cacti in the sun
Holy stolen
In your boots
I am no sinner
Cast me thru the
Farmlands of the
Black seed
I am going
Home to where
Your eagle’s waiting
Eyes of plenty
Vines that
Creep among
The tangled people
In their fever dream
Announcing lampshade
Shadows holding
Form from in the
Broken molding
Here I watch my
Not-self wonder
At the wretched
Timeline of reactionary
Heroes
Tired old mothers
Wandering up the stairs
To their misfortunes
Glasses brought back
Full of orange juice and water
I am drawn upon
A silver second
Lost into a fog
She is obvious in
The way that she is leaving
I am almost out of
Oatmeal and songs
Silver for my floors
Time evaporates
This instant
Like a clean and subtle
Memory of everything
You say or do or wake to
All your riches and your fables
Are a lamb sworn
Into custody
Of the same slate asylum
Battered boats near docks
Knocking water
Into snake holes
Wandered under
Painted bridges
Holding no collapse
Spending hours and days
Washed up on drowsy
Shoreline nettles
Chipping flint stone fire
Extinguished under floodlights
Gigi Tiji May 2015
Does my very existence not fit into your narrow idea of what a human being should be?

That you even hold a belief that my identity should have parameters truly disconcerts me.

First, I feel a reactionary urge to be sorry for not fitting into this tiny little cardboard box you've made for me.

This box you want to close up and push to the back of a dusty shelf.

This is because I'm used to being swept under the rug like a mess you don't want to see but you don't have the time for.

Then, I want to crush it beneath my feet and tear it apart.

But the mother within me caresses your hateful glare with a sorry stare.

Disappointed... worried, I gently pick it up.

With a sad smile, I begin to open it.

Carefully, with the calloused pads of my fingers, I untuck each fold you have created in order for this box to contain my soul.

With each motion, I make sure not to rip it at the seams. That would hurt.

It seems, though, this material has been handled unlovingly to begin with.

Mold has made its way into the corners, and the fibers are fraying at each corner, at every fold.

But I am patient. I will slowly but surely deconstruct each and every hateful box that has been stacked in the musty warehouse of your heart.

I will be here until all unsuspecting souls have escaped their prisons.

I will be here until I die.
But that's okay.

It gives me something to do with my hands.
Plus I enjoy the company of the liberated.

I need their help to clean this place up.
Tyler King Nov 2015
I dream of living to see the next revolution,
And of the men who will not live through that revolution,
Of the air humming electric static heat in anticipation of the inevitable riot,
Of the holy barricades standing in defiance of Heaven,
Of the enlightened kicking down the doors with guns and masks, asking;
"ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM OR ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION?"
Of gallows for the dogs of war,
Of guillotines for the capitalist pigs,
Of a firing squad for every reactionary content to oppose the wheel of history even as it crushes their bones down to nothing,
Of the end which justifies  the blood staining the cities red as the hammer and sickle cells that divide and multiply fevered in the streets,
Of the ghosts of iron men long dead still insisting that we take not one step back,
Because men get arrested, animals get put down
And God,
God made them as stubble to our swords, boys
And with blades clenched between their teeth so climb the dregs of the Earth to the surface to taste the apples they shook from the trees,
In 24 hour news cycles the slogans repeat to infinity:
"NOT RESISTING ARREST"
"NOT COMMITTING A CRIME"
"I WAS NOT A THREAT, WHY DID YOU TRY TO **** ME"
You can only force people to paint the smallest target possible on their own backs for so long before you end up in the crosshairs
I have seen the faces of  my saints painted on the walls of eternity -
Of Trotsky,  million headed proletariat staring daggers through the hearts of the tsars,
Of Cromwell, crusader for the ungovernable force of will,
Of Robespierre, headsman of divine terror riding on the wings of the Angel of Death,
I have seen the end and the means played out in countless dramas across millennia,
And the only question that remains unanswered is this:
Are you gonna be a part of the problem or are you gonna be a part of the solution?
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
Refractions of Vivid Emotions

