Fast Day 330 October 5 2013 The Painted Man

The Painted Man

I cannot sleep within my bed
I must pace the hours of lead
cold recollect of new fall snow
ibuprofen
snow.

Christmas carousel candle
force my foot in ice sandal
frowning morning once again:
Washington news:
painted men...

the painted man’s a symbol
standing behind the demon door
kissing discord’s pomegrant
more hallowe’en
haunt

the businessman's uniform,
and deadly nightshade apron
seek to deeply sink their claws!
makes us rebels
without cause

--

notes

pomegrant  =   "pomegranate" as often pronounced as 3 syllables; the pomegranate is seen as the fruit of Persephone.

Fast Day 274 September 1 2012 {The Film "Hugo"and a Political Convention}

The Film "Hugo" and a Political Convention

The very failures to which they lead,
through causes unforeseen,
are as beautiful as stunning success,
when shown upon the screen.

The arcana of the cinema,
applied by chemistry,
through deeply laid principles and appliance
resolve our inquiry.

Roman rotations upon the clock,
white arms of odalisque,
and Hero's pipes join clepsydra -
around the temple whisk.

The automaton convention claps
in synchronized adulation,
and smiles break on well-oiled lips
to mislead a nation.
--

Fast Day 273 August 25 2012 {The Years of Toxic Sleep}}

The Years of Toxic Sleep

Naiads of the river nymphs of the bureaucracy,
dryads of the city-county and manticore of our lives,
sweet medicine of mandragora and poppy of Cyprus:
O, the sleep of Reason!

Religions of wahhabi bulldozers, running on
delusional diesel of 'Uzza, Lat, and Manat, spreading
toxic water and damming aquifers, torturing aqueducts:
O, the sleep of Faith!

Feet quick to spill blood, feet slow to pilgrimage:
ferriers and blacksmiths who deform the holy word
between hammer of their soul and anvil of their own desires.
O, let the mu'ezzin cry:
O, believers! 
Sleep is better than this Freedom!

--
written as intolerant hard-liners attack Sufi mosques and shrines in Libya.
again, they are urged on by our "friends", the Saudis.

muezzin  - the caller to prayer    a Turkish form.

Fast Day 236 December 10 2011 {Mami Wata: How Government Began}

Mami Wata: How Government Began

Be careful where you step

by the river or by the sea:

Water,  she get no enemy.

Do not tread upon the old one.

Mami Wata was the ruler

of Sahara’s rosary:

lakes to the sunrise ceremony,

all the way from western ocean

Papa Legba of the crossroads

was land born from the sea;

fenced in, he believed himself not free:

riparian earth and sediments.

He gathered land-men far and wide

to go to parliament,

claim equality of descent,

to break the circle of Mami Wata.

They swore a suicide a month

until they got their way,

to reduce the mothers’ sway

and establish patriarchy.

Mami Wata ebbed and withdrew

to her palace lazuli

far away from the crazy

genocide of the dusty men.

Such is how we got government…

and Sahara desert…

leaving just aquifers covert…

and children soldiers bearing guns.

--

notes

Mami Wata  - goddess of the waters (West African, Haitian)

Sahara's rosary - the string of paleo-lakes and rivers of the once lush Sahara. Of course, we mean all such ancient waters, ocean and all, and referring to the "rosary" of the Sahara is using a part for the whole.

Legba      -    a male god of the crossroads (West African, Haitian)

The picture is supposed to be a depiction of a lwa. (pronounced "L-WA"), and perhaps Mami Wata, although it does not resemble the usual depictions of her.

SYNOPSIS
Mami Wata is goddess of waters. Here I picture her primeval spirit of the world. The land came later, and it is pictured as male, as seen by Papa Legba. To break the matriarchy of the goddess - and goddesses - of the waters, the oceans, the lakes, the rivers, Legba and like-minded men threatened to kill themselves until they were granted power.
The Mothers could not bear to watch their children kill themselves, so they withdrew from the places of mankind's power and authority, and the patriarchy and all it entails was set up.

(I am late getting this up. I have been back and forth between my parents' place; they had a cat crisis and we had trips to the vet.)

Fast Day 234 November 24 2011 {Procne Is Among The Slaves}

Procne Is Among The Slaves
Dedicated to the US Congress
November 23, 2011


there was construction on Mack Avenue
so I got out of the car and walk for a mile
walk for a mile

in my high heels
my crane-like high heels

in my black, black high heels

(chorus: her black, black high heels)

bike guy on my left
food truck on my right
I got out of the car
walk for a mile
in my running shoes,
black Converse running shoes

(chorus: her black Converse running shoes)

Eastern Market Thanksgiving turkey
no hormone nonsense for my babies...
I took the turkey home,
and gave it to my Sis;
get new gilded shoes on
and going to go to Greektown

(chorus: People Mover Greektown)

Greektown casino takes my money,
and tries to take gold lamé virgin;
blue-heron-like
heels, and my life
to sit like Procne
among the slaves.

(chorus: Procne among the slaves)

I will shoe my feet in rain clouds,
I shall clothe myself in line;
like a phoenix.
we shall rise and fly
away, swallows and
nightingales...


scorn the ruling tyrant owls-
carrion eaters of the night;
we leave them behind,
we high-legged herons!

--
notes

Procne and Philomena were sisters and both became married to Tereus, king of Daulis, who symbolizes government.
He was depraved and eventually caused both sisters in their turns great grief. They escaped from his depraved tyranny and were turned into a swallow and a nightingale, while he was turned into an owl, or some stories say a hoopoe bird.
There are many variations on this story.

