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Watching That Golden Prize Be Lost

6/30/2017

“Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood—
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature’s God!”

Clouds gather, and a distant rumble
Reaches my ear—approaching thunder—
As this proud nation, poised to stumble
Moves thoughtlessly into some blunder.

A thoughtless horde of men and women
Perverting Christian piety
Rush to fulfill an evil omen,
Skipping towards Potter’s Field with glee.

However did the soul of man
Attain such hubris? Artificial
The self-opinion which began
When theft made mankind prejudicial.

What kind of people will allow
Its use of language to descend
To lies, distortions such that now
No man upon truth dare depend.

My country, it is well for you
To draw a line upon the sand,
A demarcation, so as to
Make scapegoats, love a contraband.

If love and truth be dead today
Then from this empire I secede:
We will be slain that do no slay
But will not acquiesce to greed.

No human thing I do not know
(As Terence said), not alien
Though mobs condemn or make a show
Boasting themselves the best of men.

My country, it is very well
If by disaster, some purgation
Be had for souls enacting hell,
And yet I tremble for this nation.

“Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood—
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature’s God!”

The Fragile Ego

6/30/2017

“[I]t was probably difficult for whites to admit that an African had taught them anything, for the slave’s Africanness was a crucial element, so the rationale went, of his or her enslavement as an inferior.” (Sterling Stuckey)

The trend continues, does it not,
As whites may shit, but off the pot
And leave more than their tweets behind—
A mess to the unborn consigned.

It shamed them that “dark Afric’s son”
Knew more than they themselves had known
Of how civilian government
Functions: they mocked their president,

Then voted in a white buffoon
To show how white men call the tune,
And, lest incompetence arise
Declared that men must close their eyes.

Free speech—the press was stripped away;
Voting rights—rolls were purged that day;
And, to ensure “alternative fact”
Be kowtowed to—the court was stacked.

Ah, white man, such a tender skin,
How did you let it get so thin?
Believing white makes right, to twist
Fragility supremacist.

Holding the Color Line

6/28/2017

McConnell brought the country down
And he was glad to do it,
Lest Negroes from Chicago town
And other places of renown
Demand White Privilege be mown
Down with the laws that strew it.

He had to find a way to stop
Obama from appointing
A nigger-loving judge to bop
With the Supremes; so Mitch let drop
Pretense of justice at the top
Through Gorsuch's anointing.

The Silver Fox, the White Man's Hack,
Gorsuch became the ringer
To help Mitch bring the profits back,
Supremacists on the attack
Odds in their favor so to stack—
To favor goals right-winger.

When law cannot achieve your ends
Then tear that framework down,
This Mitch McConnell knew—with friends
He schemed (though chaos it portends)
And rent the Constitution, rends,
To claim chaos his own.

The more he strove to tear, malign
Obama through his malice,
The world observed all was not fine:
The Party shouted “Mine mine mine!”
While holding fast the color line
But let its heart grow callous.

No False Compare

6/27/2017

Neil McGill Gorsuch, John Wayne Gacy,
Compare them, harm for harm,
Which one was staid, and which one racy?
Who sounded the alarm?

Both men like sleepers did their work,
Sly fox or friendly clown,
Pretending probity while lurk
Discordancies unknown.

It would be hard—let God decide—
Which man is worse or better,
For fact and image must collide
When spirit parts from letter.

Each man pretended such and such
But actions proved divergent,
Nor people bothered overmuch
Or thought the matter urgent.

John Wayne or Neil McGill alas!
It would be hard to know them.
Horrendous details come to pass
With only time to show them.

On the Recent Verdict, or, Credibility in Question

6/27/2017

However now the court decides
The presence of a ringer
Upon the bench, all truth derides,
A bee without a stinger.

Trust in the verdict of the Court
May not now be assumed:
A ringer works right will to thwart,
With justice nigh entombed.

His name is Gorsuch. Hear ye! Hear ye!
All rise and walk away.
Disorder in the court! How blearily
Keen judgment falls away.

The people voted (if not all)
For lies instead of truth,
Dishonesty as ought appall
Disgraceful and uncouth.

If truth so sorely be esteemed,
The court’s a verdict-flinger
Sans principle—so unsupremed
By virtue of a ringer.

Mitch McConnell’s Explanation

6/26/2017

"You can go to church and sing a hymn
You can judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you die
One thing you can't hide
Is when you're crippled inside."

When I was sick with polio
Man’s altruistic urge
Saved me (for we were poor, you know)
From the disease’s scourge,
So I grew up a strapping lad
That now am 73,
But don’t expect a Galahad
To do thee as done me.

