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CounterPunch
February
15, 2003
Can We Have Some Peace
and Quiet Please?
By ELIOT KATZ
The belligerent voices are yelling
in the streets
& on the radios calling for the big bombs of peace
to fall, the smart bombs, the bombs that have passed
their college entrance exams. It's Orwellian the way
everyone claims Orwell for their side--these days
everyone is fighting on behalf of Orwell and God.
Years ago Don Rumsfeld & Saddam Hussein met in
the corner & exchanged secret diplomatic handshakes--
it is only after peaceful gestures like these that the missiles
can fly. In the meantime, the time between the world
mean as is and the world we mean to become,
the endless rains are Yehuda Amichai's tears watching men
still violently beating their swords into plowshares and back
into rifles & remote-control fighter planes. On the corner
of Spring & Broadway, a taxicab driver threw a baby lamb
out the passenger-side door--everyone in a two-block radius
ran away screaming. In New York City the yelling is
so loud and the quiet so quiet that everyone I know, just below
the surface, is scared out their wits, knowing the violence
these days that can follow an apparent peace. They are calling
Senators with empathetic American voices, urging earthly
generosity and kindness, which their elected leaders interpret
as a vote for pre-emptive strikes. The next century's gods
have not yet been born and the last century's are no longer
able to show a child the simple magic trick of pulling
its fingers away from a newly lit flame.
Eliot Katz is the author of three books of poetry,
including Unlocking the
Exits (Coffee House Press, 1999). He is a cofounder of Long Shot
literary magazine and a coeditor of Poems for the Nation (Seven
Stories Press, 2000), a collection of political
Poems compiled by the late poet Allen Ginsberg. He can be reached
at: unlockingexits@earthlink.net
The Greasy Octopus
By SCOTT HANDLEMAN
I'm tossed at sea, a dizzy water-rat
Beneath the midnight blue; and while I sink,
A greasy octopus is growing fat.
Its quiet like the mute immersed
in chat
Where furtive bottom dwellers feed and slink,
And toss at sea like dizzy water rats
He whips his arms, and mother
crabs go splat
His gray skin turns a happy mottled pink:
That greasy octopus now growing fat
His tree-trunk arms could strangle
mountain cats!
He sees me eye him, blinding me with ink--
To tossed to see, a dizzy water rat
His shadow scares the little
octo-brats
And while he makes the squid and walrus blink,
The greasy octopus keeps growing fat
When Octy dons his military hat,
All sea-life trembles at his oily stink.
We're tossed at sea, like dizzy water-rats
While greasy octopus is growing fat.
Scott Handleman can be reached at: scotthandle@yahoo.com
Prayer of an Infidel
By BRUCE E. TOMCZAK
I wait at the east window for first light
to erase the edge of darkness.
I follow this random line in
dreams in time of war,
never reaching the source.
I have the hope but not the wise blood
to reach the middle ground of care.
I return from sleep before the
silver chain is struck.
My dogs, like the shamans they
accompanied,
point me there, to the land of castles worn in ice,
where the auroras dance in colors to the gods we have lost.
I pray in the dead air to any gods, who may hear,
the winds that whistle on the lips of oblivion.
The gods I grew up with, like
old Christmas toys,
are broken and powerless.
They sit in immaculate order on the shelves
of the rulers, icons to the corrupt who have stolen the
meanings of all they hold dear.
Beneath, they worship oil, blood
and power.
For games, they set their soldiers on the stained altar of sacrifice.
They intone the ancient litany of freedom, patriotism and fear.
They make devils out of other men and mark those to be slain.
It has always been thus, divining light from darkness.
The weak and innocent die under
the just heel of the smiling oppressor.
The weasel eyed President is unable to straighten his eyes or
tongue.
The badger-browed Secretary of War, a weak, little man who tries
to sound big, makes boxes with his hands when he speaks and
stammers helplessly when he lies.
The, crick-necked, vice President fattens each year as he smiles
crookedly.
The Secretary of State, looking askance at history, is no longer
a credit to any race.
Thirty years ago, he lied about
My Lai and the tenor continues with Iraq.
Close-minded and spiritually bereft, the Attorney General sodomizes
Justice as he follows his
agendumb in Nazi fashion.
It is a cabinet of fools.
We must find better men to lead us in this dangerous world.
We repeatedly pick the venal and corrupt,
then pretend they don’t disappoint us.
And we must find better gods
to lead us to higher ground.
There is no room for war.
The anguished cries of all the dead of all time flood the earth.
We must search and find the goodness in our cores,
not react to evil with evil and call it its opposite.
Justice, not vengeance, is ours.
I wait in the eastern window
for first light in the twilight of the new gods.
Bruce Tomczak can be reached at: upstreamb@juno.com
Yesterday's
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CounterPunch News Service
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President
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Peggy Thomson
My
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Gary Leupp
Meet Mr. Blowback:
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Saul Landau
Bush and Corporate Fraud
Adam Engel
A Civilian Occupation:
The Politics of Israeli Architecture
Anthony Gancarski
Jacksonville in Crisis
Rick Giombetti
Specific Threats to Democracy
Jean-David Levitte
A Warning on Iraq from France:
Make War the Last Option
Ian Gurney
Whose Side is Bush On?
Maria Engqvist
Did
the FARC Shoot Down a US Military Plane in Colombia?
Ron Jacobs
This Madness Must Cease
Josh Frank
Call to Washington:
Stonewall Bush
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