February - The Love Month #2

I love poetry. Shameless hot love. I found the Poetry Foundation. 

I went there hunting poems about Love. This poem was listed under Funny Love Poems. The poem comes from the book Bar Napkin Sonnets. 

I have lived this and I ain't laughing. Poem so good it hurts. I am remembering, lusting after and loving all and everyone who was there. I love them now. Even those who do not talk to me anymore.

Bar Napkin Sonnet #11

Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I'm a girl who'll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt—sweet Bacchus' pards—
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
inside that makes me do the things I do.
I wasn't sure which worm he meant, the one
I ate? The one that eats at me alone?

by Moira Egan

February - the Love Month #1

since you’ve been gone

since you’ve been gone, I’ve been alone.
like an arm without a bone.
dangling limply like a phone that’s out of charge.
like homer without marge.
like an egg without a spoon.
like a dugong on the moon.
like a clownfish without nemo.
like twilight without emo.
like hardy without laurel.
like high ground without the moral.
like disney without walt.
like battery without assault.
like a pet shop without gerbils.
like hitler without goebbels.
like a dilemma without the di,
just a lemma and a sigh.
like déjà without vu,
I am nothing without you.
till the day that you come back,
I’m like whitney without crack.

- Bill Bailey (via acupofpoetry)

The Dream

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." - Martin Luther King

Countee Cullen is a giant of an American poet. I dream America free of bigotry of the killing kind - so exquisitely expressed in Cullen's poem.

Countee Cullen

INCIDENT

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Rest in Peace Martin Luther King Jr. The struggle continues.

Lyrics to Lift Every Voice and Sing written by another poet of the Harlem Renaissance James Weldon Johnson. Composer is J. Rosamond Johnson. History of the Harlem Renaissance and its Poets HERE. 

Lyrics:

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Veni, vidi, vice. - Julius Caesar

Graphic by Buddy McCue.

I studied two semesters of Latin in High School. This is the only sentence in Latin I know beyond the Latin Mass. It translates I came, I saw, I conquered.

I have been absent and this is the first time I have been able to think anything at all much less write anything. I am grumpy. I did not much like John McCain when he was alive. I see no reason to like him now that he is dead. Rest in Peace.

I am thinking about War. We were lied into the Iraq War. Saddam with WMD was an outright utilitarian lie. Democrats under Obama should not have 'moved on' for the 'good of the country.' Torture is a war crime. Bush and Cheyney need to stand trial. Not doing anything about it was cowardly and accelerated our current contempt at all levels for 'facts' and the rule of law. Our biggest problem now is rampant corruption. I like the way the Bible puts it. 

Galatians 6:7
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

So let us talk about war heros like Julius Caesar. And The USA waging war somewhere on the globe for a moment.

We have not won any wars. We are currently at war all over the globe. It is all the same war. We have been in continuous war for more than 30 years now.

This approach to diplomacy is making us poor and the 1% rich and killing innocent people. We are a global bully and the chickens are coming home to roost.

Bush and Republican policy created the last fiscal disaster. A taxcut for the Corpos and 1% while in a war is the perfect recipe for fiscal disaster. And that is what they did to us and have just done again.

On a lighter note, the corn and cantaloupes seem especially yummy right now. One day, we will eat the Rich and the Corpos. They will leave us no other choice.