“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.

Never allowed to grow
Beyond ornamental,
Small perfect leaves
On small well pruned branches;
To please the eye
Of miniature torturers.


Cramped in a micro life,
Roots restrained
Within un-natural boundaries.
The promise of a tree
Never really fulfilled,
Beyond a whisper.


Fussed over relentlessly,
Like an O.C.D.
Perfect shape and form,
Trained from natural beauty,
To sit on a shelf
Hidden from reality.

When
cheaters and liars
rise to the top of the polls

When genocidal speech
wanna be torturers
let their goals unfold
advocating killing relatives
Something every drug lord knows

When words don't mean anything
Images are everything
When words and images disconnect
When words don't work

It's what we call psychosis
in the psych biz

We're all thinking
That can't happen here

A cousin they call Germany
Refined
Civilized
Educated
Defined art
Music
Ethics

Found out exactly what every **** head
knows when you go too far
There's gonna be advanced window patrol
Getting out the duct tape
Wrapping up the house
Can't let any light
in or out
You may end up in leather restraints
On a plastic sheet on a metal bed

America better call the crisis hotline
Stand in line for same day services

5150/Legal 2000/72 hour commitment
Being a danger to self and others
Rapidly becoming gravely disabled

Hold on, I'll write that Hold now

Bring out the atypicals
Risperdal Zyprexa Serequil
Take an Ativan
Take a Zanax
**** it take a ******

If you don't come back down now
Find the ground

You'll be okay
In a decade or three
The suffering of course
Will be burns in the third degree

Psychosis can be unkind

All civilizations have their day
Incline
Recline
Decline

It can't happen here?
Chaotic brutality knocking on the door
You gotta know what's in store

We need an intervention
Breathe it back on in
It can still be okay

Reality check

Words sometimes mean something
And people sometimes mean what they say

And though
Images dissolve
Evolve
Fracture and split

Those that are seeing and hearing
What's going on
are holding their breath
Wondering how crazy it's really all gonna get.

Flames Of Time Start To Burn,
Through The Days,
Through The Hours,
Throughout The Minutes,
Until It Boils Down To That Very Second,
That Second Where You Have To,
Fight For Your Well Being,
Tell The Truth,
The Whole Truth,
And Nothing But The Truth,
Let Me Take My Yesterday,
And Just Walk Away,
There Are A Million Endings Of This Story,
I Hope It Ends The Way I Wish It To End,
And Fate Goes With My Favor,
Fate Has Sided With You For To Long,
Its My Turn,
If You Say Life's Not Fair,
That's Bull,
Karma Will Get You Back,
I Just Hope,
My Torturers Will Have To Pay They're Debt,
Real Soon

By WILLIAM LOGANJUNE 14, 2014

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — WE live in the age of grace and the age of futility, the age of speed and the age of dullness. The way we live now is not poetic. We live prose, we breathe prose, and we drink, alas, prose. There is prose that does us no great harm, and that may even, in small doses, prove medicinal, the way snake oil cured everything by curing nothing. But to live continually in the natter of ill-written and ill-spoken prose is to become deaf to what language can do.

The ***** secret of poetry is that it is loved by some, loathed by many, and bought by almost no one. (Is this the silent majority? Well, once the “silent majority” meant the dead.) We now have a poetry month, and a poet laureate — the latest, Charles Wright, announced just last week — and poetry plastered in buses and subway cars like advertising placards. If the subway line won’t run it, the poet can always tweet it, so long as it’s only 20 words or so. We have all these ways of throwing poetry at the crowd, but the crowd is not composed of people who particularly want to read poetry — or who, having read a little poetry, are likely to buy the latest edition of “Paradise Lost.”

This is not a disaster. Most people are also unlikely to attend the ballet, or an evening with a chamber-music quartet, or the latest exhibition of Georges de La Tour. Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience. Poets have always found it hard to make a living — at poetry, that is. The exceptions who discovered that a few sonnets could be turned into a bankroll might have made just as much money betting on the South Sea Bubble.

