My Resolve for SJM

A swollen brook flows,
As I tolerate my own indifference,
To the depression that wrenches my soul,
My despise giving way to love,
And surrender.

As I oil my mind,
Lubricating the invention,
More correctly the rebirth,
Of my own ascension,
I will be…

To feel as if a handsaw,
Had hacked my insides,
Leaving no bruises,
But the scars so very real,
That none can see,
I push on.

As I forage my own intentions,
I discover the resilience of alfalfa,
Its tender shoots,
The fibers that allow me,
To grow,
Spiritually.

With seething anger,
My face turns red,
As I consider the past,
But I know,
That my future will be my resolve.

SDM

And now for a word from our...

Saddam –
Dan Rather –
Thank you CBS,
I’m pleading for the truth
and you offer me a prelude to war
brought to me by General Motors..
Saddam come now,
oil, oil, oink, oink,
we all know,
use religion as an excuse,
a prelude to war.
Many years from now,
on a different couch, cigar in hand,
I’ll remember what life was like before the second war in Iraq –
This time the Coalition of one;
THE MIGHTY DOLLAR (GREENBACK, AMERICAN)
the bottom line –
How may will die? –
That day,
cigar in hand,
I guarantee I will know.
Two evils no lesser;
Results different yet same –
Gun to head Choose!
C'est la vie circa today!

SDM

Networked Fear

Ominous –
Looming –
Impending War –
Are you frightened?

Has CNN
or NBC
or CBC
or BBC convinced you of the need to go to war –
To shatter a nation already in shambles –
Incidentally one of the wealthiest Oil nations in the world.
Did I mention with a leader (whom no one really chose except for the United States),
sounds eerily familiar,
especially to the people who elected Gore
and ended up with Bush.

We’re hearing about drones and no fly zones,
seeing controlled and contrived images
as approved by the very real censors of Iraqi’s,
just like you or I digging trenches outside their homes,
on their streets –
Can you imagine that?

And I don’t mean city workers –
I mean can you imagine digging a trench in Toronto,
Ottawa or
Montreal,
New York,
Los Angeles or
Washington.

Trenches!
We’re hearing again,
about blanket bombers from another war –
Sorry conflict, not so long ago –

What do you think the Vietnamese are thinking of the B – 52’s active use again?
We’re hearing of B2B’s and I don’t mean business to business –
F – 117’s, Apaches and lest we forget batteries of Patriots –
Untold (literally untold for the cost of War is never as neat as Balance Sheets and Profit Loss statements)
Billions will be spent fighting to depose one man –
One man and a few of his cronies, is anyone else afraid,
what happens when the dog scratches –
your bound to come up with fleas –
Believe me – No amount of duct tape is going to keep a determined flea out!

These are but a few thoughts on a senseless war which could be but one mans blood –

SDM

The Price of Iraqi Freedom?

Missiles cruised from hundreds of miles away,
toward phantom targets that intelligence thought was real,
the earth trembled as mechanized dinosaurs stormed through sovereign territory –
belonging to the people and not Saddam,
yet it seems they paid the price –
TWICE!

Ferociously for decades, a tyrant ran the show,
stacking the deck with cronies,
if you can call those in perpetual fear for their lives cronies.
Industry –
His –
Oil –
His –
Palaces –
His.
All Iraqis paid a very big price.

The mechanized dinosaurs rapidly advanced and watched cities lit up from the sky,
Iraqi’s initially shocked and awed that yet again,
no matter the intention,
their empire risen from the sand through oil stood shattered.
Now tattered,
confusion abounding
I hear the sounds of demonstration
and I stand confounded from the lessons I’ve learned
from a short lived war that still rages in the hearts and minds of all ages –
In Iraq and indeed around the world.

SDM

Speed of Light

Like Einstein I imagine myself shooting through the universe at the speed of light.
Searching for some meaning to this life.
As I approach earth I can feel its pain, knowing that it is bleeding oil, which is leading us to death.

