Window Poetry

The rain is falling

Like a paratrooper

Diving over

Normandy.

It cries out

In silence

As it’s braving

The New World.

Gusts much like

Artillery

Blow it

To and fro.

Cars below like

Ships off shore

Are attacking

With pollution.

Explosions

In the form

Of lightening

Blast apart the clouds.

The home

It risked so

Much to save

Is nearing gone.

Fellow drops

Intercept

Like planes

To dogfight.

They cross, combine

And fire

Moisture into

Water bullets.

The rain hits

A window in

A quaintly home

With Christmas lights.

‘This must be heaven’

Thinks a droplet

As its insides

Fall away.

.

Please Ask, Please Tell pt..2

'Don't ask' repeal clears House, heads to Senate

Excerpts from JIM ABRAMS, MSNBC -

Legislation allowing openly gay people to serve in the military has cleared the House and now heads to what could be a tough fight in the Senate.

The House approved a defense spending bill that contains a provision to repeal the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" law that demands that gays serving in the military keep their sexual orientation secret.

If it clears the Senate, the repeal would become law only after a Pentagon study on its impact and after the president and military leaders certify that the policy change will not affect the military's fighting ability.

The drive to end the ban still has a way to go. The 234-194 House vote Thursday was an amendment to a bill approving more than $700 billion for military operations that some lawmakers vowed to vote against if the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal was included.

Several Republicans voiced strong opposition to any change in current policy. "It is very clear that homosexuality is incompatible with military service," Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., said.

"I think it's really going to be very harmful to the morale and effectiveness of our military," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona

The chief sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., who served in the Iraq war, said that when he was in Baghdad, "my teams did not care whether a fellow soldier was straight or gay if they could fire their assault rifle or run a convoy down ambush alley and do their job so everyone would come home safely."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that of the 13,500 who have been discharged under "don't ask, don't tell," more than 1,000 filled critical occupations, such as engineers and interpreters.
.

Deutsche Gedichte

Die Angstschrei

Gottes Wege sind unergründlich
Er kann die Hoffnung machen
Oder bringt die unbewohnte Angstschrei.

Kinder sterben und wir weinen
Denken Sie nicht uns gehoren.

Der Draches Feuer flammt den Kirche
Und das ist die Arbeit in der Hölle.

Ich sage zu dir das ist alles Got
Der Schmerz und der füllende Braten.

Der Erlkönig lebt im Himmel –
Und lacht zuzammen mit die Menschenseele!

English:
God works in mysterious ways
He can make hope
Or bring the empty cry of fear.

Children die and we weep
Thinking they could not be ours.

The dragon’s fire burns the church
And it is the work of hell.

I say to you it is all the work of God
The pain and the filling taste of roast.

The Reaper lives in heaven
And laughs together with the human souls.

Der Berg sich erinnern

Auf die lila Bewölkung
Der Sonne hat gesung

Ein Welt war neu vor langer Zeit
Die Luft war klar mit Nichtigkeit.

Der Acker baute endlos an
Die Fluss’s Ablaus nie getan.

Aber, wie sind die Manner in den Himmel?
Wem besiegt die Sterne mit die Flügel?

Sind Sie Götter
Oder Vater?

Wir wissen nicht
In das Gedicht.

Wenn die Sonne singt
Nur die Ungewissheit bringt.

English:
Of purple clouds
The sun has sung.

A world was new so long ago
The air was clear with nothingness.

The fields grew endless
The river’s flow would never stop.

But, who are the men up in the heavens
Whom conquer stars with but their wings?

Are they Gods
Perhaps our father?

We know not
Within this poem.

As the sun sings
It only brings uncertainty.
.Or

Retrospective

Excerpts from envirowonk.com -

The largest accidental oil spill in history happened in 1980 in Mexico. An accident in an oil well caused an explosion which then caused the well to collapse. The well remained open, spilling 30,000 gallons a day into the ocean for a full year. The largest ever was done on purpose in 1991 when Iraqi forces opened the valves of several oil tankers in order to slow the invasion of American troops. The oil slick was four inches thick and covered 4000 square miles of ocean.

The Exxon Valdez was the tanker responsible for the worst oil spill in American history. But it will likely surprise you to know that the Valdez spill was actually only the 34th largest oil spill in history.

