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[Bill Dodd`s new book IN OCTOBER BEFORE THE WAR is now available from Publish America (www.PublishAmerica.com). Poems by Bill Dodd
that is Amerika
(Kafkaesque piety
(the taggers rag and rage ‘gainst Manifest Destiny
(the white man’s burden is also his pie— let’s have ‘ole history reinvestigate our crimes— how the flappers got from Plymouth’s nothing(ness to a Market stake, Long Island manse, the lamé dress
‘jes ask the Iroquois
West Africans
now settled in as duopoly
coined, methinks, by Nader
un-bigoted, but highly racist white man’s, again, coalescence; an allegiance (outside the Senators’ campaigns for a libertarian, entreprenuerial Algerian, H., vision of nation (where reality is implacable, multi-national corporate bodies
a prison enormity to house the inevitable detritus unable to adapt to white-collar criminality on which the corpulent middle of America turns
Consequently, both “parties are now linked globally in a unified effort to turn any perceived advantage there/ to our self-interest
backdropped by a monstrous military which obscene funding has created into an arterial behemoth on not only our “culture but the world
:a set piece— implacable and unyielding
It seems a tiny voice, ever receding (like the cosmos that once warned against a “military-industrial complex
Done
Observe the frantic behavior in the affected communities faced with possible base closings: which, in fact, will be expanded
If one is born outside the 1% that controls everything— wealth— and cannot lie, cheat and steal upwardly mobile, then one is normally doomed to a marginal existence, they hope committed to an abiding servitude to either God or His social agenda, i.e., abortion, gay or gun rights, etc
Heaven help you if you are attempting to look behind the curtain of this “democratic illusion to the system’s parameters, to a new day or a new way
which will come
If 9/11 had been as extensive as originally planned (so they’ve said
we’d have found ourselves in a major economic depression
That’s how fragile the system really is beyond those tales told for fools about the anchorages of our ‘democracy’
so seriously fradulent as Florida proved
We are warned— by way of rationale— about citizens’ ‘gaming,’ say, the bankruptcy laws
yet the whole apparatus— from Orwellian advertising to preferential government conduct and contracting— is based on the same thing
(the good ‘ole boy network, one is reminded
ii.
It is easy to speculate, hard to know the exact moment
chain of events (the scenario that will lead to America as a second- or third-rate nation
(something in the water: once fresh and plentiful, gone bad
(abandonment of our great- ly celebrated national Ethic
:the will to do good; to be good; at least, to be better
(that pulling for the little guy, the down-and-outer
now literally left destitute to die in the street
or imprisoned; forgotten
Perhaps the Asians will call in all our paper they’ve bought up; the dollar tumbles; the soup lines are reconstituted
even a decline in military spending
another 9/11, of sorts, this one full-throated
social malaise will descend; the wrath of God; a Judgement
or could be construed as
the cities collapse in chaos
subsistence farming saves itself
power grids falter, fail
and perhaps most telling
the Big Mac falls to a dime
Of course the elite, long ago converted to the Euro, and to gold, escape to the Riviera
The Left, and their possibilies for change
hesitate, then collapse
as it is left in name only with the entanglements of White Flight and Black culture, the gas engine, the aforesaid power grids to continue on towards their ultimate implosion
(the educational system on the rocks: as, indeed, it is already
the Liberal Arts D.O.A. as minimalist manifestations to cultural, social and economic woes writ large
Perhaps it will neither be more traumatic nor appalling than the current status quo
if perchance
(ice water in hell?
the “public awakes and squarely takes on the issue of social justice for all in a way it has never before shown the slightest inclination or aptitude to do so
The most likely trip is a radically two-tiered culture (rich/poor
closely monitored by a military poised to intervene to preserve the dead image of a c. l950 mainly middle-class and happy folk sucking suds, riding Studebakers
(something like that
only not that
gone and barely grieved by the descendents of Phillip-Morris, Wm. Penn; born-slaves
There will be Hell to pay
and will most likely be paid in jackboots
where most democracies have fled
that hell of inhuman regimentation and forced dedication to a blind state, gone dumb
The savage, blonde Vikings
intent on invasion
(violence supreme in their world view
drove their longboats towards the English isles
setting in motion a chain of similar adventurism, the Crusades— their dirty hair under the skullcaps of armor as they invaded (with mixed results the peaceable—relatively—caliphates of ancient Arabia
A thousand years later, one Geo. W. Bush, legatee to many shallow things, but the humanist doctrine of Christianity, as well, and a braintrust of fools, plot another foray there: Iraq, led by our at one-time handpicked surrogate, Saddam Hussein, whose microcosm, governed by pragmatic utililarianism, has rescued a secular and wholly functional society from the patchwork state cobbled together by those selfsame English, regardless the geometric macrocosm of his Islamic heritage, fifty years earlier
So, you, mon lecteur, you decide the justice of our having hanged the man for his crimes “against the Iraqi people
You judge whether or not we justly deposed Saddam, our handpicked enfant terrible during his exiled sojourn in Egypt, under sponsorship of the CIA; for having taken our WMD during his war with Iran; for having misconstrued our ambivalent response to his feelers on a proposed invasion of Kuwait?
