Berlin’s Wall Uprooted

Foxtrots down a slippery slope,
Wolfgang elopes with malediction
and on his breath is some new election
of promise and peace.
“Ease your mind,” he says
with upraised arms full of ivory
while the livery cattle call
across Berlin’s wall uprooted.
Wings of war dropping soundless fury
infatuate t.v. audiences;
tea and oil opiate the masses
and their classless society
lies dying
while Wolfgang keeps trying
for holy war.

Primatives at an Exhibition

Peacock plumes and sharkskin shoes
shaken free of intimacy
dote on depth of field,
drink down rotten cocktails tainted green.
Fleeting glances,

their eyes emerald,
pick at prints of pale-skinned savages
bled dry.

All our Dylans died
or tried to change the times
with electric chords,
placating pulizters,

standing silent in their simplicity.
Suffering sells where
bitches bejeweled jostle
and wax intellectual with bragarts and bullshitters.

Don’t tempt me with tempestuous
promises of proliferation to the poverty-stricken.
My dreams do not disseminate
their dissent to this desicration.
My beatnik bent belies

the brazened patrons of cafe’s
and coffee shops, creeping
underneath

to undermine the minds that mold this
morbid war. When death
is done and winter
comes with all her fated fury,
what word wreaks havoc enough to
awaken wonder at the absent sun
when bleakly breaks the dawn?

Bush’s Ideal of Moderation

January 10: President George W. Bush announces an increase in troops in Iraq.

The nationally televised speech was, as I think most of us expected, simple in verbiage and more or less void of fresh content. We all knew what was coming… despite recommendations from the Iraq Study Group, despite the plummeting approval ratings, despite statements by generals that the 20,000 troops requested simply aren’t available.

The thing that struck me was the repetition of an ideal most American’s have been pining for since the inception of this presidency: ‘moderation.’ At least three times, according to my count, the president mentioned his intentions for Iraq to embrace moderation. And I can’t say I disagree. Radical fundamentalism has been the undeniable cause of sectarian violence in the Middle East. However, it seems to me that Bush has overlooked a greater cause of violence: the US military under Bush’s command.

True to form, our president ignores his own advice. Our lack of moderation in dealing with Iraq is evidenced in no better arena than Bush’s own speech. The fact that he has ignored both the voice of the people and the Iraq Study Group’s findings and recommendations by calling for more troops is its own radicalism. This is a man on a mission to save face.

A lot of shit has been thrown around regarding the motivation for the increase of troops, and it has been posited that Bush simply intends to pass the buck to the next commander in chief. This would be wise thinking, if Bush were an evil megalomaniac, which I doubt he is. I think that instead, our country is run by a man with his head stuck so far up his own ass, he has forgotten the people who elected him and why he is even in office. His drive now is to see Iraq a democracy, and the only reason he seemed to be able to give in his address to the American public was that this would be good for America. I’m all in favor of security, and (despite my inclinations to the contrary and my belief in the complete injustice of this war) feel strongly that we have a responsibility to the country of Iraq (considering the mess we’ve made). However, if Bush’s prime motivation in bringing a close to the war isn’t a similar sense of responsibility to the people in the nation of Iraq, then he has lost the plot in this war.

(As if it hadn’t been lost before it began.)