Protest poetry: citizens speak back

by **darkbeforedawn** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:38 am

I posted this in another thread,but it is so great I wanted to start a new poetry thread dealing exclusively with protest. I am also interested in links to other poets and song writers protesting fascism, rascism and corporate rule. It is time for artists everywhere to gear up and fight the boot. Or is it boot up and fight the leering chimp. Whatever.... Business As Usual”/The Anger Poem (2nd Mvmt. of The SATURN SUITE) -Matthew Berrien Smith, Late Autumn 2006 I am working on Anger, the management of outrage. Time to corral disbelief, to contain astonishment As shock and awe become shuck and jive A routine deep in hock and flawed. . . . . .business as usual. . . . . .and we, complicit, speak as one electorate, chosen: Ladies and Gentlemen, THE PUPPET-IN-CHIEF: I, Dubbya, am the Crown Prince of your reflection; apparent heir to the realm, Latter Day Zeitgeist, I, Dubbya, leave clown prints of deception strewn in all directions. I am the Body Politic, Dubbya projected, popular sovereign co-opted, A charade in plebescite’s clothing. The Republic’s demise follows my hand, <<Apres Mois, Le Deluge!>> Blight follows my gaze. Look on me and duck! Think on me and run! I am that I am, the low flying, heat seeking, righteous nightmare of your demise, Dubbya! Cuttin’ a rug to the song of the moth, “I been down to Guantanamo Infrimary To abuse some detainees there…” Merciless. Indifferent. Conservatively Compassionate, I, Dubbya, am bankin’ on disaster. Privately pleased to disappoint, I turn our face to the world, an Abu Graib portrait hung. I am here to hawk elixir: “Doctor Dubbya’s” salt and vinegar poultice! Rub the wounds the wrong way! Insult the injured! Ramp up half-mast, half-assed, melt-down, skull-n-bones megaphone: Raise the Dread Anniversary: Nine-One-One! Nine-One-One! Eli’s grotesque minions follow his cheer leadership, chanting whenever questioned: Nine-One-One! Nine-One-One! Give me a Blue! Blown Give me a Green! Gone. Give me a Yellow! Ya-Ya-Ya-YELLOW !!! Orange? ORANGE-ORANGE-ORANGE !!! R! E! D! ALERT !!! HOT-HOT GET YER RED HOT-HOT ALERT!!! HOT-HOT RED HOT !!! “Nine Eleven.” “Nine Eleven.” “Take One for the Team!” (“Let’s Roll!”) (Clap-Clap) “Nine Eleven.” “Nine Eleven.” Take One for the Team!!! (“Let’s Roll!”) (Clap-Clap) “Hardly are those words out, when a vast image of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight.” I, Dubbya, moral levees burst, gone bust, have broken trust in the shelter of last resort, an assault on the halt, the lame, the vulnerable abandoned and neglected, dismal afterthoughts. I, Dubbya, of thee I sing, “Katrina, Katrina, you’re my kickback queen—“ “Lovely Rita, Meteorology Maid—“ “W—I—L—M—A !!!!!” “I Can’t find no-- biotoxins! “I Can’t find no-- chemo-war-heads! “I Can’t find no-- Dubbya, M.D.!” Yellow-Cake! Yellow Cake! Baker’s man, Make me a war as quick as you can! Pre-empt it on the hurry up and bake it up fast, Gotta sell a road to hell ‘fore any think to ask-- Karl Rove—er, Karl Rove—er, Let Rummy ride your scooter over! Baghdad, Baghdad, have you any wool? Some for the Masters, plenty for their gain, Some for their Lobbyists that live down the lane, and plenty to pull over the eyes of anyone watching! I will not play the Plame game! I, Dubbya, am too busy “Workin’ on the Cheney Gang—“ R P G. unarmored Humvee, hit. Insurgent Roadside Incendiary, unlicensed to kill device— “…standing in the shadows of…” Two Towers falling, and Alexander wrests his rag time gaze on Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, in a swoon of dementia, raging, Raging with Nebuchadnezzar, tearing hair and ravaging the grasses, wild-eyed, debauched and vacuous. Old King Kronos sowing, wretched. A cynical malaise descends. Quaffing bitters, poison draught from a barrel of dry rot, malefic force sneers behind a puppet screen. Working on Anger: Abramov Outrage? Condalezza Disbelief? Wolfowitz Astonishment? Tom Delayed Shock & Awe? Rove v. Libby Shuck-n-Jive? All routine. Bush, man? Just another day in Doom City. -Matthew Berrien Smith, Late Autumn 2006 Doom City (3rd Mvmt. of The SATURN SUITE) -Matthew Berrien Smith, Late Autumn 2006 Time to accept all affront and roll: Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! Data-mined we go along, Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! Time to accept the trendline. We Americans, complicit, passive, comprise Smith’s hand, invisible. Adam at odds and Even ‘neath the data palm conscripted, Vast and contiguous, our queue, Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! It’s SRO, I know, Marching to the Bar Code Vomitorium, we heave a collective <<Sieg Heil!