If one is to judge by the relative results of the two regimes, his and ours, our folly, as well as the folly of the Crusades, is abundant and saddening: where there was order, chaos reigns
2.
“The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe, and they call the wind Maria
as I turn to a song’s pastoral lyrics and its cardinal energies
away from the planetary-wide buzz they hanged the wrong Iraq war criminal today
(even the NY Times intuits the truth while demurring from any direct indictment
It is a sad truth: we are the barbarians as an accurately rendered history will one day testify
Per sd to M (before the breakers on the beach “What perfect scrollwork
but thinking, “the raging sea
Mother of life/ the trilobite trail through the sand
She comes to my door in the desert, an American Gothic woman figure with a miniaturized copy of Watchtower for me from her clutch
Perhaps death does retreat before her; but this is illusory as it is everywhere
While there is no ShiningCity, the mountains here do glow golden in the eve’light
(the years are brief, and never to the point
It is positively Mediaeval, the way we’ve sacked Baghdad
This has been the first (fully-scale, anyway Pre-emptive War we’ve declared
That is: a war of naked aggression
and now, to have executed Saddam (and one can clearly see the hands of Bush’s “Braintrust behind the insistence to execute our chosen tool
a Strongman, who did, in fact, hold Iraq together
during whose tenure the Iraqis for the most part enjoyed a high standard of living
yielding, finally, to the efforts of Clinton and George W.
The execution is simply appalling as it is all about our barbarity
This comes as CNN of our tabloid news media announces a retrospective of Saddam’s life
One wonders if it will include our blatant culpability in bringing him to power
and keeping him there?
Who, one vainly inquires, are these shadows less than shades that lead the nation?
and a Congress of sheep? a media of wolves?
3.
We are in uncharted territory; with a blind man at our helm
What will be the cost to our country? To the world?
Maybe we will just have had enough of the violence and loss—much as did the Crusades quickly evolving into the sentimental romanticism of the Age of Chivalry—replacing the bloody with the symbolic ; It is perhaps an unfortunate truth the American consumer is nearly indefatigable, and the North American Continent is large enough to contain many body blows against it
Still, no one knows what a truly precipitous decline in the dollar might bring—coupled with the incredible surge in gas prices that will certainly result should Bush & Co. bomb Iran
Saddam is dead; the autocrat, the Strongman
another DOA logged into W’s book together with the hundreds whose extermination he presided over as Guvenor of Texas; all those 2999 (today) American soldiers dead in Iraq; those countless Iraqis
their cultural decimation; the almost completed flatlining of their infrastructure
George Bush was a bus Saddam didn’t see coming; He is the price all of us have paid for his Supreme Court appointment as President
All those excitably neurotic Republican youth corps who pitched such a scream down in Florida in 2000 are (rightfully hiding out in D.C. these days
:and we perhaps thought Clinton’s antics were high drama
They were as nothing
Those who have never read their history are doomed to repeat it
There was a time in America when…
(a prologue which, naturally, starts the patriotic juices flowing
Well, of course, there never was any such “then or its implicit zen
except the vanity of white supremacy (usually paternalistic
a rancher standing on his Montana porch looking into forever uninterrupted by ubiquitous power lines or dreaded fences
(a colorless portraiture despite following hard on the heels of the Civil War horrors
and belies the fact his Native enemies were all placated, i.e., liquidated
then, again, he can’t quite see all the way to Butte
where, if he could, he would witness the net results of the magnates of his time
(parenthetically, the Gilded Age
forever torturing the earth with wastes of their copper mongering
recalling, as well, his little missus in the kitchen
her lips effectively sealed against opportuning for herself
except to suck up what comfort she could from her Coca-Cola imported from Atlanta
when “Coke” really stood for something
It is little better at my place on earth
presumably years later
incidentally in the great Southwest
with the Santa Rita pit nearby (heir to Butte and Anaconda
large as a Martian crater and twice as venomous
and north they’ve packed the Manzanos surrounding Albuquerque with 2K nuclear warheads
farther on, the humanity-damning atomic labs of Los Alamos
Still, we wave the flag, saluting smartly, lacking but one vote (this time around to make it a felony to deface the thing
Whereas, our most vociferous patriotism is bottled in bond
or the Constitution which the major parties honor only in the breech
excoriating it in all their legislative effrontery
(a great barrel of pork for the privileged
(and the military’s heart’s desire
I would leave but the post-Columbian stranglehold in S. America has left such scars it’s hard to know where to go
It’ll be another half-millenium before there’s hope of progress and perhaps forgiveness for the white-eyes’ misanthropy
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Big Ben no longer even goes to the window