The ten largest oil spills, all massively larger than the Exxon Valdez, were all smaller new stories, either because the ships were offshore, or dropped their toxic loads in less developed parts of the world. The Valdez spilled 10 million gallons off the coast of Alaska, the smallest spill in the top ten was four times larger.
. 

Please Ask, Please Tell

On Capitol Hill, the third-ranking House Republican promised unified GOP
opposition to lifting the ban on Don't Ask Don't Tell. "The American people don't want the American military to be used to advance a liberal political agenda. And House Republicans will stand on that principle," said Mike Pence, R-Ind.
.
Says Ben..., "Freedom knows no political agenda."
.

A Tragic Meeting: Rewrite

Resting in a snow-laid forest;
The ground a cloud for me to drift away on
and feel the joy of heaven's shine.

There was such warmth, in utter, freezing cold
I thought as stars twinkled in the twilight
converging, clashing in electric haze.

The heavens dipped and swerved from sight
as if no mighty canvas held them still;
Perhaps the Goddess Nyx had been deposed?

Orion, the Dipper both came to life
in the form of tiny, winged creatures
flashing bright, leaving spots before my eyes.

I called out, getting shrill laughs in reply;
They surrounded me in what was now a
deepening, impenetrable darkness.

Fear took me and I used my size against
their vast growing and expansive numbers
stretching from fixed earth to porous moon.

I threw an angry blow upon their ranks,
They scattered to regroup hastily;
Manifesting shape of Mighty Heracles.

A glittering lion skin of fays draped
the form, that conquered Mighty Hydra,
found the apples of Hesperides.

They moved to strike me as Stymphalian
birds, the pets kept by the God of War,
with beaks of bronze and toxic dung.

Their fairy club hit my heart in brutal haste
knocking it painfully from out my chest
while turning the angelic snow to red.

With greatest effort for the heart I reached
as laughing faeries kicked it to and fro,
not caring if they dropped or punctured it.

Before I fell unconscious, I saw them
fly away with it, cajoling madly
at my maligned misfortune, misery.

Woe, this life! I awoke without a heart;
Unable to retain a love or friendship,
cursing my sojourn into that accursed wood.

Females screamed to see a hole where it once
had beat so valiantly, so dutiful
to the rhythms of the band and bells.

It glowed with black magic in the dark,
imposed itself upon the blind to feel
so they might be scared as all the rest were.

I became a living myth;
So like the dreaded beast of bull and man
that haunts the Cretan Labyrinth.

Medusa was the only one to under-
stand me, so isolated and alone;
a cast-off recluse with the gaze of stone.

A sigh worthy of the great Icarus
took me, as I felt I’d flown too near the sun
and had fallen to die drowning in the sea.

Such price to pay for relaxation,
I think upon this lonely trek, years
later as my life fades toward finale.
.

Headlines

A car struck a telephone poll killing one;
Stores offer savings on dinged and dented groceries.

Shootings outside a club left injured, dead;
Enjoy the summer weather in the next few days.

Yemeni cleric calls for killing more civilians;
Obama says diplomacy, military go hand in hand

The black box was found after the crash;
A baby gorilla’s coming to the zoo.

Insurgents attack NATO’s Southern base;
Fertility clinic holds up ‘married’ policy.
.

Psychadelic III

Heaven is a hedonistic heap of hope;
A lavish land with LG lava –
Freezers, fryers, fridges, phones!

Our cloud’s a callous cardboard cut
From a whirling, wasting washer box –
Scotch tape, screws and Styrofoam!

God’s not dead, he’s shown on DVD
Just $19.95 for all fulfilling faith –
Crosses, Crucifix and Jesus Christ!

St. Peter’s selling scriptures on the side
Of Gabriel and 8th –
Hocking, haggling, hooting, hoarse!

Marx is meeting with the masses;
Revering revolution once again –
For the proletariat!

And, I am
… dead?
.

FASCISM IN ARIZONA PART TWO

On the surface it would be hard to say why Arizona's latest measure is tragic.  Arizona's Department of Education is sending evaluators to audit teachers and their English speaking skills to make sure districts are complying with state and federal laws.

Why is this bad?  Surely, we want our children to learn English in the best fashion possible.  Yet, the reality of the law is not so easy to decipher from first look.  Will Hispanic children be able to learn English effectively if their teachers are thrown out for having an accent?  Will their be any sensitivity to their needs?  Will Hispanic teachers be able to to undergo these evaluations successfully while fearing for their jobs?  The answers are all no.

