Blackberries&Bromige/Dresden James/Bill Maher

(P1) Poetical

More of the Lasting Contribution of David Bromige

Perhaps it was 2 years ago that I shared the following poem with David Bromige. He suggested an addition that is in the second version below. Suffice to say, it is the second version (with David's addition) which has been accepted for publication by Xanadu.

Picking Blackberries Without Me

She sd
I could have used you
to hold the dog
Your height
to get to the good ones
Your body mass
to push aside the vines,
tough out the thorns
and get just a little bit juicy.

Picking Blackberries Without Me

She sd
I could have used you
to hold the dog
Your height
to get to the good ones
Your body mass
to push aside the vines,
tough out the thorns
and get your face
just a little bit juicy
so I could lick it off.

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(P2) Philosophical

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over gerations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. - Dresden James -

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(P2) Political

Bill Maher's New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing?...Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? ...unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate... ...But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans.... ...If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain."...

...And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

Bill Maher (at Huffington Post), host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher airs live tonight at 10pm

Get the entire essay.

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Conscientious/Bromige/Cheney/Fliers

(P1) Poetical

Beckman On Vietnam and David Beckman

VIETNAM AND ME

The draft board needed me to
wanted me to fill,
to fill a slot.

Smell of charcoal
and burning meat
from the family grill and all the fun
all the frolicking summer cookouts
that fun summer.

They didn’t care
didn’t care if I
sat out the war as long as
as long as I didn’t, you know, embarrass anyone.

How I refused,
refused to fake some infirmity
and take the easy way.

How I applied for --
it’s an interesting couple of words, all right --
conscientious (that’s heavy, that has implications)
conscientious objector.

How the draft board,
my father’s friends,
(How are you, Herb? How’re the kids)
asked me to define
please define for us what the hell that is

and then said yes,
you are a
we know you
know you to be
yes, we know that you’re a sincere young man.

How ten years later I awoke in a sweat
wondering who
died
who exactly died
in
my
instead of, you know,
in
my
stead.

-- David Beckman

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(P2) Philosophical
from David Bromige





life is brief


it says here








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(P3) Political

THE TRASH CAN SCHOOL OF POLITICS

Holds there is no truth greater than the stink
of the compost beneath your sink. No greater
titanic ruse to the drowning of your senses.
Or the senselessness of a dead mouse
at the doorstep of former V.P. Dick Cheney.

Sells a silly fiction that anything goes
and everything soars like the gilded eagle
perched beside the original Articles of Confederation
signed by Adams and Hancock but not read
by all the people or former V.P. Dick Cheney.

Swears by the tarot cards of the fortune teller
of all Roma festivals and raw excitement
of jaw breakers and castanets and the quick steps
of the flamenco that string us along in a milkyway
of conceit just like former V. P. Dick Cheney.

Possesses the fatalism of the dead sea of the Plastic
Killing Fields of the Pacific. The wide smile
of unilateralism is the guise of good intentions
martinis and the kiss of the sloth, muskrat
blue monkey, and mother of former V. P. Dick Cheney.

Slips a knot around each word and high fives
the graffiti of Guantanamo drop by drop by precious drop.

~Nancy Cavers Dougherty

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