(all the native fish are poisoned, and the deer chronically wasting
If he looks at all, it’s at television, telling him nothing And Maggie’s a little frightened at complete freedom, fearing most, evolution in the schools
and the absurdity she knows too well
will relegate God to a kind of low-grade cracker-barrel theology the children will ignore as completely as they now ignore Christian teaching
While she believes it’s true enough, she’s afraid it’s so informal it’ll replace the church
where she and Ben, for whatever else it’s worth, were married
a kind of parallel universe, when they were young, and unthinking; and definitely a two-edged sword
still, welcome as alternative to all the pap of popular culture
(and denatured Coke
but somehow sad; the same for all the clergy who had counted on their ranch and holdings
and, alas, she feels everything’s awry as Butte’s entirely gone to random tourists and a random universe in some existential purge
(of which she’s most afeared
She’s read the French and realizes it’s one thing to eat well, but quite another to digest
in a sly allusion to Rimbaud
For Butte, thus written off, the “smart” money is buying-up summer homes rearing their families— completely lost
It’s in the water, which is not the water of life
and the food, not the wholesome bunkhouse board, nor Maggie’s food for the soul
(“Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills
But one need not re-explain life; she thinks Camus has already done that
only the expectations of life
but his sugar-free world view is still too rich for the American palate
preferring the Western with all its bullshit gore and glory
No Samuel Beckett anti-story lines for us
illumination of the nothingness
or life’s absurdity (and hard-wired
reiterations of thought and physiology
(“I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Now, Maggie’s gone forever; Ben, as well; Butte left simmering in its toxic brew
Eventually, the horizon mends from nature’s teleologically-sound rapaciousness
(the life-force, at any cost, as the Wild West is a big place that swallows up many a storm
No ticky-tacky holidays in old mining towns will long endure the rigors of a natural justice that brings illusion to its knees and casts away experiments in evolution
I toy, in the store, with the notion of buying a small flag, imitating something of those around me, but I don’t know quite what I’d do with it; it is not without meaning; someone did set out the Declaration, from which, at this moment in time, we seem very far removed; further, even, than Ben and Maggie, who were, after all, two very small figures living out their brief lives on an isolate ranch in Montana, intending no one harm, which, in retrospect, was a real progress compared to our militarization— nonetheless more defenseless against nature, and the shortcomings of Mankind than they… They like to think (and say they’re dismantling the welfare state
they’re (somewhat libertarian (in that
and, also, heaven-bound
(neither case
and are not ever without the gravest doubts as the brain’s encased in bone, and it is flesh and bone that rattles faith
seeking, in effect, to create another Mexico—handfuls of rich in a sea of desperate poverty—and watchout Canada
The question implicitly posed— how to circumvent the Baby Boomers to abolish what’s left of Social Security?
Of course, they only have to wait (bide their time fifteen years, or so, until they’re gone
then the necessary decisions are made over the heads of a generation too numbed to care at the roar of video wars bleeding into the real thing
But can one really imagine a “modern country of nearly 300 million stripped of all social welfare
surviving any significant duration without chaos and revolt?
There will have to be more roaming body collectors than snowplows in the northern states
This is the emerging vision
the corporate cyclops social plan
that also imagines itself the keeper of our client state—Israel in the Hostileland—a quasi-Western island in a Muslim sea
All the while, one presumes, we’re running on oil, or what’s left of oil out of shale and sand and heavy crude
Naturally, we’ll all be eating food substitutes, by then, down them with cups of pharmaceuticals
There’ll be no books, unnecessary to bodies plugged into non-stop, streaming entertainments and unending family prattle
and for those of action, the nearby, rutted course for ATV’s, mankind’s addition to the fossil print
and a nearby hunting range where chronic wasting deer can barely move to dodge the bullets of the firing mob
and for the fisherman, everything he needs: fly-fishing for planted fish, rich in both oils and mercury
Surrounding all will be a world moved-on
somewhat less holy than our own, but far more equitable; non- Christian but oddly compassionate
not put to sleep like imbeciles by brain-washing media lulling us with infomercials, each a concise mini-epic with its supposed “Homeric clients
which means that l984 was a mere 25 years off course; not bad, and the groundwork’s laid, and George was close as dammit
I just saw the first “abstinence billboard in my neighborhood: as if they said, “Hold on, we’re coming— and they had
I must admit it took me quite aback, but why be so surprised by a culture that has relegated the homeless across the railroad tracks like so many mindless zombies waiting every seven days for three nights in a bed and four days of soup and bread
and who knows how long such little charity will last?