Previously we have seen classes teaching ethnic history and solidarity assailed for teaching "white hatred."  We have seen legalization of racial profiling.  In a larger sense we are seeing everything that would keep Hispanic children in touch with their heritage done away with.  It is a bold statement, but they are most assuredly being made into second-class citizens.  All education and law that would empower Hispanic Americans is being chipped away.

The laws being put in place in Arizona are not out of justice, but rather fear.  Fear, in all recorded history, has never led to the rational thinking required in justice.  Fear is mob-rule.  Fear is what relegates the innocent to ghettos.

Washington has only contributed to this climate through inaction.  And I won't defend Barack Obama in this.  He took on everything before immigration reform.  He promised it in his first 100 days, and doesn't look to get to it in his first 100 months.  Both parties and everyone continuing to stand idly by while this tornado of racial hatred engulfs us is to blame.

As with so many times before, our government has failed us.  And it's the minorities of Arizona who feel the brunt of our reckless incompetence.
.

Capitol Punishment in WSJ Unless We're Bailing Their Asses Out!

"The Senate's passage Thursday night of far-reaching financial reform is being portrayed as a big loss for the financial sector. "No End to Banks' Capitol Punishment," reads the headline in The Wall Street Journal. But everything's relative. The legislative action is a defeat in large measure because Wall Street wanted no reform. And it seems like harsh punishment because the default situation for the last 30 years has been that the financial sector gets precisely the regulation it wants." - Daniel Gross, MSNBC
.

The Gnomahis

Gnome Company

.

Gnome Company Always on the run
Destiny is the garden's rising sun
Oh Hafrank was born with a flower in his hand
Behind a root he'll make my final stand
That's why they call it gnome company
And you can't deny
Gnome company
Till the day we die
Till the day we die

Krista: Hafrank, step on it!

Hafrank: My legs aren’t long enough to drive!

Krista: Nick, step on the peddles for him!

Nick: Wouldn’t this be easier if I just dr-

Krista: NOW!

Nick: Why are we in Washington D.C. anyway?

Krista: I want to crash the White House State dinner.

Nick: Why?

Krista: The Salahi’s almost did it again, but their limo got stopped. The point is it’s dangerously easy to meet the president and we must take advantage of the situation.

Hafrank: Will you tell him to install carrots in all public buildings? Gnomes like to climb carrots.

Krista: No, I’m going to ask him for money, of course.

Nick: We wouldn’t be in the red if you hadn’t insisted on an impromptu vacation.

Krista: Either way, it’s our only hope.

Nick: What if we just send him an email?

Krista: Nick, what did I tell you about practical thinking?

Nick: Keep it to myself.

Krista: That’s right.

Hafrank: I can’t see over the steering wheel either.

Krista: What about the mushroom I got you to sit on?

Hafrank: It’s become a suppository.

Krista: And later it will be fertilizer, a win, win.

Announcer: Ewe, Hafrank. Just dirty. Plain dirty. We’ll be right back.

Hafrank: Hello, again. I bought this blog time because I knew the announcer would have pithy remark about my latest antic. Little does he know I poisoned his microphone! Ha ha ha!

Announcer: Death… it hurts! Looks like I’m going to announcer heaven, where everything’s dramatic and coming this summer.

Krista: Hafrank, that wasn’t very nice. Now we don’t get a commercial break.

Hafrank: Of course we do, I hired a narrator.

Narrator: Yo.

Krista: Hi there sweet voice.

Narrator: Mrs. Krista, I think you’re trying to seduce me.

Dustin Hoffman: Stay outta my lines bitch!

Hafrank: Hey, you still have Midnight Cowboy.

Dustin Hoffman: That’s true.

Dustin Hoffman limps away

Nick: Hafrank, you haven’t been paying attention to the road! Stop with the whimsical banter already!

Hafrank: It doesn’t matter; it’s not like I can see.

Krista: I’ve been looking for you.

Hafrank: Does it really make sense that Nick’s working the pedals, I’m steering and you’re watching the road?

Krista: Of course, families do things together.

Hafrank: How many people have I hit?

Krista: Well, like I said, families do things together, and a lot of them are dying together.

Hafrank: Looks like I’ll be going to gnome hell.

Krista: What happens there?

Hafrank: The garden doesn’t grow… EVER!

Krista: That does sound harsh. Do you have purgatory?

Hafrank: Pergo-what? I don’t think Hell has wood flooring. It’d burn up in the fire.

