And the children wonder . . .
they are used for tinder by
the caprice of war.
Orphaned - there is no one
to teach them love.
Fleeing - they have no time
for games or laughter.
They cannot interpret was
is happening to them.
They can only endure the pain,
and wonder at the maddness,
and in the end,
become a little mad themselves.
If the U.S bombing of Serbia for 78 consecutive days isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If killing thousands of people in Panama to incarcerate one man isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If bombing Iraq for twelve successive years isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If engaging in wars in Latin America killing untold thousands of human beings isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If using the first atomic bombs to vaporize hundreds of thousands of civilians isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If incinerating innocent children in Vietnam with napalm isn't terrorism,
then what is?
If suppling the malevolent dictator of Iraq with weapons of mass destruction isn't terrorism,
then what is?
The United State of America is the predominant salesman in weapons on the world market thereby promulgating those weapons of mass destruction.
And if that isn't promoting terrorism then,
in the name of heaven,
what is?
Out of the miasma
of a starless night
emerged
the black soul
of
Ricahrd Cheney.
It was wearing a
Death Mask
and
dressed in an ebony-hooded robe.
It carried a bloodied scythe.
The souls of 500 soldiers stood before It.
They sighed the sigh of death.
Abruptly
It
turned
and
led
them
to
their
graves.
One day,
and in total
bewilderment,
Edward Teller
found himself wandering
in the
desert.
He was
naked,
and the sun
blistered his aged,
wrinkled body.
How came I
to this place,
he asked?
By way of
Evil,
came the answer.
Teller squinted his
reptile eyes, and saw,
throught the
shimmering haze,
Lucifer
on a
fiery throne.
Lucifer smiled,
and
Edward Teller rejoiced
realizing
he had succeeded
and was,
at last,
home.
THE ARRIVAL
The morning had the luster of a rich, pure pearl, the kind of pearl that invisible dragons
chase angrily though invisilble clouds. The morning was calm, the earth and the waters,
were calm: it was called the land of the morning calm, although it was an ancient land
where kings were born of gods, and the earth trembled with constant warfare. The
transition from slings and arrows to rifles and bullets seemed to come overnight. Ancient
generations begot modern generations: dynasties flowed swiftly from the past into the
future, sometimes on calm, peacful, fruitful waters, but more often over turbulent, violent
cataracts.
Conquering nations came, murdered, plundered, wrung dry the land's resources, then
were cast out by some new and more powerful conqueror. The foreign nations came,
bringing their customs, religions, philosophies and political doctrines, alwasy forcing their
mode of thought up the conquered, but ever regarding as base and inferior the culture of
the populace.
The people were always given the guarantee of independance and freedom from the
conquering hordes - always the people remained exploited and subjugated: always they
were the vanquished - never the invader, yet always invaded.
And why?
There was never a single, good reason why.
All this had happened and was happening as the troopship passed into the harbor,
past the land that thrust boldly up from the water in almost perpendicular lines, jade, high
and majestic in the pearl dawn.
The troopship was drawn to the docks, and the soldiers disembarked: and some were
sent to the front lines to die, and some were held back to live, no one exactly knowing the
reason why some were destined to live, and others, to die.
THE LULL
There was a lull in the war, and there was a lull in the lives of the children: and those who
remembered how, smiled, and those who never had, imitated the older children: and those
children wo were left with legs, ran, and those who still had arms, threw snowballs, and
those who could see, laughed with their eyes: and those who had had enough to eat and
had not been driven mad, ran and laughed and played as if this lull in their lives would last
forever . . . they were the innocent and the pure for the evil that was done in the war had
not been done by them. And because they had suffered without reason or just cause, the
children indulged in the luxury of their sainthood.
The soldiers rested, slept, wrote letters, and looked to the blue winter sky and the white
snow that covered the distant mountains, and thought how much beauty there was in the
world, but quickly thought of other things - of cleaning their clothes and boots, on playing
cards, on anything so as not to linger too long on the thoughts that really mattered, for
then came longing and dreams that were better left in the back of the mind until the day, if,
the true peace would come, and at last they might rejoice.