It’s a creeping Armageddon that’s America; a Cowardly New World, and cruel
as Easter dawns today
and no one teaches his message was something intermediate, a bridge to social justice in a new age, at least/not according to those reactionary sages, devoted to his love
a narrow sectarianism incommunicado with a diverse globe
I’m talking something more pragmatic and flexible in the realm of universal social equity
and a continuing inquiry into the indigenous pagan who were here for eons
about taking a more naturalist, interpretive look at their cosmology
(see Suzuki on earth, water/wind and fire
by way of transfiguring ourselves into a kind of Christian humanism
for if he wasn’t about that, what was he?
Still, one must continue to dispel the rumor America was about God; rather, Europe’s bowels full of would-be bourgeoisie, freed serfs (who turned that freedom around so slavishly
intuitively knowing the innate virtue of land for the taking—no higher calling there, except to the freedom independence brings
esp. from the landed; now the corporate
One is reminded in (or about l776, a corporation was sunsetted after two years
which is not a bad place to begin thinking about how to restore dignity to a badly scarred land
before the final indignities are visited on her—I heard one suggest (Mr. Phillips, I think, a joint, caretaker government to give us a chance to brainstorm the problems
not, perhaps, unlike what Roosevelt’s braintrust once attempted
but this, full bore, and as void, as possible, of partisanship, but the battle is between the forward-leaning and progressive and the backward-looking and regressive: and must be joined
Iceless in the summer glare
the Floridian if that is what he is
and wants to be remembered as American
(mobility, our cherished means and end
“Puleez, mistah, don’t kill anymore dem chillen wid dat awful abortion machine—the
Bush-Cheney ’04 election placard on his bumper
ubiquitous in baseball cap, pathetically presents mercury-tainted catfish he has caught to feed
(the multitude, as it were, the only quasi-historical reference he’s ever known
the children, waterless and hot, powerless
homeless in the swamp
leaderless and jobless
a familiar American failure episode
(so much done by so many for so few— ‘n they’re lovin’ it, the Hamptons ‘n the limousines
amidst no talk, not even a breath about redistribution of the wealth
(or sending them to school abroad
(besides, the local ones are also closed; open, they only teach so much
add to this, the waste of Iraq
the billions profit gouged out of flesh by Exxon-Mobil— in pursuit of unimaginable pleasures
the job he started with sent overseas
a trillion on the military
Florida, itself, overturned by Caterpillar, then asphalted: its one-note fixation with ‘development
Fast rewind to New Orleans, the notable absence any of the promised 60B
They’re told: If you show real interest in rebuilding, the help will come
and no one knows exactly what that means
except the water never did arrive; a thousand died
more if you count the haunted prisoners loss of life
Katrina as ethnic cleanser and electric chair
while Washington’s current sociopaths work all night on cutting Medicaid and slashing tax on death to further benefit the half of one-percent who have all the wealth
What amazes one we never are compared to Europe’s stable middle-class that’s, here, all but disappeared
their long, lax holidays and living wage
their power at the polls
and wouldn’t disqualify poor Southern blacks who live much as they did as slaves/poor whites, the same
Catfish, anyone?
If only they can build a fire
Hey, kids, I’ve found a catalogue
where the privy’s real enough
At this point, the mind blurs: a woman is seen outside the Convention Center holding an unresponsive infant
a dead black baby is in repose on plastic with its pacifier from which it vainly sought to suck a dram of water
unforthcoming by all the powers
(a particularly proud moment for us all
Now, really, don’t you think Fitzgerald threw away a golden opportunity to bring down Bush and his co-conspirators?