Back on earth at a much more understandable speed I can hear the planet choking one rev at a time.
We design machines with fail safes and shut down at the red line yet somehow can’t seem to see the red line when it comes to our thirst for oil.
Technology advances rendering ever more efficient machines that once were just the things of dreams or science fiction.
One small step for man who still seems to fall on his face which is why we’re searching deep in space.
For as all the dinosaur bones dry up and the sky becomes dark as night, we’re killing ourselves slowly despite our greatest might.
We have the wonder of our brain and yet the more things change, the more WE stay the same, so I’d like to return to the speed of light because out there in the darkness of space...

SDM

"Liberators?"

You have to admit that in this age of information we seem to be getting short changed. Propaganda and rhetoric in this time of war seem to have taken the place of information. For example, the well crafted, public relations, “Code Name” for this ongoing coalition of the willing action is “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. For months leading up to this war, Rumsfeld, Bush, Powell, Cheney and Rice told the world that Iraqi military would roll over and play dead. It hasn’t. We were told that the people of Iraq would welcome the coalition as liberators. As yet, that remains to be seen, perhaps when the regime has truly folded that will be the case? Perhaps! At this moment Rumsfeld is on the screen, on the street in DC, asked about the progress of the coalition the first words he said of coalition success; “We’ve secured the southern oil fields.”

I’ve tried hard not to be cynical, tried hard not to buy the conspiracy theory line. Unfortunately, its beginning to seem as if we’ve been witnessing and buying, hook, “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Line; “Coalition of the Willing” and the unfortunate sinker; “We are liberators.”

Its quite sad for me to say as a lifelong friend of the United States of America, the land of liberty, the center of the free world, democracies great proponent, that it appears this mission should be called;

“Operation Earthen Prize.”

I hope history reflects on the aftermath of this war; I pray for us all!

SDM

_________

context - written just after America invaded

Dropping the Other shoe

The other shoe has to drop, but it seems maybe an end is in sight, the plight of those in the Middle East, some looking for a homeland, all concerned with peace. Yet, are they really? Its often said that actions speak louder than words and all I can hear is the consistent ringing of my ears from the continuing bombardment perpetrated by fanatics, not just of the religious persuasion either. I can see terror lashing out at the soul while ravaging the body, blood stained streets, cleaned by the same street sweepers that clean the streets that I walk. Morosely confronted by the thought of what cleaning solution, what mixture removes blood from cement, or brick and curious as to whether that same solution can cleanse the soul?

In that same region, home to the birthplace of three religions, the cradle of civilization, the attention of the global nation is transfixed by what might happen next. We stand on guard like idiot savants watching the news mistaking sounds bites for truth! Truth?

Whose truth and at whose expense? Where great kings and queens used to come together, where once great empires stood, hanging gardens and entire civilizations knowledge weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of men who had to balance their desire for power with the will of invading armies. Armies whose appetite for destruction included turning back the hands of time by pilfering, then looting, then burning and destroying this history, tradition and cultural awareness to replace it with, well, their own and where the people would not go willingly, or quiet enough for the powers that be, THEY were eradicated, simply wiped from the face of the earth.

Times have changed indeed, or have they?

People in search of a homeland, people in search of self, people in search of meaning and people in search of wealth. Oh sure, times have changed, but PEOPLE remain the SAME, playing still an age old game. It is as old as time and still people in search of illusive truth justify the quelling of the sprit of youth.

For with the innocence of youth the spirit can feel searching for answers that somehow is real and here I am. Contemplating far off lands and the wishes of men with best laid plans. Like pipe lines and oil for societies rich yet entirely poor I think that’s why we still know war.

Like lions and tigers and bears we fight for riches without despair. With nary a care for our time and space we’re confronted by images surely in poor taste, ours! With all the elegance and class that money can buy we drive our vehicles while people do die.

At our expense and in our place the other shoe now falls and I wonder is any are aware at all. We’re killing ourselves one barrel at a time, drunk on oil as if it were wine. Deposing tyrants where once civilizations story was told, where aqueducts and math, the science of thought and religion did unfold.

Not today, nor tomorrow or yesterdays sorrow unchain us from our past and the revolution coming most surely must last. Go get your oil and effect regime change but realize this its us and our basic instinct that remains the same.

SDM