Between the enemies lay a river of death, a sea of bleakness - no man's land - no man's
ocean - an ocean of rubble, waste, stubble and blood.
Between the enemies lay a space of iniquity - a land of carnage.
The enemies faced each other over this expanse of futility, savagely fought over, and
they wondered they had fought at all.
And the dead stank: they lay rotting in a warm winter's sun while blueebotte flies
swarmed over their festering flesh.
Teams of graves registration men, covered by riflemen of the nearest combat unit,
took advante of the lull in the war and went into no man's land to recover what was left of
the dead. Combing the battlefield of twisted and melted metal, uptorn shrubs and bomb-
scarred earth, the men worked quickly, placing the remains of the dead in rubber-lined,
zippered pouches.
It was a macabre dance done by the living on the bleak, silent battlefield.
THE TRUCE
One minute after the signing of the truce, and one minute before the cease-fire was
ordered on the battlefront, one last bullet was fired and one last man fell.
The man was given first-aid, and taken to a front-line hospital tent.
The man was operated on, and the bullet removed from his chest. Doctors worked
over him into the night, then he was placed in a private room to be watched over by his
brothers: their faces were etched by a dim light against the night in the blackness of that
room: waiting, waiting: their faces stark-white and filled with awe as they gazed down upon
him: they could only stand and stare in mute wonder, for before them lay the last to fall in
battle, somehow more piteous, more desolate and alone than the first to fall - for the living
looked back to the beginning of the war, and thought what a waste all that followed had
been.
And the man died, and the living thought, we all die, each and every one of us, alone.
AT LAST PEACE ?
The children swung - flew - from earth to heaven, each touching a leaf with a barefoot toe:
. . accomplishment and delight . . . nothing else mattered except to swing from earth to
heaven in the sun and touch a leaf on the way.
The children caught huge, brilliant, iridescent dragonflies and attached them to
strings to serve as living kites.
The children captured lighning bugs to make glowing lanterns out of glass jars.
But it seemed the war was reluctant to leave the land, and a dozen children who were
playing tag in an open field were killed by a live bomb partially buried under the tall grass.
THE SCIONS OF DEATH
Alfred Krupp
begat
Fritz
who begat
Bertha
who married
Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach
(thereby renamed
Gustav KRUPP von Bohlen un Halbach)
and they begat
Alfried.
Now then,
Alfred Krupp
also begat
the Franco-Prussian War,
& Fritz Krupp
begat
a worldwide
munitions web,
& Gustav
begat the
First World War
& Alfried
begat the
Second World War.
In doing so,
the Krupp Dynasty
begat
untold wealth
(for themselves)
and untold suffering
and untold destruction
and untold horrors
and untold bloodletting
(for others).
And, in doing so,
the Krupp Dynasty
begat an
evil
which transcended
anything
the world
had ever
known.
And now the United States
is compounding that evil
by becoming the world leader
of the
military-industrial-chemical
complex,
thereby insuring the end of
this life on earth
as we know it.
FIREWORKS
Silver bombs
were
falling
rain-like
from black clouds.
Tracer bullets, the image of
shooting stars,
streamed
through the night.
Enticing
yellow bomblets
resembling play things
EXPLODED
creating a multitude of colores
and
cleaving the bodies
of unsuspecting
children
into a bloodied mass of
butchered flesh.
UNTITLED
When I was young,
barely born,
my heart was pierced
by a blood-red thorn,
and ever since
my heart has bled
a deep, dark sea of
crimson-red.
SO LONG
The point of
no
return:
we passed it
at
Yucca Flats.
2020
Sunrise today
but the
earth shall
perish
at sunrise
tomorrow
though
tomorrow
seems
far
away.