Have some catfish nuggets on the man in Florida— about to be overcome by unmitigated disaster, he conceives a huge, operating chain of catfish eateries, which he franchises out, at enormous profits, unique, as they are, for being cooked in motor oil in this best of American outcomes, entrepreneurial feat of the imagination while his children hang themselves from nearby palms
Winter in Sun Valley, anyone?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the aimless and pointless and planless President is busy covering his ass (as they enjoy saying in D.C. with oak leaves and bluebonnets
heard muttering about Christ’s dim view of America
discarding the poor to reap the winds of the hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma
and he is thinking about taking a drink when he ponders who will be reaping the whirlwind
(insofar as he is capable
while Condi is in with Dom Perignon beating out Basin St. Blues on her Steinway
Dick and Lynn in Wyoming, teeth chattering in front of a roaring fire in a cheap main street hotel in Laramie wondering how to get back to Georgetown (or Bethesda and their servants
All the while, the general populace is resolute, convinced, in their own minds, America is just going through a ‘phase, the better, and that it just goes to show the superiority of a system that can learn from its mistakes
while the catfish blacken on hastily fashioned cooking sticks over an open fire in the Everglades and low chuckles and the humming of Ole Black Joe, snake and possum eyes reflecting the demolished trailer park
Everyone, after all, is thinking how much better off they are than the 2000 dead American soldiers pushing up nothing in Iraq
how things always have to get worse before they can get better
which thought turns Socrates in his grave
how the morning will bring hope/how they’ll find a sack of twenties on the freeway and the Prez will announce the Great New Deal
centerpiece of his tenure
to guarantee a minimum annual income to every U.S. resident
how there’ll be no sinister snicker as they slowly waste away
(for want of anyone who cares
In a cyclone one can only depend on the safety nets already put in place— ready cash for the printing on the Treasury Department presses
Religion’s charity clearly cannot be trusted anymore than Congress
Indifferent dawn; the children look back wistfully on yesterday’s poisonous fish to a day of, perhaps, snake eggs and lizards; then, who knows? Roots, leaves, bark
feasts to come in the trailer parks
This October Sunday morning was w/o sunburst; Otis, instead, that hurricane off Baja brings small rains
(There’s one off Yucatan, as well
A saturnine counterpoint to Gen. J. Polly Wantsa Kracker
(and his clones
on NBC and ABC in full campaign-ribboned television dress drab army green
trooping before the Sunday morning newshows to proclaim there’s three batallions almost done; one, only, if you take away Americans propping them; and, really, only a single, senile Sunni man, armed with an Enfield and three-legged dog, ready to attack
We’ve been this way before, three years ago, or is it four? The vast armada of military types parade before a wide array of talking heads
while producers dipped as low as majors in fatigues with mystery maps
to Jessica, her trigger-finger forever frozen in position
Of course, then they had America’s rapt attention
as almost everyone takes interest in the latest war
Now, if there’s any sentiment remaining
they say through polls they want us out, or, at least, those billions spent on New Orleans
but most of all, to see to it that nothing interferes with their routines, cheap gasoline, vacation and retirement planning
So, any serious mind must ask is there anyone who any longer cares except profession activists and neocons who still maintain Iraq’s democratic mission to the East is highpoint in the otherwise dumb show (on PBS with Charlie Rose
appropriately hidden on the dial where the sun will never rise
The threat of Armageddon
or
evaporation by the bomb, notwithstanding
Americans simply don’t want to be disturbed—
are resolute in that— and won’t be, come hell or high water
We, as a people, don’t know much, would prefer to know even less than the nothing passing for information in the press
What I once blamed on education and the media, I have come to realize is self-induced amnesia
It’s as if we have passed through the phase of falling on our swords; through the phase of watching it dramatized; to the phase of being completely intellectually disarmed
and are happy with lobotomies shortcomings
It’s all we know, and all we want to know
Some will surely say we are in decline
which ignores the rest of the world getting in line for similar operations and to honor the supreme deity with new generations of Wal-Mart shoppers
who is, himself, a kind of Super Center
for hundreds of millions of the holy unimaginative
There are splinter groups, of course, the Vegans and organic enthusiasts
who maintain their market share
(infinitesimal
and little more
(just like opponents of the war
The guilty and innocent blur, according to a CNN ‘embedded reporter, among the civilian population
as she stands before the results of marines free-firing on an unseen ‘enemy
which turns out to be predominantly children and seniors
As a late friend of mine once sd
why don’t we go out, buy a big goddam car
and drive
and, for Chrissakes, look out!