There are still those odd sorts, no doubt disturbed, and unsocial, and torturers of cats, who love poetry nevertheless. They come in ones or twos to the difficult monologues of Browning, or the shadowy quatrains of Emily Dickinson, or the awful but cheerful poems of Elizabeth Bishop, finding something there not in the novel or the pop song.

Many arts have flourished in one period, then found a smaller niche in which they’ve survived perfectly well. A century ago, poetry did not appear in little magazines devoted to it, but on the pages of newspapers and mass-circulation magazines. The big magazines and even the newspapers began declining about the time they stopped printing poetry. (I know, I know — I’ve put the cause before the horse.) On the other hand, perhaps Congress started to decline when the office of poet laureate was created. The Senate and the House were able to bumble along perfectly well during the near half century when there was only a Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress — an office that, had the Pentagon only been consulted, might have been acronymized as C.I.P.L.O.C. instead of being renamed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/sunday-review/poetry-who-needs-it.html?_r=0

PANIC ATTACKS ARE FUN!


Ayad Gharbawi


A waterless feast for the thirsty
Torturers
Struggling to restrain their base Infamy
Hungry ravenous ******* eyes
Smiling grotesquely
At their Prey
Wingless birds
The nightmare is still swirling in its
Intensity
Variations of horror
And perpetual stalking fear
Shaking eyeballs
Blurring visions
Colours far too strong
Piercing
Sweating inside
Palpitating heart
Driest mouth
Piercing
Beyond any reason
Pointlessly running
From the excessively, maniacal seething Fear
Never ending
The deformed visions deepen
Yet disconnecting themselves
From my shaking Self
Withering my ‘I’
I see a threatening ugliness staring at me
I know
I am victimized
How can I get out of this?
Filthy stench of a greasy pit!
Where are the maps?
The guidelines?
Where are the physicians?
Promoting this vicious
Civilization
That I do swear
Is even sicker than I am
For you have left us all
Stranded
Surrounded
In a surreally insane No Man’s Land

Sometimes I've had about enough
All these ******* buttercups

Puckering up
At the first scent of gruff

It's disruptive
To my mustering

I mean

Must we
Smother trouble out of ****

Must we malfunction
Into a skit

A script

Skipp-ed
To laugh tracks

Pre-writ
Until the last laughs

Where the curtains close
To fading claps

All the cards
Are all on the floor

Little adorable torturers

Peering through the doors
Afforded by our tor-mentors

Over it
We will get

Even get on with it

Cuz all of this
This is that and that is this

Is ******* ridiculous
Is worthless

It is foulness in its stench
The bowels of our regret

Unkempt and ******
It's ******* soaked in ****

Where the credits never roll
And the patrons only stroll
On outta here for a beer
And a night on the town

And all this

Flapping of the gums
And slathering of spit

Is glossing over my ****
And it's all we will ever get

If we would just submit

Wipe the sand from our *****
And remove the ******* sticks

We might find
We have loosened up a bit

Just don't be such a little *****
And other inflammatory ****


[That's it]

There was a boy who had to learn very young how to fend for himself

Fore his family never cared enough to remember to put food on the shelf

The streets can be harsh for one so little

But this boy learned quickly and so he gathered enough coin to purchase a fiddle

Sitting on the street corner everyday

The boy would place his coin plate and then he'd begin to play

At first the crowd was small

But soon the boys song began to lure all

The plate grew heavy with many of coin and his belly was always full

But good fortune can only last so long when you live under the Devils rule

His parents grew envious of the boys coin and fiddle so one day the boy left to go play

He returned to find his fiddle broken and pieces thrown every which way

His plate of coin was in his father's hand

He said 'boy you do not need this much coin, these riches are meant for a man'

The boy could do nothing fore he was too small

So the next day came and the people waited for the fiddles call

They began to protest when the boy did not show

Marching to the boys house refusing to go

The father came out and said there was no more fiddle

Then the boy stepped out with his chin held high trying to not look so little

The crowd began to cheer when they heard the familiar song

The boy held his mended fiddle proudly as the crowd began to sway along

Out from the crowd stepped a old woman who had sold the fiddle to the boy when she saw he was in need

Then he brought her the broken fiddle and she gave him a new one with the promise that he'd be freed

The woman stepped up and took the boys hand

She looked at the father and told him to get off her land

The old woman, not known to the boys parents, owned the town and would not tolerate this type of sin

So she had the boys admirers run them off and then she banished the boys torturers from ever returning again

You see I've never been good at this whole love thing.
Not to you
Nor to me.