CUBAN DREAMS
Last night I
dreamnt
I was in
Cuba
sitting at a
table with
Alicia Alonso
at a seaside
cafe.
Fidel Castro entered,
saw us
and
joined us.
We drank,
laughed,
sang songs,
then
Alicia and Fidel
danced the
Rumba.
John Ashcroft
walked in,
looked at
us
askance,
but after
two Cuba Libras
at the bar,
he joined
us
at our table.
We drank,
laughed,
sang songs,
then
John and Alicia
danced
the
Rumba.
ILLUSIONS
HOPE
is only
a straw
which we
desperately
clutch
as we
are
slowly
sucked
into
the
mire.
untitled
steam rising from
the tea cup
is seduced by a
capricious breeze.
Questions
I wonder if they're any
ayes-ayes
left
on the slopes of
Madagascar?
The Possum Knows
I glanced out my
window,
and happened to see a
possum
scurring atop a wooden
fence.
I cautioned,
"be careful, don't
fall."
The possum looked at me
incredulously,
then said,
"I know how to play
dead.
You don't even
know
how to play being
alive."
He then
flatulated
and disappeared into
the foliage.
On Being Different
To deny one's ethnicity
because a given societ
demands it,
is to destroy
one's soul.
TRAVELS
When I pass
from one
room
to another,
I pass from
one universe
to another . . .
traversing from
one time
to another,
never repeating
what was
lived before.
Dream Girl
She drifts in shadows
between sun
and shade
dusk
bright moon
elusive
beckoning
unattainable.
An Ode to Claudia Cardinal
She was a tall, voluptuous girl,
and as we danced
I hooked my nose
onto the bodice of her low-cut gown
and smelt
of the musky perfume within.
Enlightenment
Light outside,
darkness within,
Yet, the guru says,
"look inward and ye
shall see the light."
I have looked inward
and seen heartburn.
Commadments
"Let there be light!"
So, I struck a match.
Vicissitudes
Life is like a
bowel movement,
sometimes, it's easy,
sometimes, it's not.
MUSINGS
A knife.
Too messy.
A tall building.
Afraid of heights.
Drink.
Too slow.
A gun.
Too bloody.
Drowning?
Perhaps.
2003 - 2004
The old year ends,
a new one begins,
but in reality,
all the years
are but one
vast
eternity.
The punctuation
is made
by man.
Man created
the year,
the month,
the week,
day,
hour,
second.
And in so
doing,
man underlined,
with a heavy, black stroke,
the reality
of
his mortality.
Hotel Room, New York City
This cell is whitewashed white,
and is illuminated from above by a
large, circular, neon tube.
and I am a constant hostage of
the glaring walls and light.
Nothing exists outside this cell,
and nothing exists within it.
Winter, Riverside Park
ice flow down
polluted
hudson river.
riverside park:
hushed,
deserted:
swerling mist,
and the silence
shattered
by
the
blast
of
a
ship's
foghorn
ECHOING
echoing
echoing
opague
avenues
of
towering
elms
thrust
taunt,
barren
limbs
outwards and upwards,
a mass of black, thin lines enmeshed against the
impregnable
sop-white void.
wet,
dank
leaves
encircled
colorless
puddles
of
dirty
rain
filled
pot-holes
look around
no one
there.
riverside park
lay
ghost-bound
L.A. ORGASM
L.A. is building itself
a skyline as
great monolithic
structures of
steel, glass, marble, granite,
are being thrust upward into
e
n
o
r
m
o
u
s
h
a
r
d
o
n
s
ejaculating piss-yellow
smog,
suffocating
the moribund city.
DNA
The blue rose
is beautiful,
but is unnatural,
thereby,
diminishing its
beauty.
KNOCK, KNOCK, WHO'S THERE?
Life is a mystery
(a well established fact)
and we're locked into it.
There is no
escape,
and the beauty of life
is as painful
as the
hard knocks that
keep pounding at
our doors.