for the Hummer, be he civilian or military
our corpses won’t distinguish
Anymore, Americans could give a good cahoot who’s running the show
the brass or the bureaucrats
If they’re curious enough to want to know
they’ll find it on DVD some place or the other
Meanwhile, from my view of the ranch— looking south, towards Crawford— I can’t say I disagree with their point-of-view
this entirely passive condition
finding it neither alarming nor surprising
(startled somewhat by my own lack of reaction
But one has only to examine the brief centuries of America to discover the human limitations of an immigrant country whose people were here for a better life— and that only
Of course, they rise and fall in that tide—and will not ever be moved by rhetoric or melodrama that seeks to change their minds
Abhoring all unnecessary vexation and controversy, we opt for certitude, shelter, and three squares over the consciousness changing
mundane creatures who leave the big questions in the hands of professionals and elected politicians, which, on the surface, surely must indicate the depths of our inertia, as, for example, the continuing war on Iraq does the depth of depravity of we, the people
As I sd to my brother, the fourth dimension of America is business
has little changed since just after being mistaken for India
the States, child of Europe’s seafaring Adventurism
stepson to its Industrial Revolution
brought slaves to these shores
to work the cotton
(while professing democracy
:easy enough to do as an educated l8thC white in a whitewashed tower
then imported proletariat to work the mills
(thoroughly indentured
extend the country as an exercise in expanding markets
(the heyday of Roebuck
establishing sovereignty
Next came the illegals to work the fields
of the newly freed
(the next nouveau riche
the misuse of wetbacks whose popularity is now waning
just in time
as the slave trade is outsourced to our de facto colonies
the Central, Southern hemispheres
the Far East, China, etc
whose leaders are immune to horror
long as there is capital formation to benefit themselves
When we pilgrims, Joe and I, left for America we were right in the middle of a discussion as to the value, if any, of the white man, other than as facilitator
Certainly, we could see very little, if any need for him in our home, war-scarred Europe
Oh, there was some artistic/cultural promise along that tortured road
now, in America, much the same— art dancing around its commercial history
cultural sparks in the form of anything that would both pass for artistic entertainment and simultaneously make money
e.g: “Death of a Salesman” as an ironic classic
:The Birth of a Nation with its nearly inexhaustible variants on Capitalism
It is because of this innately amoral nature, all social, ethical and humane appeals here mainly fall on deaf ears
the great Turd that is Commerce has neither eyes to see nor ears to hear either public or private appeals
Of course, we hadn’t anticipated, prior to our voyage, the techno-industrial age and its unlimited capacity for destruction would have proceeded us to the U.S. and would have so fully flowered and fruited
At any rate, we arrived in due course, and were immediately struck by the social inequities everywhere abundant in the new land, which, amazingly, few noticed, and to which still fewer took umbrage
When we inquired about this curious phenomenon, the consistent reply was a quizzical look, as if to say, “What? You question God?”
And when we noted the class gulfs in this new country, we were almost as astonished— when we inquired after this, we heard words like “character weakness,” “savage,” or “inferior”
We were puzzled as we did not know to whom these attributes should be ascribed
whether to abject subject or demonic master?
There appeared to be a most curious, almost pyramidal scheme at work everywhere in the land
vast financial empires being constructed on the backs of others oblivious to their own subjugation so intent were they on the exploitation of still others less well off than themselves as they strove mightily to fashion a somewhat more modest success, and so it went in a continuing downward spiral from there
I sd to my brother, let us go and enjoy the sights of America and leave these most foolish persons to their waste of life
by then knowing we would fit comfortably in the lewd excesses of their creations— so much fitful enterprise
And so we did
thereby greatly enjoying our youth and the ‘culture’s surfeit pleasures
there were always women aplenty to go with us in the night so anxious were they to affect the seductions they had been so well-prepped to do by advertising and the media extolling celebrity, and had learned so adroitly
and so it was with our casual patrons who feted us continually at their groaning boards with mead and wine and all manner of fine potables
Consequently, I undertook the study of music, the arts and philosophy to construct an antithesis to these ephemeral pleasures for the good of my soul towards the day when, with gathering age, I could no longer, and, indeed, no longer wanted to support such transient pursuits
I was, like, you know, what they say about L.A., how, even if you personally have nothing, almost everyone else has a pool, and many that are catered, some 24/7
By this time in our progress, we were absolutely convinced, everything in America that is not directly about business, stands little chance of having any meaningful impact over time
and while there is much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over issues that demand immediate attention in terms of the will (or absence of will of the public— wars, poverty, social justice, etc— all are subordinate to the bottom line
And since, in my childhood, I had been denied the opportunity to pursue sportsmanship
(I had by this time in my progress frequented Aspen, San Francisco, the Redwoods, Yosemite, L.A., the Gulf Coast, and N.Y.