So was that tyrant Tereus' nasty lust

Changed into Upupa's foul-feeding dust

Lord Brooke; Declination of Monarchie.                   ( Upupa = hoopoe )

Hoopoe Bird

The poem is a symbolic story of the oppression of the poor and the powerless by bad government and its  supporters. It tells how the people will become free from their chains and fly away to freedom. It is about women and poverty.

line    =   linen

--

Fast Day 202 April 15 2011 {Susan Welcomes Revolution} {شوشانا ترحب الثورة}

Susan welcomes Revolution
in the month of Nisan:
she smokes without matches,
she drinks without wineskins;
when she cries,
she is not dieing...
as are we...
but she is creating the rivers of Eden!

Susan is a Visionary
in the Spring of the year:
not drinking from poisoned wells,
not eating of forbidden foods;
when she sleeps
she does not slumber,
as do we,
but remains vigilant for her tribe until dawn!

Susan is an desert shaman
in the April of time:
the scorpion of heart's desire
makes her strip off all her clothing;
when she loves,
she is not at peace,
as are we;
nightly hunts she leads with the campfire's greyhound smoke.

Susan welcomes revolution;
in month of Tammuz:
reflections in eternity,
encased in Persian mastic
as an ant
encased in amber:
but not we
who east of Paradise must live until all men be free!


--
notes

the poem is about new life and new intuition and Arab culture and the events of 2011.

--

Fast Day 138 January 22 2010 {The Opium of Afghanistan}

The Opium of Afghanistan

The opium of Afghanistan
is always on my mind;
sixty patients who conceal
man's intolerance to man
who will die, and who will deal.

A strategy of hegemon
planned within the Pentagram's
cubicular endless row,
sends a gift wrapped carton
bomb where we disguise our blow.

A poster of the ocean sunset,
a poster of new born pups;
missing pieces jigsaw puzzles
newspapers with coffee wet
on tables 'neath our muzzles.

Our karaoke souls sing:
O, floating to Madagascar
on a raft of vegetation;
lithium changes everything,
in the hospital of my nation.

I believe in a higher power..!
To see my god I wish!
TV! Cable snaps to view!
One thousand channels from but a Dish!

( the cable screams...!
like the cirucmcised sons of Heth.)
circumcision...magic edit...
morphman video magic edit
crack download
true launch drivecrypt
zetamail and nitroboot
max crax
transcender device
system
key
crack
visual chairman
and the red book of
mr. skins.
the cities of the plain in Midian...
and Narcisse in Cairo's cemeteries
where white skinned children play...
with roadware techno bombs,
bullshit crack,
according to our plan
the power of the pentagram...
and the hard drive is a leather
disk-like codpiece storage unit...
...I have run out of precious words!
...chain-smoked them all! scattered at our feet...
like leaves to fill and papers to roll
and my mind a bic lighter to ignite...
the robot drones of fate draw nigh!

------
notes

meditation on the untold story of where Afghanistan's opium is going, mental hospitals, and TV.

Fast Day 88 February 6 2009 {President Obama's Stimulus Bill)

President Obama's Stimulus Bill

The Senate's consid'ring the stimulus
package to jump start the economy,
to give help after the drive-by shooting,
or so I said, reading the B.B.C.
She laughed, "Now they sit in Washington
like untrusting customs agents, trying
and discov'ring illicit smuggled cash
for the arts." She shook her long hair, and said,
"It's a man thing: the metaphor of jump,
and hooking electrodes to fix things up...

like Frankenstein", she softly hissed, snakelike;
"Dig up th'industrial skeletons of old,
unnoticed from the mass graves of today
on the roadsides of our Burma Shave memory!"
She laughed loud, and sat up straight: "Scarey, eh?"
Yes, I said, to vampire and to zombie,
to resurrect and stitch the body of
our rust-belt past, like Re-Animator
or The Night of the Living GOP,
while we townfolk stand with torch and pitchfork.

Later we went to Grandpa's old Garage;
as old as Henry Ford it stood with eyes
of glass panes, like a bee's multi-facets,
broken here and there by boys' tossed stones,
the Tracker Brothers Trucking of right now.
We break the seals and open doors,
whose hinges protest: Go away! Away!
like Samuel's shade did protest the wicked
Witch of Endor, filled with resentment, yet
unable to prevent the enchantment
of determined Van Helsing intrusion.

Past the crescent noon of time we stood
and viewed the treasure house of our grandpa's
tools: thresher, binder, cross-cut saws and tongs;
a Fed'ral truck, and two floors of dusk.
A device of lunar breastplate iron
stitched together with cobalt rivets hung
heavily inert from a heavy hook.
Who is a tool and die guy? anymore?
Where's the engineers of these hieroglyphs?

To clean it up, we took brooms with besom
from straws of Olympos and Avernus;
bronze rakes from Benin, ponderously long,
forged from old cometary copper;
we scrubbed from east to wet, and north to south,
until it gleamed again, like auroras;
and with those rakes, the peoples of the world -

grasping with eager sinews their brazen shafts -
pulled cool drinks of darkness from the blist'ring
Sahel sun - the killing genius of the drought;
and alternately pulled warm draughts of sun
from the unyielding cold - killer by ice.

And when it was done, we had a party
to celebrate our secular novelty
with all the flags and pennons of the world.
No one got drunk, and no fights broke out:
and we were not so tired we could not love.

notes:
Burma Shave memory: a simple recall that floats by like the indicated signs.
Re-Animator etc: old horror films.
Tracker Brothers Trucking: an abandoned facility in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.
Witch of Endor: asked by Saul to summon the shade of Samuel.
Dr. Van Helsing: entered the ruins of Carfax Abbey to destroy the evil of Dracula.
Olympos and Avernus: mountains in Greece and Italy, respectively.
Benin: country in Western Africa with a history of metallurgy. Together, Olympos, Avernus, and Benin refer to the influences of their respective cultures upon our country.
Sahel: African region south of Sahara desert, drought-striken for years.