This poem has a story. A few months ago, inspired by
the response from patty m to one of my poems (quoted below,)
I started this poem and never completed it. Stumbled upon it, and asked for permission to post, when I realized the why of the absence of her voice from here, the passing of her beloved, Joey.
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1195106/for-the-love-of-my-life/

It changed the poem.

for Patty M.
and Joey,
who I only knew through
the eyes that loved him


~~~

"dayummmm this is amazing.
I love your foreplay,
the wanton ******,
your words tipping words in
refractions of vivid emotions"

patty m

~~

she hits me
sweetly, unknowingly
with a best shot,
a four lined stanza
of expresso appreciation,
while
shhhhh,
I'm at work

everyone, observing,
looking at me,
cause I am instantly
floored

instant cognition,
emotional reverberation
disturb, perturb,
by her phantastic imagery
a language, a phraseology
"refractions of vivid emotions"

slow conniption,
her phrases,
never didactical,
cause my reactionary words
to refract my emotions,
light rays now reflecting,
breaking off pieces of me,
all scattered about the universe,
and I'm learning me a lesson good,
be careful what you read...

grab the cell only to hear:

"currently, none of
Humpty Dumpty's men
are currently available,
so please stay on the line...
you're caller number one,
expected wait time, well,
ha ha ha ha ha..."

fix me woman!
tape or glue,
won't adhere
where you words have cut me,
sutures cannot close caverns,
reverse magma flows,
can you,
is even possible
to bring me back to whole?

you've tapped some
deep watered notions,
split my atoms,
you have refracted me,
vividly

I have here
writ me
down

newborn needy,
requesting more of her words
to patch
up

and heal
me
~
so I search for a refresher course on
The Poetry of patty m,
and am twice trashed,
thrown twice over prostrate to the floor,
her voice gone quiet,
lost from loss,
sometimes loss makes makes the best silence,
sometimes loss make the best poetry

Oh, this wanton ******!

her news upends,
her words tipping words,
each word,
a companion to each tear shed,
and I cry copiously

a last poem, this time
of an endplay
absent he... absent foreplay

my pal Joey,
though our eyes never met,
a debt of gratitude owed,
for you refracted
from your soulmate

words that made this trying world
such a better place

I too,
at loss
how to say goodbye,
this imperfect poem chile of mine,
for I am inconsolable and ashamed
the overt poverty of my words
that offer but a weakened console

so with pride
I will borrow some
patty-words,
hoping that's ok

~~~

**Beware,

life is never fair,

a trap, a clap trap happenstance

leading me in rapid dance

perchance enhanced with vibrant hue

dispensed in advice I'll give to you;  

run don't walk with backward glance,

hide desire wrapped away

and concentrate on dragons to slay.

Rejoice in thoughts if once set free

would join the world

in unity,

but you and I

can never be,

this I say with certainty.  

then sigh. . .