I began to fly-fish for trout in Sun Valley
wing-shot (at pheasant in the Colorado stubble
a variety of duck in the Pacific Flyway
One can imagine my consternation, when, emerging from the thoes of such largesse, I was shocked to witness the retrograde tide— social, religious and political right-wing activism— to be witnessed, quite frankly, from the most god-forsaken areas of this great country
(or, this great business interest
There were voices emerging from what by then were called by the name “red states calling for all manner of counter-intuitive, anti-empirical, socially regressive positions that most curiously undermined their own poor circumstances
Here were significant groups that, having failed miserably to enjoy any of the good time in America, now appeared poised to programmatically endorse policies that would guarantee they never got any such opportunity
poor people who supported removal of all social safety-nets; the uneducated who apparently opted for continued generational ignorance; ‘old money that was content to sit back darkly submissive to the declinations of time
Oh, well, as I told my brother— it’s their ass…
Better them than us
And while I regret being either cavalier or callous towards their choices, I am in no way desirous of returning to a state relative to the one from which I previously escaped— the calumnities of Hitler, Stalin and English Class
or to this inglorious grief of an inbred, stultifying, death-worshipping cultism and its irrational obsession with stopping time in its tracks like some black-holed apostasy out of Hell, all joy and whatever possible progress for poor humankind ceasing
terrified, not of terrorists but life/mortality
devoted, so they claim, to some future cosmic stasis that one of the ‘three great desert religions promise, on the one hand, while brandishing a cultural sword of Damocles over our heads with the other
Long live the Midnight Swim, naked in the moonlight
THE LEARNING CURVE; OR, HUBRIS IN HIGH PLACES: A PLEA First, foremost, there who was all about Dad, its petroleum, Israeli, and a Corporate Legislature, and all of them, their followed closely by Kerry clearly enunciating we (the Shiites creation of an Iranian-allied (shades of the old Domino Theory of …finally, flying off the Capitol rooftops
Now, forcing his way forward Howard Dean: We cannot just leave …we must stay on… Terrible alternatives… So ghastly familiar… …does no one here
We’re in the same kind of denial Something there is that We’ve even now got There may be no chance
It is said the Am. public What is this paralysis exactly? We’re certainly bleeding dry our treasury
It was said by both government we’d never make the same mistake again but this is still Asia, bodies in the Tigris, helicopters and planes downed by missles humvees and armored carriers by RPG’s Fallujah is rubble; Baghdad is zoned; the It is easy to underestimate (apparently but there is no question We Must Get Out Now
We must reject this mythos
Whatever chaos results As it is, it is a rubic cube The truth is witness the Soviet Union or, Somalia If we fail to act now the horizon is an indefinite What? We’re into our Would the cry We Must Get Out of Iraq NOW Woe the consequences The Plea must be unencumbered by the a Day Certain set & Kept (It is the reinforcement (or the pen (through which passes the real River of Peace
sin fronteras, we, as writers, well-meant naiveté Slavery, we thought but now researched increased the national product the GSP, as it was (Gross Southern Product and it was gross! such treatment ill-advised (Reparations? Hell, that’s cash owed, and interest Now mere “economic refugees” disqualified politically although, in truth, they ran away, these children of the Indios from generations who pay their way— as today the NY Times and, otherwise, fit having little or no (which is to say, who gave up reading And, naturally, as illegals, and take and do those chores— the bitter fruit mop floors, clean toilets dutifully dying in all those thousand things And if that doesn’t What threats are they to us; contributing heavily (our operative word the American dream And who these mighty a government enjoying who expect nothing (If one wonders we hail these brave and let us praise the principally and pity the Minutemen, particularly the inescapable one
Teaching freshman comp the one verboten subject was abortion
I’d had enough disgusted with
no healthcare for neocoms bent And along comes Mary, a pathetic commentary in a culture Yet, we again appear as the Church in Boulder we’re miles from and a culture long-ago or, as Sen. Sarbanes strange form of (while W, little realizing, understanding, caught up in the throes amidst the casual sex They resented my prohibition which may indicate from the bowels of
Sounds like Arafat is The Little Minam
There’s a cacophony in TV land, and of bent and baldly interfacing both unaware & and their “news”
But this week or, at least, for the young marines
the senses of it: (just something they feel (getting right with God
Baptism must be intuitive, perhaps harkening back perhaps a part of (there were even laws early in American history pneumonia killed so many
But these particular pictures
are preludes to dying
And no one even says men, who, in combat and it seems our prayers, have been answered, which more accurately,
There again, no
One can only speak who cannot locate to indicate the kind of that lifelong dialogue in a word, respect
There’s no lesson all which point
But, at least, the core were it not for the
being made about
Michael Jackson
straining vainly
Here is this small spending a quarter-million, to pursue questionable charges
and I must say, I,
unless something
I mean, it’s off the wall regardless of his guilt to the great issues
not incidentally, with over twenty unknowingly converted
then the marines, are pulled back, deferring to traveling there in waving the selfsame flag