Krista: No, purgatory, the place you go where you’re in limbo and nothing happens. You just sit there for all eternity.

Hafrank: I’m pretty sure that’s heaven.

Nick: I haven’t braked in like twenty minutes.

Krista: It’s a good thing this limo has four-wheel drive or it’d get stuck in the carnage.

Hafrank: Let’s break out the champagne!

Nick: Are you sure that’s wise?

Hafrank: We can only drive better at this point.

Krista: What did I tell you? Families that drive together stay together!

Hafrank: I think we’ve stopped. Where are we Krista?

Krista: We’ve crashed the White House party. Quite literally.

Hafrank: Wow, look at that rose garden! It’s like a buffet!

Hafrank jumps out to chew on roses

Nick: I thought gnomes respected the sanctity of gardens.

Krista: Just their own; they’re competitive like that.

Barack Obama: Who are you?

Krista: Two humans and a gnome. We’re a, uh, group of strippers.

Barack Obama: All right, you’ll be on in five minutes then. Just remember, I like tassels.

Nick: The tabloids were true!

Barack Obama: Of course they are, you don’t think CNN has it right, do you?

Krista: Oh, Bama!

Barack Obama: Oh, Nick!

Hafrank: Oh, delicious garden, I have your powers now!

John Travolta: I had to take my plane all the way here, why didn’t anyone tell me they were leaving?

Krista: You were asleep in your cat box, and we didn’t want to wake you.

John Travolta: Well you should have. Everyone knows I play with yarn at 11 O’clock sharp, Monday through Thursday.

Hafrank: Here, have some Johnny-nip.

John Travolta: Goes down smooth... like a groove.

Krista:  Johnny, stop singing the blues.

John Travolta:  But I'm a successful actor you treat like a cat.

Krista:  Good point.

.

Treason?

It was strike two for a major science funding bill Wednesday as House Republicans again united to derail legislation they said was too expensive.

Going down to defeat was legislation that would have committed more than $40 billion over three years to boost funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies involved in basic and applied science, provided loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies and promoted science and math education. - MSNBC
.

A Lesson from Trotsky

"Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers" - Not Reagan, not Bush, but good old socialist Trotsky. His ideas are alive and well in the Republican Party today.

.

Lebron

It’s safe to say we died that day
Lebron lost and took his jersey off.

An image is a thousand words
And now, so suddenly a million tears.

In our hearts and minds he’s left already
Became a Bull that’s much less Cavalier.

In essence he was all that Cleveland was
And now a symbol for all that it has lost.

Lebron James is the factories
That left for China.

Lebron James is the prosperity
So long forsook.

Lebron James is the hopes and dreams
Now mired in a smog of urban poverty.
So long.

Psychadelic II

I click into Mozilla’s majesty
Become a flaming fire-fox
That flies in freedom o’er Facebook
To see it shaped much like a continent.

Grotesque wires grip it to the other giants
Replacing reality with information
That knows no loyalty but lavish luxury
And cold, manipulative logic.

There’s no forecasts that’s not thunderstorms
The sun is used up, burned away
Tossed in the ocean like the moon
Filled with chips and called a server.

A breeze blows everyday at 8 am
To placate pulsing processors;
Then the heat returns to rule
And humanity must go and hide.

Hide how?
Hide where?

In dusky dens with deadened daffodils
For We forget so fully how
They looked when they were growing green
With colors not in pixel form.

Alas, the world has changed
Our children kill on videos –
And eat and walk and live
As prisoners of easy chairs.
.

FASCISM IN ARIZONA

Ethnic studies target of new Arizona Law


Measure prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

Associated Press Writer
.

PHOENIX - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.

State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.
.

Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.

 "It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.
.

Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated.

The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.
.

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

.

For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors.
.

Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He's been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that "Republicans hate Latinos."

District officials said the program doesn't promote resentment, and they believe it would comply with the new law.
.

The measure doesn't prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn't promote ethnic solidarity or resentment.
.

About 1,500 students at six high schools are enrolled in the Tucson district's program. Elementary and middle school students also are exposed to the ethnic studies curriculum. The district is 56 percent Hispanic, with nearly 31,000 Latino students.
.

Sean Arce, director of the district's Mexican-American Studies program, said last month that students perform better in school if they see in the curriculum people who look like them.
.

"It's a highly engaging program that we have, and it's unfortunate that the state Legislature would go so far as to censor these classes," he said.
.