         as I softly whisper

goodbye.
"For Patty and Joey: Refractions of Vivid Emotions"
Started April 2nd 2015,
Finished June 27, 2015
~~~
How it all began.

On May 12, 2014,
I wrote:

Patty M (Read the new poets here)


I have never been published
or won a prize,
except, yeah, yeah,
the one in the
Crackerjack box

but from that cheap plastic surprise,
much was learned even as a young boy

cull the chaff of life
from amidst the wheat

plant it well and deep,
then forget all about it,
except where,
t'was seeded

when eyes yellowed,
hair turned a color Disney repackaged as
frozen
white,
normally a gift of a hairdresser,
called mother time,
and your pink skin scaled smooth
now kin and kith of the kitchen grater,

then time is in,
cull your plantings

go back into that yards,
pull out the weeds,
uncovering what only time
can provide -

poetry planted and born from
the summary addition of thousands
of days of life,
well felt,
well received,
well recorded,
drawn from earth and water,
well lived

sometimes my nyc sidewalks uneven,
cause a toe snagging tripping,
this loss of balance,
adrenalin hot flashing,
similar to tripping upon a new poet

every time I say no mas,
I must choose tween
left or right,
one can
read or one can write,
but not
both

a voice on I stumble,
making me ever so foolish,
ever so humble,
ever so confused

so at 12:31am
at it again,
reaping what others have sowed

this woman by her own confess,
Trouble with a capital everything
T.R.O.U.B.L.E

only a grownup chile
writs me a poem
re crackers in her vegetable soup,
a naval battle akin to that of Midway,
that makes me crackers with delight!

saucy, that poetess
you better love her well,
she tells you outright
or she'll sell you, the reader out,
for the next one cruising along,
hence this poem, her good graces sought!

but to get certain memories I want,
but can't recall for I never had them,
she, for me doth record:

*Imaginary space within a dream
floats in a subconscious sea.
Our affection grows from
tremulous beginnings
its dramatic unfolding
vestige of the soul whispers
and lingers in twilight and ice

Shared breath,
in time our leisured rhythms
savored sweetly match kiss for kiss.

Words in parody drop,
one by one.
enmeshing me in rippling sorrow,
once again you've moved
just beyond my reach.*

curse the teachers and the genes
and my plain vanilla simp vocabulary,
that don't let me write like this,
but to my backyard I go,
where I cull what other's have planted better,
and harvest the new fruits of
crackerjack superior poets
Victor D López Feb 2019
Such artificial nonsense rhyme,
That can turn art into slime,
And make your thoughts not worth a dime,
And words a total waste of time.

Throw away the limiting forms,
Burn all the idiotic norms,
Old-fashioned rules apply to fools,
No one but me plays with my tools!

The new trinity is Me, Myself and I!
I set the rules for every game,
And follow none, just the same,
Anarchy rules all, and that's no lie!

Iambic pentameter? Pyrrhic substitutions?
Who the hell cares about those illusions!
Counting syllables and each line?
Grand, old, pompous idiocy most sublime!

Write a sonnet? I'd rather wear a pink bonnet!
But if I do 15 lines it will be
Why, 'cause I say so, doggone it!
And no idiot ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

I am GOD and rule it blasphemy,
To follow both hard and easy rules,
That can make heads hurt, you'll agree,
Or burn in eternal hell as reactionary fools.

There is more art in a cow's mighty ****,
Than in Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Pope,
If you can't beat them, marginalize them from the start,
Drag them through the mire to raise me up, that is my hope.

From now on all couplets shall triplets be, thus do I decree,
Come to me on bended knee and I will set you free,
Everyone's a poet, welcome to the new reality.
This was originally submitted to another poetry site a short time ago in response to a challenge to essentially write an anti-rhyme poem in rhyme. For anyone who takes this at face value and misses the point, I hear my shrink has some openings available this week. Glad to pass along her contact information . . . :)
Gigi Tiji Feb 2015
Our eyes are near
and my heart is hot
but your stare is cold —
a thousand miles away

Your words are clear
and time has stopped
there's nowhere to go
my thoughts are broken and blurred

Sweet lips, your sweet lips
Carry such a bitter sound...

I'm floating in place with
no lover to face

trembling, trembling
trembling heart space

I'm spinning in circles
looking for miracles

and it's proving to be
horribly difficult

Trying to fly
with no wings to spread

I crumble and cry
a song for what's dead

the sound of alarms
ring in my head

the sound of alarms
ring in my head...

I'm trying so hard