>> Hurl our demands as one beast barfing, “I’ll buy that!” The Buddha said, “The world is on fire.” So where is Red Adair when we need him? We are anxious animals. Tsunami Pakistani Quake Down. Katrina Rita Wilma drown. Screaming wretch. The chimera of emergency assistance. Steaming heap of data bits in a hurricane of spin. Streaming urgent ecstasy, bottomless, planet sucking appetite of Doom, this City, implodes, the ethic of consumption… Delphi filing-- From the delta to the northwest flying chapter eleventh hour charter service with a smile (Inc. – Doom City to “celebrate” desperate economic straits) Particularly in the 2nd Mvt. -- think Greek Chorus/Cheerleaders “They Tried to Kill Us” (1st Movement of The SATURN SUITE) -Matthew Berrien Smith, October 2006 I was there. In Houston. At the Dome. I was there. To render care. I was there on the heels of Katrina, Nasty lady that, whose winds were nothing Next to those that blew apart the moral levees In our name last hurricane season, the ones that broke my heart and Froze my soul in Houston. I was there. To offer succor at the foot of FEMA's feeble line. To render aid to those displaced and I was scared. The anger? The rage of those abandoned to the Crescent's failed response? The berserk and bellicose, lawless looters, maddened masses of the poor? No. I was there in Houston at the Dome When the first of seven fearful, frail, forgotten grandmas leaned in close And whispered in my ear, “They tried to kill us.” And I, taken aback, denied her, saying I had temporary housing and a cash card for her redemption. I was there. When the line of days delivered the next, who could have been the tireless maid Who fluffed a thousand tourist pillows each day in her prime, Working poverty's hours to hold her family in its tenement home. She, too, leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “They tried to kill us, son.” I was there. When the third came tottering toward me on her cane, her dignity ragged and Despair worn on her worried brow. “My home is gone,” she said, “I tried to save the orchid in my window, but I could not carry it with me. My home is gone,” she repeated and leaned in close to whisper again the terror in my ear, “They tried to kill us. We've no where to go.” And I could only offer a shared room at Motel Six and the cash card of disaster. I was there. When the fourth sat down before me, Sister Rosa reborn and defiant in defeat, A leveling glare in her eye, spoke, “I know what the game is: Diaspora of Jazz. Uninsured for flood. Neighbors scattered, lost or drowned. I know what the game is.” And she, too, leaned in close to whisper, powerless, the silent scream, “They're trying to kill us.” I was there. With band-aid relief, an insult to a culture foreclosed, my heart constricting in pain, My mind in panic building, when the fifth old angel smiled and said, “Well, dear, Pharaoh's freed us for the wilderness and forty years of homelessness. What can we do but wander? Abraham? Martin? John? All gone. I'm lookin' for Moses, but-“ she leaned in close to whisper, “-they'd prob'ly kill him, too.” I was there In nightmare. Disbelief, a failed resort, and word that Rita was near, and FEMA's umbrella turned inside out in a gale of bickering shame and blame, the game that none will play when all are guilty parties. I was there. When the sixth appeared in weariness, wizened, aged, atremor as from Parkinson's, She wept and thanked me for my kindliness, the shelter that I offered, and her weakened hand held mine in grace, accepting cash card compensation, but even she leaned close to confide the dread whisper I'd come to accept, “We are in the way. They're trying to kill us.” I was there With the seventh angel when they told us to leave the Dome, and she, as insubstantial as a wraith, in creole patois whispered, “…walk on gilded splinters, bon-bon, walk on guilty sinner, bon-bon…” Matthew Berrien Smith Late October, 2005

by **marykmusic** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:24 pm

That last is heart-rending. I had to go to the FEMA guy after the Rodeo-Chedesky fire, so I know how it works. --MaryK

Protest poetry: citizens speak back

Protest poetry: citizens speak back

Re: Protest poetry: citizens speak back

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