Love is but a torturers way of tearing you apart.
I will never say those words,
I will never feel their meanings.

I will build these walls up around my heart
In order for mw not to feel
In order for me to forget.

I'm nothing more than a failure in the love department.
I can't love my family,
I can't love my friends.

You see to me love is a shout into the black abyss...
So dark and unbecoming
Is a four letter word really worth all the pain?

THE SHAPE OF WATER
they say Gods do not exist
that if they did they would be untouchable.
I know this not to be true.
They are everywhere
and come in the shapes
of this earth and the next.

Of all the gifts that my god gave me
and for which I am grateful
the power of speech was not one.
From being a little girl I have been silent.

My position at the research labs
of the federal government
is not one of power
I am a cleaner
I pick up messes
wash toilets
And dust the exhibits.

The amphibian man was a God
I know this now.
They had him in chains
trying to find his secrets
They hurt him
and electrocuted him
kept him from his water
that was his home.
Do we always torture our gods
when they visit us.?

My. Silence was his language
I reached to him
and held my hand against his
on the glass of the aquarium
that was his prison.

I fed him as I cleaned the room.
Then when he came from the water
on heavy chains
I held his hand we signed
which is my language
I taught him words and meanings
care... food ..compassion ...and love
and he felt these things for me.

I was the one that heard
his torturers plotting to terminate him
to open up his body
and see what is the difference
between us and him.
I could have told them
what it was,
he had beauty and gentleness.

I think that was when he fell in love with me
no one has ever fallen for me.
I am ordinary
meant to be single
and of course speechless.

What I did not know was
I was falling in love with him
perhaps  meeting of hearts
of two oddities of our separate species.

The escape was easy
no one suspected me
a lowly dumb cleaner.
But I took him out in the laundry cart
I sent out every night.
For weeks I kept him safe
in my little apartment
filling the bathtub with salted water

at last I had someone to care for
someone gentle and kind
someone who did not need
the voice I did not have.
I knew I must set him free
in the oceans where he belonged.
But my heart would break if I let him go.

The real monsters
came looking for him
with guns and there stun guns.
My best friend Dolores from work
phoned they were coming to search my place
I Got him to the harbour by the docks.
But they followed me

The car headlights blinded me
as they fired their weapons .
that when I had been hit
and fell to the ground.

My god lifted me
and dived into the deep waters
I was floating with him
in a lovers dance within the waters.

He was a god
and he healed my wounds
so I  could breathe as he did
under the waters.

Together we left the sadness
of this world and I followed him into his.

Dolores said later

did they fall in love and live happy ever after?
Are they together forever
Living in the domain of the sea.
I like to think so
but
Instead I call upon a poem
Written by lovers hundreds
of years ago.
it says more than my wishes
And defines clearly
What is  love
and the shape of water.

*Unable to perceive the shape of You,
I find You all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes
with Your love,
It humbles my heart,
For You are everywhere

I want to be a war machine

I want to rupture spleens with a gleam from my eye

I want to spread suffering in lines waiting for lies, just in time to ignite a stupendous sight in one phone call

I want the call to arms to be in the alarms of emergency vehicles

I want the residual survivors slaughtered after given my word as to the **** of every daughter in my New America

I want to just stare at ya as you plead to be spared

Beheaded and laughed upon, kicked down the stairs

I want to judge you

Smother you in your filth

In your guilt

I want to starve your kids with empty ingredients

I want to **** on my **** and smear it in your ears while beating it

I want to stare in each and every eye, as it dies with the burning sky in its frame