I don't know what to do

My heart is aching
thinking of you

A small square of paper
sits on my tongue

With razor sharp edges
and tasting of dung

It takes me to spaces
deep in my mind

Where there's too many places
and not enough time

I've been drowned in guilt
and I'm suspended in shame

Repeatedly killed
like in a video game

Written upon
the sharp paper square
are words for destruction
and guilt and despair

It's a trip like no other
you won't even feel high
you'll feel like a bother
and just want to cry

Drifting in place
dead in deep space

You left me here with
tears on my face

Crystalline droplets
scintillating pearls

spinning in circles,
spirals, and swirls

Why did you think
to leave me alone

at the cold ugly brink
a frost to the bone

the cold hard shoulder
feels far colder
than a lifeless boulder
I'm cold, I'm
cold

I speak with my music
and these notes are my words
My harp is my voice
and these strings are the cords

I try hard to play
But you've cut them all off
My harp is left bare
naked, unstrung

I'll move all the pedals
But unto what end?
I can't speak my heart
I can no longer pretend

It's time to stand up
and take a great bow
Walk off the stage
The end is —
.....

and
There is a silence
in the mist, hidden
between the little
droplets, whispering
rivers of soft words from
past lovers evaporated~
.....

together
we held hands
and in our palms
we held time

and we ran away
from the rising sun
so we could see it
rise forever

but we grew tired
and we slowed down
and the sun sped up
and time was slipping
between our fingers
dripping
from our knuckles

and together we ran
we ran away toward
the setting sun
as fast as we could
but we were too tired...

and
you showered me in
silky sheets of glowing lovelight
you embraced me with
warm rays of shimmering soulshine

you pushed and pulled my ocean's tides
in and out like a lilting melody
making love to a perfect harmony

but slowly you
drifted away
into space
to shine on new rocks
leaving me cold my
ocean waves
still...

and
For the longest time
I wanted to thank you, thief
for stealing my heart.

I thought it'd be better off
in someone else's hands anyway,
because I sure as hell
didn't take good care of it.

Can you tell me about the time
you carefully held it close?

because I'm sure
that you can remember that
because that's all you want
to remember.

It was your
little pet.

and I can't tell you
how much it meant to me
that you found it so
intriguing...

but I can't tell you
how much it hurt when
it stopped being something special
and started being
just another animal

Don't you remember
how much fun you
had with it?
Mm..

But you don't remember
watching it struggle
to breathe in
and out?

Because it seems like
despite that

all I can remember now
is your tightening grip
suffocating it
carelessly
and your acidic lip
spouting seemingly
ceaseless
abuse

Tell me about the time
you played with it
until it was broken
and it bored you

Because I can sure
remember that.
but can you?...

Oh!
Batshit crazy,
Batshit soup.
Am I just lazy,
or caught in a loop?

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup.
Razor blades,
Razor blades,
Razor blades,
****!

Love is not a competition,
Love is not a game!
You see me as a player,
and it's a downright shame!

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup!
I am totally lazy,
and caught in a loop-die-loop?!

Glass houses
Baseball games
Angels wings and tar
SEPTA lines and pine trees
Can take you pretty far

Love is not a competition,
Love is not a war!
and acting like a soldier
is really quite a chore!

Silly souls
Wacky words
Dragonflies and tar
I want to make some art with you
but I don't know how you are!

and
it's
Just another slide
down the razor blade
of life! into a bowl
of sour owl ****...

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup!

Am I crazy,
or am I caught
in a loop?

Razor blades
Razor blades
Razor blades
****!

and you are
ribbed, but uncaged, and
you read like a book broken,
with a cracked spine, snapped,
always opening to
the same page

the wrinkles stacked
dendritically, along the
ragged column, show
where you were split,
down the seam,
in a fervent attempt
to be figured out

your leaves are worn,
dog eared, and torn,
with words used, and
defiled

unadorned,
sickly souls

forlorn figures,
sitting silently

wishing and waiting,
no kissing or playing

it seems that you've left me,
and you're all I want to read...

blistering sunsets
burn my skin

I watch the ball of love
get further from me,
falling a w a y

It was always out of reach,
but I could feel it's warmth!
as long as it was in sight,
but, no longer

It forms rivers from dry wells.

In it's absence
it has them brimming,
now overflowing, down
channels of skinclay
wrinkles

they run deeper,
than the roots of