entering Fallujah
Hamill was found today or, he wandered in inadvertently released, or, through prayers this ‘good ole boy’
a “contractor”
designed from nobid
Thomas Hamill,
which, of course, attention while earning him and, doubtless,
What continues to go the major consternation against and encourage it, the rest of the Middle East but rather the pacification fourteen military bases
is secured and don’t let us forget and the ability to which completely explains
go so strangely unacknowledged
despite the fact more of our soldiers dead
announced as he landed on the
than during the invasion whose legitimacy or pleases George Bush whose agenda, is splitting at the seams
Their vision remains,
as they
and its oil reserves
The present course could not, but they’ve already shown
They would even just so long as they have
oil, their “Maginot” line
And as for Kofi Annan , well, if they
Heraldic device, of sorts, Snapshot
This vision for the enrichment of the hemisphere did not come in a flash
rather a dream within a larger in which, as the CEO of Bechtel
that global behemoth, truly a nation unto itself
he first dreamed of being President
and would, of course, need a necessarily strong platform
like any good engineer
on which to run
if he was to make hay politically
and what better proposal than to saw off Haiti
sever that giant beetle-like proboscis defacing the globe from the rest of Hispanola
so much more esthetically pleasing with it gone
reminded him, for future reference, of the Establishment deformity known as Martha’s Vineyard
It certainly offered the engineering challenge of his
(or any other
lifetime
To erect
(don’t you love that term made so non-threatening by pharmaceuticals
a deus ex machina so gargantuan as to be able to trench down two or three hundred miles
then bring to bear atomic powered wedges
thereby forcing that pincer protrusion of a failed colony into the sea
I mean, he is quoted as saying, let’s bring some real beefy engineering to bear on this would-be democracy so close to our shores
as opposed to engineering (with a small “e” these puny and temporary overthrows of democratically elected leaders
I mean, sooner or later
and sooner is better
we’re going to have to find the means to sever all democratic aspirations of perhaps the entire continent of South America
and in light of this impending peril to American empiricism
not only would we get rid of Haiti
but we would be well on our way to perfecting the technology to potentially sink every nation in the world
and even toss in a few chosen plums stateside
and northerly
Can’t you just imagine it?
Texas as the only continent left in the world
And he, personally, would jigsaw out Houston and Harris County
giving us Lake Paranormal with even more largemouths than Possom Kingdom
Just think of it—he opined, free, free at last from those would-be democratized jingoists who have the unmitigated gall to speak French
this close offshore to Freedom Fries & Freedom Toast
The Dominicans wouldn’t complain, might even add several meters of attractive new beachfront property for their development
And we in America would have permanently ridded ourselves of this long-standing slave colony
which had the temerity to fight for its independence from the French empire this close to the American empire
God only knows what ideas were sown in the heads of our domestic population
In any case, it’s high time we
(employing here the imperial “we”
put an end to this national irritant that jes keeps rollin’ along
century, so it would seem, after century
There’s always going to be another Aristide coming along holding out hope to its citizens we’ve tried to ensure remain demoralized and destitute
Do you, mah fellow Americans find this notion any stranger than Florida and the Supreme Court elevating a certifiable bunch whose only garb should be canvas into positions of national responsibility?
No, we’ve got to draw a line in the sand
or, as it were, cut a switchback trench through tropical jungle
an undertaking so colossal history will forget the Canal, the Pyramids, as we perform this one penultimate feat of the imagination made real
Is that scary or what?
From the international political point-of-view I personally don’t think the rest of the world will feel the slightest bit more threatened than they already do
and I don’t believe I overstate the case any
It’s about time men of goodwill everywhere came out, stood up, got dressed, sucked it up, and did their patriotic duty
I can see the headlines
Bechtel Chief to promote New Tuna habitat
Whales for Bechtel
Bechtel Head Points to Overpopulation’s Final Solution
Be sure to read his book: “Treading Water For the Beginner and Do-It-Yourselfer”
Can there be any doubt?
Think I can’t win if they can?
Think again —Bill Dodd
Halabja, and a Defense of Tyranny I have this image in black flop hat to the music materializing out of war’s to say the sultry humanity’s resilient continuum but I am Western man for even in Today, it’s the ruins of Iraq Bush and Perle, all the gang disingenuously asking meaning Saddam Hussein, the final redoubt the selfsame charge And this very day reveals Halabja was not rather the incidental killing probably by Iranian chemical weapons, in a battle prompted by the an unfortunate fate, indeed, but not the act resonant defense given that everything from claimed as justifications for And the mass graves? Those insurgents What was it, and he had no better answer until the current fools to presumptive war leaving America, Do Bush and his cohorts care? Only so far Arnold in California as the majority choice, We so love our heroes as direct consciousness for why do we work so hard I’m afraid the rest into a future we have without us by whatever their lights and what our few from our best promise Iraq, too, will pass, an unfortunate episode, that awaits —Bill Dodd
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