Our planet can be renewed or ravaged.
Now is the time to awaken & take action
Carlos Barrios
A Scent of Osama
somewhere, half-lost in meadow grass,
it lows in soft requited ease,
glad of the respite from the plough
Addaeus of Macedon
This epic’s conception & creation
Ran parralel to one Jackal’s career,
Human supernova of sensation
Who gave the world a fearsome atmosphere;
As babes are born
Thro’ screaming labour pains;
Bin Laden blew the horn of death & all its pains.
Obama’s top priority
Was to unearth Osama,
Whether hidden in a city
Or biding as a farmer,
Eftsoons his sheer tenacity
Moved the Goddess KARMA,
“He’s in Pakistan!” Guantanamo moans –
Soon couriers hunted by robot drones
Shall hone in on a wall’d compound
Void of all externals,
& think him found! While on the ground
Agents fill’d their journals,
Close by, in complete ignorance, Gen’rals dined
with Colonels.
Abbattobad
January
2011
Arab Spring
How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another’s will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought
Sir Henry Wotton
Balmy as the basil tufts in Florence
Across the Arab World the vital Spring
The reign of flowers passionate commence
Let people & their power stunt a king;
Stalinian,
Great lands its rag-lives stain,
Maladministration & cashquisition’s drain.
They rose up in Tunisia
While the leading leeches slept,
Then a wild, widening river
Swept tyranny from Aegypt
& even to west-courted Libya
The hopes of good hearts crept –
An evolution of the human gene,
A revolution like theres never been!
But humans still as humans are
All in the oil-rich sand
Upspeaks the sha, to each a car
& hundred thousand grand
To every Saudi citizen born in his royal land!
Saudi Arabia
April
2011
A Very Royal Wedding
The fact is that
thousands of wealthy men
determine the destiny of the world
Joan Brossa
Far from the flaming barn Gardeleyen,
How wonderful she look’d, what gowns they wore,
Westminster thro’, stepping propylaean,
Heteronormativity namore;
Illustrials!
Her groom shone paragon,
Sealing their conjugals the whole world
gawping on.
The Duke & Duchess of Cambridge
Represent a future age
When ancyent royal privilege
Shall remain on centre stage,
But light years from Ancona Bridge
Refuse the wars men wage,
Working for a world that works together
As his Diana did in Africa!
Off to the banquet sped the cars
Glitterball gallantry,
New superstars, to wild huzzahs,
Kiss’d on a balcony
That once stood just a bomb’s-breadth from the Devil’s Germany.
Buckingham Palace
April 29th
2011
Death of Osama
I am tribal and am lost in the unity of nation.
To elevate the name of Afghans
I love these young people who puts the halter on stars
Allama Muhammad Iqbal
As when the lion-kings trapp’d in their lairs
& when the volk cheer’d certain victory,
Not knowing what a sorry fate was theirs,
Bomber Command swarming o’er Germany;
One moonless night
Two flights of Navy Seals,
With Attobad in sight & Hermes in their heels,
Landfall, as when brave Pizarro
Dared conquer Cajamarca,
All hunting down Geronimo
To end a sorry saga,
The first hint of the new morn’s glow
On a world grown darker,
Bin Laden’s last look on this planet stuns –
The muzzles of your American guns!
Bang! Bang! Two blasts! Blood-chest! Blood-head,
Deer-hunters slay the stag,
Cocksure him dead they swiftly spread
His body in a bag,
& sink a noble enemy wrapp’d in his old foe’s flag.
Persian Gulf
May 3rd
2011
Declaration of Liberty
For how, standing up in a tram, &
defending ourselves with our elbows,
would anyone live in the present? Why?
Boris Slutsky
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
All men have been created just the same,
Th’unalienable right, heaven-sent,
Of liberty & life must be our aim;
Securing these ,
To popular decree,
All governments must cease from selfish tyranny!
