Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
johnnie seven
peace activist
my mother, who will outlive me, stands fast
my mother, who will outlive me, stands fast, shrouded in grief’s fine dust. who can console my courageous mother? dead hand of the past, smug with indifference; blind faith extols babylon’s towering plans, now collapsed. you anesthetize minds with vitriol, as spurious power slips from your grasp. heaven’s forgiveness will not save your soul from a mother’s rage, a rage whose dolor dwarfs your noble cause: the future you stole to satiate your cowardly bipolar bloodlust for omnipotent control. lurk behind your narcissist’s walls of glass: my mother, who outlived me, still stands fast.
calendar of war: 7/18/05
“in silence here are eight more”
that was friday on monday, tuesday, wednesday there were six nine eleven more
on thursday silence then seven more
that was last week this week, in silence, there are
more
in photos, they are always younger in photos, they are always silent in silence, there are 1,864 now silenced in silence, there are always more
&, now, in silence here are a hundred thousand more silent casual ties of war
addendum: as the title of this poem indicates, it was penned a little over a month ago . . . this monday, august 23, 2005, in a speech designed to promote his dirty oil war, president bush finally acknowledged the u.s. troops who have died in iraq since the u.s. invaded & occupied that nation . . . the number bush cited (1864) coincidentally matched the poem’s total (which also includes the soldiers who had died in afghanistan up to that date, july 18, 2005) . . .
incidentally, the number i noted regarding the iraqi dead (one hundred thousand), while controversial, may be an underestimation . . . indeed, we may never know how many iraqi citizens - who are by no means “numbers” - have lost/will lose their lives in the war . . .
the quantity of hatred
someone is going to win the endgame lottery today. someone is going down as a historical footnote: name, rank, serial number (answers blowing in the wind). someone’s beloved child just made the ultimate blood sacrifice for god & oil today. someone’s child just made the grade: a sacrificial lamb for god & blood, today. someone’s love has no tomorrow. as of this moment. someone’s love is now a milestone on hatred’s battlefield plateau. for god, for oil, for corporate king’s crown, amerika’s glory shall be maintained: the quantity of hatred is bloodstain’d.
(in memory of rosa parks, & the 2000th u.s. soldier to die in the iraq war today, 10/25/05)
“the mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible” ~ oscar wilde
is it the scar? the faded memory of a wound, raw, gaping, ulcerated? or façade wending thru wounded story, pretending pain has long since abated, that maims more? is it thirst unquenchable, the suffering of flesh dehydrated; or the yearnings of intangible desire, which cannot be satiated, that withers parched souls? is it newborn stars creating fantasy sculptures of dust & gas that enchant us? or, gourmand mar’s madness inciting blind faithfuls’ bloodlust? is it wars’ unseen child who dies hungry, or the blasé indifference we can see?
collapse, catalyst, then, like a scrap of paper hanging midair in suspended animation, the willing suspension of disbelieving, grieving, then autonomic stop & go stoic panic or fight or flight or doe-eyed helpless hopeless madness, then regress, loch ness, bloody fingerprints wherever fingertips gripped phantom limbs, or grappled with the origami unreality of reality’s paper-thin arms grasping at straws, gratuitous firearms, superfluous fire alarms, vacuous lucky charms, then 3rd-degree burn burning realization, self-preservation, nonlinear correlation, perchance the end of civilization, one last lot’s wife backwards glance or thousand-yard stare, then wager the elevator or chance numerous stairs or stay & pray, praying going nowhere prayers, then selfless selfishness, or numbering numbness, maybe blissful dumbness, like apocalypse soon, or the sonic boom of a loved one’s halcyon hallucination on the line, one last time, together at last, “hi, it’s me, yeah, i’m fine,” en masse nervous laughs, then calmly smiling, perhaps then, 7th heaven, fingers recalling, automatically dialing 9/11.
i. my storybook fright a troll the famine of my psyche. the footbridge & the riddle are not enough for him. & when he sniffs the wind, chills whistle my vertebrae, like lightning sulfurs ozone, shudder of firmament under mushroom clouds.
ii. time & time again, leering dawn sharpens its claws on steel & concrete ravines, even as dusk bares yellow fangs at the corpse of impending. lulled docile, the entire village a common grave. & ever after, gnarled knuckles, crooked back, forged iron, fire ants, his atomic eye.
[inspired by recent velvet revolution advert in the washington post & the new york times]
of thee, i blaspheme
of icons, reconcile yourself to gilt. accept that castles built of quicksand jam- packed with vials of apocryphal bloodguilt pap are naught but xerox of vietnam. of conquest, concede you burnt your tongue on deus ex machina. of great beast, ask what is its mark? ask! ask: who eats its young? whose concept of freedom is oxygen mask? of slaughtered son, resign to laughter canned. of martyred daughter, submit: this too shall pass. acquiesce. your faith is sleight of hand. you wagered baby’s new shoes on blaise pascal. of god, but what of god? (don’t ask.) don’t tell a soul, for promised land’s iconoclast hell.
thus far, you are nothing like you portray yourself to be: a communicator who advocates for lost souls betrayed. master of none, you’ll do well as dictator. your noxious beneficence perfumes airs; altruism prospers parasitic; chinks in your look-good edifice lay bare defects in your foundation’s quiverbricks. last night, in your wildest dreams, an empire grotesque mushroomed amidst wretched windswept. your crowning achievement, your bloated aspire: vanquish scrutiny, so to vanish inept. but sure as mutiny crucible marks time, time itself shall gore your bubble.
thrumming battlecry doubles for vanguard omen intoxicated & everybody’s dancing around the applied mathematics blitz blood-black & alabaster, & everybody’s dancing around the compass of morals as if to dance undoes its undoing from withering cant, then one uncommon denominator of tone-deaf is any sound will decay, in time, for nothing more nothing less than a chance to settle old score, to dissect her unblushing corpse with studied indifference, second-guessing rape as if rape is as if pricktease was it, itself as if not. she can count on the fingers of one backhand flunkey the times that devour limbs skewered on gridiron where nobody’s child naps mother-naked. ubiquitous cities of the future wed left- right symmetry of metronome machete to abyss kiss-off, meantime laughing hyenas chisel acme logo upon pyramid walls white- washed & parallel smokestack flashbacks sow the wind, scatter ashes ashes divide & conquer, her arms flailing blindly guaranteed 10 seconds on flatscreen newscast swallowed whole, then lump in throat spectacle is capital for image made real dwarfs all of heaven below. in the cinders of war, cinders or whore, ledger rounds up as iff less is more.