Six UN human rights experts released a statement earlier Tuesday saying all people have the right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage, they said.
.

Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman didn't directly address the UN criticism, but said Brewer supports the bill's goal.

 "The governor believes ... public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people," Senseman said.

Arce could not immediately be reached after Brewer signed the bill late Tuesday.

.

And Liberals Only Pick Judicial Activists!?

Richard A. Posner, a conservative appeals court judge in Chicago, and William M. Landes, his colleague from the University of Chicago law school, ranked all 43 justices from 1937 to 2006 by ideology and found
that four of the five most conservative ones are on the current court... By contrast, none of the current justices ranks among the five most liberal members. - MSNBC
.

Psychadelic

Papier-mâché trees with cardboard trunks,
And starry lights
Attracting gnats in posh berets
That speak obnoxiously of French Ballet.

Steam powered busboys clear tables
With their steel-gripped robot hands
Singing songs of woe in binary –
They know you won’t decipher any.

Holograms of cushy chairs
Disappear as you approach,
Become a bed of spiky cacti
And poke you all-night with their lie.

The moon is visible for just two seconds
Before it’s blocked out with airplanes pulling banners,
And fireworks to conquer nature,
Enforcing merits of consumption.

Even wasps text one another
Sipping nectar maitais, talking politics,
Deciding where to find the next hot market -
So they'll invest in caterpillar futures first.

Ironman

Ironman talks to me;
His lips move on the Dr. Pepper can.

“Things aren’t so bad,” he says,
“You’re still alive and not that old.”

“But I thought she loved me.”

“I thought once, long before I made
This suit I’d found the one.”

“But you’re a superhero,
Your problems are all physical!”

“No, they aren’t, they surely aren’t –
I hide within this suit to feel important.”

“I know that if she sees me she won’t know me.”

“But surely your powers just
Might bring her back to you!”

“No, power will bring fear and envy,
Even greed – but never love.”

“Yet I build this suit – adding guns,
And flight and firepower still
Wishing it could change her mind.”

“Why not tell her how you feel instead?”

“Ah, if I could do that
I’d really be a superhero.”

Ironman’s face sinks back into aluminum,
And I call her on the telephone.
.

The World Redrawn

Afghanistan - The war effort with America seemed pretty serious so they moved in.

Australia - Got lonely.

America - In a bid to improve geography test scores amongst its citizens, Hawaii and Alaska drifted closer to the mainland.

Canada - China kind of landed on top of it Wicked Witch of the East style. Oops.

Germany - Neo-Nazis are closer to the old Hitler crowd.

Iceland - Forced to relocate South because of all the ash. The name makes more sense now.

Indo-Nepali-Bangladesh-istan - India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan overcame their differences and are grooving together in a Timeshare now.

Ireland - Too many problems with Britain, is seeing other people now, namely, Madagascar.

Israel - Moved next to Germany when Syria double dared it to.

Mali - Felt imperial.

Mexico - Got tired of the U.S. treating it like a piece of meat, so it moved where more people speak Spanish... took some friends along.

New Guinea - Closer to French Guiana. People told them they had a lot in common.

Venezuela -  Thought it'd join OPEC more geographically too.

.

Bhopal

The tragedy of gas
Sifts through history like holocaust.

In this age of mighty crush the weak
There is no sympathy for those who can’t fight back –
Those so weakened and demoralized
That treat each day as a crusade
Against an absent enemy, omnipresent and all-powerful,
Conquering them forever through disease
And pestilence to steal their lives but never courage.

Union carbide took 8,000 lives in just one week
As if it were Verdun, the Battle of the Somme,
But where the French and Germans stayed to bury dead
Warren Anderson ignored his crime –
As a camp administrator might at Nuremburg.

390 tonnes of toxic chemicals abandoned
Continue to leak, pollute the groundwater
In a region that affects the thousands
Of Bhopal residents who depend upon it.

Dow Chemicals bought Union Carbide
Yet refuse to clean the poison up.

The tragedy of gas
Sifts through history like holocaust.
.

The Cinco de Mayo from Hell

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

Associated Press Writer -

Rumors circulate of an immigration raid at Cinco de Mayo festivities. Markets normally bustling with customers preparing for the celebration are quiet. Family picnics are scaled back.

Many Hispanics in Arizona — both legal and illegal — are increasingly anxious about being targeted under the state's tough anti-illegal immigration law. Some are afraid to leave their homes, even on the day when the nation celebrates Hispanic heritage.