I want to scream the names of the slain, from burning castle walls and call, for lost love to return in the squirm of man

I want to demand, flesh from the best of the best, in a contest against the peasants

I want to topple your towers down, in tickling sounds, from trumpets bound in space

I want to spit in your face, drown you in doubts and smack you awake

I want to decimate your graves, and from the tenth left make, toilets for my torturers, in sweltered pits of **** remains

I want the world to shake in the hunger pains, of every fat ****** with burrito stains in his lingerie

I want to serenade an angelic raid, on your made up play, of plastic soldiers eaten by animatronic vultures, as I smolder the beaten toys on the floor

And I want

Really really want

More

A poor roman whose blood spilled,
Far from the homeland of patrician
Is how I feel currently.

As wounded as I currently am
By the grins little devils address to me
I chant glories of my torturers as they ax me down

What are they going to do with my bones. Would they sport it as jewelry,  closer to their hearts?
What are they going to do with my flesh? Have a relish on it?

What if I was destined to be a prey, not even taking a glimpse of your love by any other mean than pain...

Can I still envision it as some sort of gain, with it being the price of my very life
And so, my very dignity, or I shall say the remnants of it, are defunct along with me

I'm being tortured. Being pulled apart slowly, painfully, and in all of the places that make me scream the loudest.
Satan has given me my own personal demons. My torturers.
They have ripped my skull in half.
They are experimenting on different parts of my mind. Finding where it causes me to writhe in pain.
They have started to rip the skin over my chest.
They have found my heart. They are cutting it to pieces.
They have taken my lungs. They are squeezing them..making it impossible to breathe..
yet God is barely keeping me alive. Why? Why do I feel like Job? I'm not strong. I don't have the strength to keep my blood flowing.
I feel it. They are going to snap my spine in half. Soon. So very soon.

You, sir,
I think I made the mistake of trusting you, sir.
I think sometimes they tell you people
That teenagers have nowhere to go and no one to talk to,
So when one speaks to you
You are the only one they have ever spoken to,
And they only one they will ever trust.
You, sir, are the light on the hill!
And yet I never saw a brightness die so fast.

I told you about the depression first.
Yes, I admit it, I was scared;
There had never been enough people to tell me it was okay
To be mentally ill, that it wasn't something I'd chosen,
It was a flaw of chemistry not of character.
Yet I clicked that door open for you and let you in,
That was step 1.

I didn't tell you about her next.
But to be fair, I didn't know about her, either.
I came to you about him, when I was lost.
You berated me for my trust issues;
I swallowed it and knew it and you told me to stop.
He was supposed to be the next good step.
My fault, and I know it.  

Step 3 were the voices.
When I told you there were voices in my head
I tried to explain to you that I was not crazy
The chemistry between me and my brain may be bad
But it's not insanity:
Only memories, only torturers,
And I didn't need another one.

When I told you that my sexuality was not straight like a pin
But waved and diverged to both sides
That I was not a het, I was a queer
You were more kindly than the congregation
And I mistook a warning as a welcome.
I was troubled but not condemned so long as I did not "practice."
Well I did not practice for it but when I kissed her and when I kiss her
I remember your words and look into her eyes and think
That there is no practice in her or in I.
Our lips meet and I feel her warmth and her hands are on my hips
And I tell you there is no "practice"
There is no practicing for love,
Not a single rehearsal for passion and commitment.
Sirrah I would do it again and again
Like the waves I will continue to touch her shores,
No matter how many times others may pull me away.

If you meant to abandon me for me,
You should've told me sooner.

His teeth were ochre pebbles
From the smoking of His pipe—
He bowed down to my bleeding feet
And sang God-awful tripe
“Life is but an odyssey,
  Can’t you open your eyes and see?
  A lot of it is smoke and mirrors
  But the rest is truly ecstasy!”
He tapped my crimson, gushing foot and got up from His knees
To sit down in His musk-rose bed where He settled His old head.

My face began to boil red until I could no longer contain my head and I burst out
at my Old Man hoping it’d make blood flood from His hands!