the tallest trees,
falling slower, than
the softest cries,
unheard

rocky river ways
froth from the mouth,
splashing and bubbling
in maniacal sadness —

silent white water rapids...

Tussled and unkempt,
shriveled livers beg for mercy!
hidden behind layers of rotting drywall

a rusty sledgehammer.

—unused

You may want to take me inside
but your mind is a million dripping daggers
perpendicular to the infinite edges
of my circular paradigms.

your cold soul wraps around me
like a chainmail suit.

I want to love it, as
it's supposed to love me, but
it's heavy and pinches every fiber
of my existence

and why should I wear it
when I want to run into love
completely naked?

My name is derived from Tyrant
I would say you should have expected it
but I am not one to take someone's heart
that is the ultimate crime.

Can't you see that you've stolen your own?
Look in the mirror! Unfurl your ****** fists.

Now my fingers are ablaze with hellfire!

and
My unseen tears
condense onto windowpanes
as they're smashed open by codependent assumptions.

Blinding
blunt force flashlights
shatter sharp shards of light
across the darkest crevices
of my soul.

Impatience
and uncertainty
leads to reactionary behavior.

Do not plant flowers
in the gardens of someone
who cannot take care of their
own plants.

Their soil is unsaturated
with nutrients.

How can you expect to enjoy the fruit of their love?

I am a withered plot.
I am the dead of winter.

No one is interested in how it has died.
They are only upset that they can no longer feed themselves.

What you see is what you get.
Madeline May 2013
not very long ago i thought i was going to say to you,
"i love you."
i thought i would say,
"i want you,
and i hope you want me too,"
and i thought that maybe it was what i wanted.
but where has the innocence gone,
and where is the love?
and when did i stop needing you,
and more importantly when did i start again?
and then not very long ago
i was filled with the kind of anger and disgust
i'd forgotten i could feel for you.
it took the words and the breath right out of me.
i'd forgotten that part of loving you,
and all at once i remembered again.
it took the want and the respect right out of me
and it filled me with the deepest sadness.
a moment of short-sighted drunkenness,
it's not what i should remember about you.
it shouldn't consume the thousands of goodnesses i see in you
but it does.
a few hours ago i was in a place we shared once
and i ached for you so badly
and now, again, i am hollow.
you fill me up and you hollow me out
and i forgot that wanting you is exhausting,
but i remember now
and now, again, i am lost.
and i hope you ******* read this and i hope it ****** you off
and i hope it makes you think i'm immature or reactionary or naive
and i hope it makes you indignant or dismissive
and i hope you don't give a ****.
jesus, i hope it makes you think all sorts of terrible things about me,
i really do.
i hope it makes you think i'm pathetic,
i hope you think it's unfair
because you're **** right, i hold you accountable,
because you're better than all of them put together
and you act like it one and a half times out of ten.
you disappoint me as often as not, now.
isn't that terrible?
i used to think the sun rose on you,
i used to think it set on you,
i used to think you were everything in between.
not very long ago i was going to tell you.
i was going to sit you down and say it all to you
i was going to speak until i'd done everything i could do,
but now
i'd really rather not even look at you.
maybe i'll love you again
and i will again allow myself to be filled by you,
to feel all the things in the world for you,
to burst with love and with pain,
but tonight you hollowed me.
you left me shocked and sick and numb tonight,
angry and disgusted.
tonight you exhausted all the light i put to you,
you burned all the love,
burned it and scattered the ashes,
and you saved me from putting it back together again.
it's over now.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
how many decimal points would it take to create
                                                                ­a 2 = 2 scenario?
maybe the cultured swine in me asks such
questions, or perhaps i don't have
enough practical, matrimonial and
heterosexual worries in my life to ask
such a question in the first place?
would it take 2 = 2.00000000000000002?
how many denials
             then?
       maybe i'm asking a question like this
to start trending a nuanced vogue
amidst
            the most discriminated form of
humanity, namely white heterosexual men?
hmm... perhaps.
      last night i watched a movie adaptation
of a video game: can i just say that
Mario Bros. worked, but
the intricacy of game becoming movie can
only work when you get sore thumbs...
