Self Death

Brick and mortar of life
Sometimes held strong
Other times weak
And crumbling before
Our eyes – sometimes blurred
And not grounded in soil
of reality. Sometimes floating
On the waters of aqua-culture,
A modernists vision of farming
Where crops may not have
Traditional stability and the whole
Outcome is called into question
By the skeptics who never
Look beyond the box for
Anything for fear the
Confrontation of a new idea
Could lead to questions
They are not prepared to answer;
Leaving them striped- naked of
Security by their transparency
To become a product
Of their own obsolescence.

A Primer of Iraqi Liberation

O the nights of lightening bursts
Over the skies of Baghdad fade
But the percussion sounds still
Rattle the streets- the shelf life
For ordinary folks smudged out
With an eraser. Water runs

Or not, the only consistent power
Has no switch for control.
Life And death seem so closely tied;
A knot that one moment can be
Pulled too tight and snaps.
People strain to remember who

Asked for liberation, their mind draws
Blank, the birth pain of democracy
All the more unbearable when some
Resist the contractions and want
Only to abort and are willing to take
Vengeance upon their own to squelch

The unwanted. Still, mercenaries
Prosecute a bold faced lie to the world
With the levy of working men and women
At home who have no choice, while others
Are sacrificial lambs for the sake of
A dignified way out of one man's perjury.

Today is Women's Equality Day

August 26 in 1920 - the right to vote was extended to women. Just a small step in the equality process.

On another note - I wanted to share this quote from Horace Mann -

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

Library Challenges FBI Request

Library Challenges FBI Request


This Washington Post article is recommended reading with respect to the current debate over infringement of civil liberties vis-a-vis Patriot Act.



civil liberties Privacy

Famous Poet: by Ted Hughes

I believe the first book of poems by Ted Hughes to be published was a small book titled The Hawk in the Rain. I picked up a copy of this at a book store a few weeks back and was reading through it this week and came upon a poem that I believe has to be one of my favorite Ted Hughes poems. It is titled Famous Poet.

I especially am fond of the third stanza:

First scrutinize those eyes / For the spark, the effulgence: nothing. Nothing there / But the haggard stony exhaustion of a near- / Finished variety artist. He slumps in his chair / Like a badly hurt man, half life-size. //

This poet, though famous it appears has seen better days. Effulgence is such great word here. We know a bit of what perhaps has been, but is now lost in this man who has sunken to something less by half of life-size.

The final stanza too is a powerful image:

And monstrous, so / As a Stegosaurus, a lumbering obsolete / Arsenal of gigantic horn and plate / From a time when half the world still burned, set / To blink behind bars at the zoo. //

So in the earlier verse Hughes uses the half life-size man - Shrinking the Famous poet down to something less then his once perceived stature. In the end, this same poet is the monstrous Stegosaurus - albeit beyond his better days - for public viewing behind the bars at the zoo. Both images work equally well.

The Hawk in the Rain was fist published by Faber and Faber in 1957. It won the New York Poetry Centre First Publication Award. The judges were W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore.

Park University Scribe

Just learned that I have four poems in the Park University Literary publication. Haven't seen them yet and it was quite a while ago that I submitted them - I'm stretching to remember which ones they were. If I was at home, I have it on my manuscript tracking system, but for now I'm too shocked. Actually this is the second time they have published my work.

Shark

Shark
Originally uploaded by stickpoet.

In the deep night waters/
Sleek silent watercraft / Self-reliant incessant predator / Swift to carve circles / Stalking in his own circuit