“Just who the **** do you think you are, God?
How can you say you see?
You know nothing of the Earth
And the nightmares that it breeds!
Did you notice Abu Ghraib,
the torturers’ many ways?
How theft is easy for gangsters
While children starve for days?
Puh!
You just sit here on your musk-rose
Cuddling its soft, fuzzy petals,
You’re nothing but a spoiled child
Who has never desired to run wild!”

And at this, Father whispered from his bed,
“Capricious, I have been
  But I cannot be blamed.
  People choose their lots in life
  For free will is their fame.
  If I gave them acres of land and
  a home that doesn’t weather,
  their bones would turn to tether.
  You think I owe everyone the world,
  And all the fruit it grows,
  But the sweetest peach you reach yourself,
  And this you already know.”

When my Father’s words had stopped
My eyes caught the throbbing wounds;
The skin blanketed the open flesh
And Dad said, “The infection won’t heal soon.”

It's ok to have the pain written on your face
It really is no disgrace
It's ok to see the sorrow in your eyes
Please my friend drop your disguise

For I know the past torturers you
And the future is hard to pursue

I know the past is the living dead
It gets up in there, and ***** with your head

It walks around in there and gobbles down
All the happiness that can be found
It feeds and it scatters
All that gray matter

A different point of view is hard to be found
When you've made the mistake of looking down
Turn your eyes to the skys
Where all the winged things fly

Trust is a must, let go of the rope
You'll learn to fly, never give up hope
A leap of faith is all it takes
To finish in this mad rat race

stripped, below naked in mind
collective, wearing digital

one minds infection, brutal
beyond, all familiarity

blood stripes, whipped flesh
fragile recognition, Mankind

TLACAELEL                                                            
            The weeks since last we met found Hungry Prince
            Of late locked in his tower, casting scrolls
            Which chart the star-crossed charms of the occult.
            And in the predawn darkness of his arts,
            He broke through to a voice from the beyond
            Which whispered that the throne of Mexico
            Must soon come to be ruled by foreigners.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            And thus the emperor submits to trial,
            And these, their wagers, are red herrings, then.

TLACAELEL
            To spare us the demoralizing news.
            The spirits’ hands will steer them to reveal
            If this prognostication failed or not.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The ball’s in motion. Let the gods decide.

TLACAELEL
            Motecuhzoma falls! The ball is down! The ball is down!

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dust rises, and our lord is lost to view!

TLACAELEL
            Three in a row! Were we left hanging, then,
            For torturers to **** by small and small?

                              MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE reappear.

MOTECUHZOMA [aside]
            I’ve lost then, but the full significance
            Of that word “lost” I’ve yet begun to know.
            Gods need not lie, and here we have their words.
            Well, let it come. [to Tlacaelel] Unseal the wagers, lord,
            And read before these noble witnesses
            The stakes we trusted to you at the serve.

TLACAELEL
            First, the abortive fee for Hungry Prince:
            King of Texcoco, had this victory
            Been won by his imperial majesty,
            And you had failed, your forfeiture had been . . .
                                                             [Opens the first wager.]
            The loss of all your lands, your courts, your throne,
            And all, for your opponent’s acquisition,
            Decoronation to a common man,
            And forced prostration to this gentleman.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            A staggering ransom! I must thank the gods,
            Not for their championing me, but truth.

Had me a purgatory day,
yesterday,

spewed my guts under the torturers
inquirical miracle twisted
all to hell, seeking truth

that fits the story the fire maker
said I knew.