can these people: who play or design such games
ever write a novel? nearing two hours into
the movie and i was chanting with a variety
of onomatopoeias a zombie apocalypse
best summarised by the words: agony drool...
well d'uh.. e ragrammaton is a sneaky ******,
pops up everywhere in language,
      while looking for the post-Heraclitean logos
within the framework of phonos
  i came across the surd dynamic of four:
well, three, the H-twins and the trigonometric W
of sine and cosine, leaving Y as the tangen
and a focal point of convergence...
    and Jesus paid no respect the name -
i could tattoo pharisee on my *** and burp
    through it... there, four prime surds...
in Sanskrit: dhaal... you sort of jump over the h
and add a macron: dāl... but let's face it:
the aesthetic is sorta missing, what you hear
and what you see are cued combatants...
              why am i writing this? i just received
Monday's newspaper... could i be less
reactionary about the world inviting itself into
my pleb-bound world? can someone please
usher these gnats from my halo?
no... well... hence the reaction.
          and so much more vitality comes from
self-loathing than from self-love...
   life is more colourful, and so much less
lies-fudge-packed-between-the-sardines-to-an-ideology...
     catch you on a Friday night when it's not
so pristine? sure thing babe... sure thing my
tweaser plucked runny-mascara piglet...
we'll be snorkelling in mud by then.
could anyone think of a reason of mixing mayonnaise
with horseradish?
          but seriously... when did people forget
the concept of polyphony that Bach (ich?
see, the phonos already retracts the polygamy
shared by the same spelling) - say chequers and
cheese in german... chaka demus & pliers
and venting out a tension in the Caribbean quarter
of London, postscript August:
and it always rains... rains daggers and lip-kissing
anger of: ******, not enough scotch-**** chillies.
      and that's saying enough before Shaggy Dry Fuss
came on the scene with: wozzin' me.
   the real whizz kid right there... question is:
alter Paris? Jim Morrison's grave is taller than the Eiffel,
well, all the bums go there and steal the naive
    groupies leaving bottles of wine and joints at
the grave... but yeah... they called it cut-up post-Tzara
with Burroughs,     a zillion things that crept up on me
while i wasn't thinking about Juliet...
                and the reality of a shopping spree,
and all the cliches imaginable...
        perhaps truths too...
                    but even the writing said it was originally
theirs... Bach was already prescribing polyphony...
        let's say multilayered convo....
                       let's say: vogue of millennials'
distractive tendency... and that's so so so much clearer
than what poetry can become:
       a deaf man's tapping to a jazzy / hip-hop beat...
   a tenacious d's   one note song: ******* too,
rhyme... grr...         why do people write poetry as
if they're talking to Muhammad's Aisha prior to
skinning the grape?
                    why don't they talk to poetry as they might
talk to a *******?
                     who are "they" (yes, not paranoid, just
an obscurity with no vectors or index pointy pointy
*******
           the oyster)
                              which brings me to the controversy...
do you think rapists are masochists? or sado-masochists?
there was me on a date, i brought the movie and she
brought the bed and dinner...
                     see, i ask because something odd happened...
first of all was the Victorian practice of *******
under the bed-sheets rather than on top and all bulges
in full view like serpentine lizards (fat? i tend to
see it as seafood)...   yeah... but in the brothel
she would fake arousal for my eyes to see and slobber
her oyster in butter... or l'oreal cream...
   fair enough... but i'm wondering: this one time
she felt so so guilty after getting a genuine ****** on
the job... obviously that's hard... but on this one
authentic anglo-saxon date i got ****** by a dry ****...
       so either rapists are self-endorsing masochists
and all the women they **** have dry ***** due
to fear... or... yeah, that glistening or...
             is this a prescription piece? no, i'm just curious
why prostitutes smother their foreskins with
beauty cream so it doesn't hurt, and this one
pristine puritan babe was all Saharan pouch deepfryer...
                which is why i'm wondering...
   if a ******* can cream-up, and a good upstanding
girl with a decent job in a grammar school with
free accommodation on site can't....
                       you might as well shove your prometheus
        into a tube consisting of sandpaper.
                                         some also call it
    scratching your 5 o'clock shadow.

— The End —