Some have left the state, and some of those who remain wonder if they should follow.

"They don't want to go to the park or clubs to celebrate because they're scared," said George Cortez, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen from Mesa, as he took a break from sweeping hair clippings at Eagle's barbershop in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in this Phoenix suburb.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., for example, said he'd support deporting U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. He added "it takes more than walking across the border to be an American citizen.

All of it has left some Hispanics to wonder about their place in the country.

On a day that commemorates an out-manned Mexican army's victory over larger French forces in 1862, talk in Mesa focused not on celebrations but about what will happen to the burgeoning Hispanic community here and the economy.

Standing outside a restaurant, legal immigrant Gilberto Reyes, 56, of Mesa, worried that Hispanics leaving the state will mean fewer customers coming into the supermarket where he works. He said it's usually busy on Cinco de Mayo, but not this year.

"People are scared to go out and celebrate because he might start a raid," he said in Spanish, referring to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's well-publicized illegal immigration sweeps that have instilled fear in the Hispanic community.

The restaurant, Taqueria Cajeme, has already seen a drop off in the number of patrons in the days since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law.

The owner, Francisco Meza, 41, a legal immigrant living in Mesa, said he has a good idea why: that more people are afraid to leave their homes, fearing that they will be swept up by police, and that others have already left the state.

Meza said he may have to leave Arizona, send his family back to Mexico and go to Colorado to find work.

***

This is how fascism, and extermination begins the world over.  We are on step 6, or preparation.

1. Classification - "People are divided into "us and them"

2. Symbolization - "When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups..."

3. Dehumanization - "One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases."  Or in this case un-American.

4. Organization - "Genocide is always organized... Special army units or militias are often trained and armed..."  Groups of citizens are already patrolling the border in Arizona.  The state is organizing against them with police.

5. Polarization - "Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda..."  Fox News, press conferences by the governor.

6. Preparation - "Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity..."  Clearly, a factor as the law encourages profiling.

7. Extermination - "It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human."

8. Denial - "The perpetrators... deny that they committed any crimes..."  Not quite to this step, but there is already denial.

.

A Day in My Life

A Day in My Life

I drove my car today oh, boy

Around the rocky spires in the rain

The sound of thunder shook the air

Lightening struck and caused an avalanche

But I just kept driving with my wipers on.

I read a poem at Carnegie oh, boy

The audience just couldn’t get enough;

A sold out show, I was the star,

The papers would all give me rave reviews…

If only I had booked the show.

I broke in that night.

I skipped a stone out in the lake oh, boy

It must have got more fish than with the pole.

The activists said I was harsh

To kill so many innocents –

The next day there was an oil spill.

I guess I proved them wrong.

It seems the day has passed oh, boy

A lifetime’s spanned out for a fly

Children were born while others died

Money was made, but more was took

I wish the sun, just might have shined

But it’s too clouded with our thoughts.

Perhaps our brains need cap and trade.

- Inspired by the Beatles, A Day in the Life

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Musings

We’ve become a race of corporate zombies. Everything that makes us human is pointed toward ambition, underlined with fact. There’s no place for fantasy when you’re up against the world in all you do. To survive we have to be the best. We cannot savor the benefits and fruits of labor as we might in yesteryear. We must always think ahead of how to grow more fruit from a tree that’s in its dying throws with roots as shriveled as hopes and dreams from childhood that now seem vague.

In all honesty I feel as if it’s better to just die of hunger than to give myself away; to die as wild and as free as humans were before the dollar, rupee, yen and pound. I want to be a hunter, gatherer in the days when there were animals and gatherings.

I want to feel the earth, not the fluorescent, artificial air of supermarkets. More yet, I think I’d just be me and not whom everyone will try and push me toward. I love myself but professors say to love someone I’m not. They want us to be like them, so analytical and crass. Everything must be the upmost academic. If you disagree, or dare to change, you’re left behind – a casualty of non-conformity.

For once I want to write, not quote, put myself in footnotes and my bibliography. All essays nowadays belong to someone else. There’s no place for emotion. What might give a paper purpose is crossed out, redlined, commented on the margin until all humanity’s a blob of hideous contortions.

Any question was once a worthy question but now is punished with irate misunderstanding. To think different is a danger. Don’t question you’re country, you’re a traitor. Don’t question the free market, you’re a socialist. Don’t question those in power if they’re belong to my party; the party has become an idol.