If you are sick, I’ll give “tough love,”
The only kind I preach,
But push “healthcare” away above
Out from poor people’s reach—
For I got mine, a wealthy man
And can afford to pay,
Let poor folks do the best they can,
I won’t stand in their way.

Except by blocking access to
Doctors and medicine,
Compounding laws as to accrue
My balance—off their skin—
For poor folks labor and they earn
But do not get to keep,
While rich men profit, turn for turn,
And get things on the cheap.

I’ve even stacked the highest court
By such a silvery scab
To be relied to “hold the fort”
Whilst I my profits nab—
Yes, I who was a strapping lad
(Averting polio)
Claim all the good, but leave the bad
For others—ho ho ho!

McConnell’s Creed

6/25/2017

I nearly died of polio,
But thanks to FDR
I got through the imbroglio
And now I am a star—

My story motivational
I’m happy to recount,
And hear applause sensational
Unto the rafters mount—

But God forbid that anyone
Who suffers from disease
Or illness (it’s no honeymoon,
I offer sympathies)

Should hope for or expect to have
Healthcare’s remediation
Without money to grease the salve—
Fanciful ideation!

My sympathies extend no further
And it is not a glitch:
My actions count as good as murther
If it enriches Mitch!

I nearly died of polio
Except for Roosevelt,
But greed is my First Folio,
Not poor folks—oy gevalt!

Why Should Cops Be Armed?

6/25/2017

He was acquitted by his peers,
The man who shot Philando,
And put a stop to all his years,
The man who killed Philando,
For (so the solemn jury said)
When panic filled his fearful head
He had to shoot Philando dead,
The man who shot Philando.

Why was he armed, the traffic cop,
The man who shot Philando?
So ill-equipped to make that stop,
The cop who killed Philando?
Philando, deferential, cool,
Obeyed instruction, not a fool,
Yet ended in a bloody pool
As bullets claimed Philando.

Acquitted by his peers, perhaps,
The man who killed Philando,
“Another one of life’s mishaps”
His killing of Philando,
Yet jury verdicts falling wide
Cannot conceal the rift inside,
Nor human conscience will abide
The murder of Philando.

A man’s acquittal by the Court,
The man who killed Philando,
As though it were a deadly sport,
The killing of Philando,
Was never justifiable,
However laws be pliable—
Armed cops proved unreliable
By more than one “Philando.”

What small infringement, what mistake
Is worthy execution?
Nor any did Philando make,
Yet death by execution
Deprived him of all life for good,
Of kinship, love, and fatherhood,
By what injustice, understood
Revealed in execution.

One’s Peerage

6/24/2017

I think sometimes, some people still think we’re working with people who you can negotiate with. And what was proven under President Obama’s time is that he gave them a lot of concessions to get the Affordable Care Act passed, and they still voted against it. And a lot of the concessions were things that helped create the problems we have now.
— Rev. William Barber

They ripped the bowels out and expect
Democracy to survive?
The viscera completely wrecked,
Disaster must arrive.

Substantial portion of the men
We class as citizens,
Our peers, proposed a regimen
And were not “on the fence”:

They voted, strictly, for to harm,
To hurt, and, partisan,
They bought quick cash but sold the farm,
And cheating drove the plan.

Lord, I have understood how base
Humanity can be,
Yet even as it shows its face
Some new features I see:

It will be well, if mankind fails,
For truth but must condemn,
And humankind, upon the rails,
Has had its Requiem.

I did my part; yet what I wrote
May not resurgence augur:
Let mankind rest, its lies found out,
In death by pettifogger.

Not a Legislator

6/24/2017

Neil Gorsuch often likes to say
“I’m not a legislator”—
All well and good, but (by the way)
As a disseminator

His very presence on the court
Suggests that laws aren’t valid,
For legislation comes up short,
A special-interest salad,

If rules apply, a thing enforced
When favoring the white man,
But for the black man, worse and worst
(Obama not the right man).

The seat you stole, or rather gained
In profit from collusion,
Renders the law a thing disdained,
A vegetable confusion.

The man who will accept swiped goods
May not be legislator,
But sits unfit, when he colludes,
A judge-prevaricator.

Better to be an honest man
And not to be a judge,
Than sit supreme—yet charlatan,
A kind of Elmer Fudge.

<<Previous

Watching That Golden Prize Be Lost

The Fragile Ego

Holding the Color Line

No False Compare

On the Recent Verdict, or, Credibility in Question

Mitch McConnell’s Explanation

McConnell’s Creed

Why Should Cops Be Armed?

One’s Peerage

Not a Legislator

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