Had me a purgatory day,
yesterday,
spilled my gut on youtube comments
no mind in a state of right useness

is ever going to believe,
believing being so

difficult,
these days. Those days

Had me a purgatory day,
yesterday.

i am a moth drawn to the flame of despair
flutter through the air
no care
for body
just the burning of my soul
the yearning to know
what it feels like
to throw
everything away
in hopes
that dawn is close
closer then is possible
that time flows faster
when you're giving your all
for the promise of tomorrow
where tomorrow is
worlds away
from today
and its sorrows
and that sorrow will someday
be a sweet memory to borrow
from when the joy becomes
too much to bear

i am a moth in a world aflame
it looks like hell
but apparently
hell other people
and i'm sick of feeling
sinful for feeling
the sorrow of my fellow
tortured torturers

they tell me i'm too hollow
that riding the updraft is no good
and being tossed about the firestorm
is for fools
and i'm as flighty as a feather
in weather unsuitable
to be out in
yet i'm part of this world
and to lock away my soul sounds
abominable
so a throw to the wind
to see where it goes
it might singe
but it's worth it: the sorrow

i am a moth telling myself i'm not
and blaming it on outside sources
but being honest shows
my woes are my woes
and everybody knows
their own

and i just speculate and spectate; trying to know my fellow moths

I know that it's twisted,
But, what love isn't
It steadily grows in your mind,
Vines intertwined, each branch is a vessel
To the heart of the blind,
because that's what love is.
Simple, how it complicates
When it breaks,
There's no remedy for how it aches
The mistakes, that you so awkwardly pursue,
Are the branches that lead to the, I love you
Now tell me and listen,
Let the quick sand, quicken
As you drown in the dust
Of what you cooked in the kitchen
You thought it was religion,
When you said your vows,
Like an animal you're stricken
When they, she, takes you down,
Simple, how it aggravates,
When you take,
Your last step.
Hard to believe it when you feel
A back-stab wound,
You're all consumed,
You want to crawl inside,
With the rage that love has blinded,
The truth is harder to take,
Than any magic pill you make,
Any time a simple memory,
Sneaks up to say, 'Hello!'
You're breaking every mirror
To not see your face bellow.
There you go, it's twisted,
But, what hate isn't,
With nowhere to go,
You feel like the convicted.
So you're trapped in a life,
That you don't want to be in.
You'd love to start over,
Just where to begin?
Tears are like, rain on the window of your cell
It's fine when you're here,
No one can hear you yell.
Anything, so long as you forget that smell,
The one that's so good, it's like poison in the well.
You want to drink.
God you know how much it hurts when you do.
Hey, take another sip...
It's not like the memories are through with you.
They're like the torturers
And you're a rat in their cage.
An experiment sometimes; Life.
It can go both ways.
You just never believe in bad fortune,
So why bow to the danger?
In the depth you're so hollow,
Because inside is a stranger.
There they are again,
The tears,
The fears,
The anger,
The stranger,
The hate,
The scientists.
Back again with prodding sticks.
They're in your mind,
And there, they're rooted.
You once grew love like a tree,
But, your world's upside down.
So all you have are the roots.
No... wait, they're thorns.
Like the roots...

Every morning after the reveille
we hold a bicycle race
from the camp to the Meuse

At full speed I take
the last turn, right into
brand new barbed wire

invisible in the light of the sun
As proficient torturers two others
are colliding with me immediately

Flat tire, torn clothes
In a comic strip, I would now
be hanging horizontally

But I fall, rips in my flesh
gaping and bleeding
Bandages at breakfast

and then I lead my patrol again, what else
after the mysterious providence
of a farmer who's going to pasture on the river?

Withering snow melts white on
Winter boughs shuddering
The image of blood
Spitting fire of horrors
Laid claim to by those we chose to protect us
Nature wails while the human race is wiped off
By the few humans who have lost any sense of
Humanity
No longer human
Hearts of stone and greed
Self-obsessed and manipulative
How can we sleep while we’ve given the reigns of democracy to those who do not care if we are killed
Only care of their bank accounts
And plastic faces on billboard fame
Don’t care if hell breaks loose on us
Only that their shoes shine perfectly polished
And hair sits precisely gelled

Don’t think of fending off the torturers of the children they have the power to protect

We talk of nationalities and citizenships that bind or break positions of power
What use is a citizenship if it can’t differentiate
Between the one with heart and without

Because,
No human of authority is human if they have enough heart to watch while massacres are paraded.

This is a call for the human in us to wake up
This is a call to wake up and take control
This is a call for humanity
Wake up.