Jesus might try and free us if he were still alive – but he would be a heretic. Wall Street and the Washington consensus would have him hunted him down and hanged.

The sinners are the ones who cast the stones; the poor without must take the beating. Those who suppress hide behind a veil of government, police and gateless borders. There’s no capitalism for those without control. The masses work for overlords and have no say.

Optometrists and pharmacists are confined behind their Wal-Mart walls. Accountants must fight large companies that control the banks, congress and existence in itself.

If life is a cart, we are surely all the road.

Us college students, who are not a product of the super rich, have nowhere left to go but down. It is rare to find a place in competition with six, approaching seven, billion people that can go and do jobs anywhere and everywhere.

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IMF

In an archaeological dig in Chicago, a lost ancient tablet was unearthed today.  It was the original IMF charter, said to have been written down by George Washington himself, on orders from the Economy God.  When he realized people were worshiping the tablet, instead of the government, however, Washington broke it into ten million pieces.  It has been pieced together now.

More shocking still, the missing letters were at last found from the name IMF.... U-C-K-I-N-G Y-O-U.

When reporters broke the story, the reaction around the world was unsurprised.  The majority of Thailand's citizens claimed to have knowledge of this secret since the 1990s.
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Myrrh-Maid

I picked out a poem for the class to give opinions on and took their suggestions to heart.  They made some good points about aspects that didn't fit and broke the mood.  So here is the revised Mermaid in Eternity....

Myrrh-Maid

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Diving to the ocean depths down deep
reflects the fathoms of my heart that weep.

Squids and schools of fish float out of reach
singing songs of love washed upon the beach.

Starfishes shining neon bright to taunt
force my mind toward memories that haunt.

I see my darling in orgasmic light
beset with wild thrill and joy of night.

Bioluminescent plankton causes her to glow
as through her thinning hair the current flows.

With unrivaled mirth I call to her out loud –
Seaweed encapsulates her in a shroud.

As the sun reflecting on the surface dims
darkness takes away her face and limbs.

She bobs, a mere torso in the current
a sordid case of organs to lament.

Still, I reach out toward what is left of her
to but only smell the drifting tang of myrrh.

Her gangly, lifeless body reforms shape
down to every, blemish, scar and scrape.

With remorse I bite into translucent breasts
thinking for a moment I am blessed.

Like the tentacles of jellyfish her fingers sting
a voice once lovely now so hollow sings.

It sings of heaven and of hell
to put marine life in a dazzling spell.

We make love as it goes on;
Panting, thrusting up 'til dawn.

In a salt-filled blink however
ties are severed.

Gulf streams of sprightly love run cold
and leave an unforgiving insight:

Her soul has gone beyond where I can look;
Far past the coral, sand and earth!

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Poem Funk

I have not felt like I have written any poems of merit lately.  Perhaps, some passable poems, but none that could ever stand the test of time.  Herded, Rock Star, Bathtub's Surface... all better concepts than reality.  I envisioned such greatness in them too.

Maybe that's why my submissions to the Literary Awards Competition were all older poems: Gerald O'hara, Die Nichtigkeit, Days, Distant Ponderings, Bird in the Garage.

Perhaps my brain needs a tune up... or a tune back for that matter.

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May Day

Herded

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Sheep herded

By the snapping dogs,

The sound of sheers,

A setup path.

Sheep herded

By their master’s yell;

Their taste of fear

Impending doom.

Sheep herded

And they dare not stray;

They feel canine saliva

Dampening their tales.

Sheep herded

While one manages to break

And falls under smell of powder;

Leaving acrid death behind.

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And a special, blog-only vilainelle
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The sheep, the sheep are coming here
To turn our skins into a coat
They’re angry, they’ve forsaken fear
From all the brutal times we’ve gone and sheared
Perhaps, perhaps we’ll get a boat
The sheep, the sheep are coming here!
For this madness there’s no earthly cure
Except, on Styx forever float
They’re angry, they’ve forsaken fear
Our organs are the next frontier
The chance of life is quite remote
The sheep, the sheep are coming here!
They’ll tear us up from feet to ear
Make nightstands with our severed throats
They’re angry, they’ve forsaken fear
Their hatred is the most sincere
The book on killing they have wrote.
The sheep, the sheep are coming here!
They’re angry, they’ve forsaken fear.
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