If not, the world most stand as one
& baronies abolish,
To never suffer, as was done,
Before imprudent English
Fought the injur’d American,
Yes! let us admonish
Those sons of men who etch life’s deep divide
With firm words & with firmer force applied.
“Freedom’s worth dying for, y’all hear!”
“Yessir, dat sure da vibe!”
Lives disappear in fright & fear
Lives too sick to describe,
Yes, let us dwell in happiness, we happy human
tribe!
Philadelphia
May 3rd
2011
Resurgances
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Til we have built Jerusalem
William Blake
I watch the world, sipping my mellow wine,
& from things deeper mysteries did glean,
Sensing the Hesiodic voice divine
To sing what has become & what has been;
& in that song,
My life’s true charity,
Distinguish right & wrong for World society.
The answer is we learn from War
Life burns bright where’er it flares,
So let us learn from it no more
& bend our swords to ploughshares,
Come deem them righteous rulers, awe
To those who show clear cares,
Friends, let us concentrate all strength & mind
On loving Mother nature & her kind.
Invested with new purposes
I dusted down this file,
Curseless verses, like couriers,
Await the final mile,
Less than one gross of lines to go, like Thonis at the Nile.
Edinburgh
May 3rd
2011
The Last
Like convalescents intimate & gauche,
We speak through sickly smiles & warn
With the stubborn saw of common sense
Karl Shapiro
They saw men drown, saltwater gulping down,
The filthy fields of Flanders carcass-strewn,
They heard a man reach Everest’s high crown
& others send a message from the moon;
Picasso’s art,
G-mails, speaking robot
To transplants of the heart, they’d seen the
bloody lot.
They form’d an ever-dwindling squad,
Supercentenarians,
Whose gallant gait rots to a plod,
Sad hearts predeceasing sons,
They’d long since made their peace with God
& curs’d those foolish guns,
That robb’d them of their mates, & of the match –
At Wipers Charles Kuentz hugs old Harry Patch.
Ah! one-by-one them angels meet,
Til one was left to go,
Who’d seen defeated German fleet
Scuttl’d at Scapa Flow,
Then he died too, on Claude Choules’ grave the bloodlike poppies grow.
Freemantle
May 20th
2011
9/11/11
You may remember, unable to forget:
Let your years flow by, remember or forget,
For once in a while, you will forget.
Kim Sowol
Twin pillars of light dividing the skies
America has shown resilience,
For five full hours, thro’ tear-stain’d, salted eyes
The mirthless dead all read out in silence;
Three thousand souls
On bronze panels emboss’d
All gone to Hades Halls, where innocence was lost.
Friends, while the end of wars I sing
They linger still in pockets,
Fighting the vast chremastic king –
Eyes bulging in doped sockets
Men fortify a tall building,
Whose Haqquani rockets
Shatter glass, make thick, twisted metal shards,
Dirty debris & bodies of young gaurds.
This battle for Afghanistan
Like others, doom’d to fail
Since it began, no push, no plan,
Could e’er this land prevail
Whose glories I must leave for future Rumi’s to avail.
Kabul
Sept 13th
2011
Fresh Finales
The poem is the cry of its occasion,
Part of the res itself & not about it,
The poet speaks the poem as it is
Wallace Stevens
Shaking Calliope from her slumbers
I took a bag of books up to the park,
Late summer sun lit those random numbers
At any given one of them many spark;
Some word obscure,
Some sweet, well-metered line,
Hot drops of poesy pure to aid mine art’s design
From Nether Stowey balladry
To Virgil in translation,
Thro’ Rilke’s Orphic sonnetry
To Spender’s generation,
How many notions bloom’d in me,
Groom’d by transcraetion…
& now Lucretious & the Tempest lie
Preganant with possibilities nearby.
As when th’entowr’d Lady Jane
Scratch’d poesy with a pin,
From Autumn’s rain I’ll cross the main,
Unleash the coil within
& tour, once more, the Roman shore, Muse let the
games begin!
Edinburgh
September 30th
2011
Axis & Allies 