Mockingbird Issue

A TIME IN SPACE

I sat down

in a painful space.

It was a back wash of time

a time of glistening silver silence;

a formidable battlement,

where swirling radiant stars

gazed down on 12 black numerals

floating in the inky darkness.

THE CHILD’S GIFT

You’ve brought me a sea shell.

Inside its Archimedean curl

it sings the seven great empyrean seas.

My heart swells with sunsets,

with flying butterflies

the color of rainbows.

You’ve brought me a sea shell.

THE NECKLACE

If only I could step into a limo,

and like the extremely rich, drive away

with my wife and sons for an exclusive country club

where the other swells would soon move out of the way.

The band playing and couples dancing,

discover that the best part of life lies behind a kiss;

I’d change lovers with each new dance

and remember the old lesson - that a kiss is but a kiss.

Outside, by the trees and greens, I’d find

the skeletal remains of a dove

bleached white and worn thin by hungry time,

and piercing it with an auger, intensely stare

at the bitter worn World, where we marry in fancy churches

and vainly try, beneath white veils, to institutionalize love.

I startle awake with the empty sound of my laughter

and a vanishing vision of a necklace made from the bleached bones of a dove.

A TOME

Setting

Down in the infinite depths of iniquity

where the R. wing tyranny has imprisoned me

where light and happiness never descends

and where an isolated dweller endures their naked malice

a poet separated by spiteful slander

in perfect candor I reproduce their dark;

where they play Marat de Sade, and their empty banter

echoes from barren walls, and where I’m supposed to eat my heart out.

But, unseen by them in this foul place,

a dream grows slow and sure that’s amazingly bright,

a beautiful dream of celestial splendor, full of grace.

When it attains its furthest height

it will transcend darkness and be a radiant lovely thing:

its Liberty! Dream of dark ages glimmering.

Have you ever inhaled fragrances – oh gentle and good reader

with eager and innocent wonder, the old rooms and old times;

incense and rarefied light, like through a cathedral’s

stained glass fenestrate, so incredibly fine?

Now subliminal technology predisposing the immoral criminal act – oh apostacy!

to forge tyranny’s bigoted biases into popular delusions!

This coupled with invading privacy to update psy. profiles is how monsterous acts are

manufactured,

while the career criminals go free to sin again plunging courts into hopeless confusion.

Our courts try their victims:

while the law which should protect equally all citizens precious freedoms and civil rights,

becomes a R. wing weapon, to be selectively used at their whim.

The ancient mystery like the fragrance of the special woman’s face,

whose smell is so incredibly fine it seems to fill the place

with strange primitive attractions all reminiscent of her;

and, her soft garments still warm,

delicate and feminine, discretely covering they set my emotions a whirl;

a hovering perfume, faint and suggestive of primitive life.

Cover

A cover to a tome catches the eye and creates expectations,

sometimes because of crude suggestive illustrations –

a cover makes an immediate mystery

secluding the work like a seraglio, a new world perhaps with its own history.

Pictures, fabrics, colors and patterns form over

it and merge hopefully into a harmonious whole;

nothing obscures its perfect inner illumination, its soul,

its every disparate part integrated and crammed beneath its cover.

Often one could comment that the author found

a picture epitomizing themself, other editions confound

the reader, like a prostitutes embrace,

with licentious leather and seductive satins;

a youthful thrill, like a Christmas toy that gave

to every moment joy, creating growth even in today’s gaping grave.

The Text

Oppression and repression make a desolation of

the flowers that decorated our wise youth,

your beautiful eyes teeming with goodness and love,

her embrace, where my heart explored new worlds of truth,

of long wet kisses, where the world dissolved in a spell,

her passion as razor sharp as insights of the heart.

What have I now? Oh open wound, where it was ripped apart!

nothing, but a strong and steadfast commitment against those who would compel.

Dying like me, isolated, by slow degrees.

Each pale day a blank page

beneath Tyranny’s dull servitude…

Dark murder literal and figurative of Life and Art,

never will superimpose their power over me – my body, they may destroy,

but, they can not destroy my spirit, nurtured on Her love and filled with God’s joy!

GRAY DESIRES

Conscious of the infinite shades of gray

of today that mutes autumn colors,

and intensifies aging gray transparencies;

the tears that fall gently on rooftops

at twilight and wash my heart

with the sea that searches for me,

the sea whose in the sky

in an all embracing mist

of shining translucent water.

Time of Truth

trapped in gray landscapes,

descending skies of closing horizons

of another existence still imminent

immobilized in gray

to the extreme limits of granite confines

exploding into beautiful great gray waves,

to be the person you desire

the personal pronoun

in my hungry quest: to know.

Banks of gray

form shapeless dimensions,

space, dressed in its best gray garments,

omnipotent, ubiquitous, indifferent and

gray, soft variegated gray,

like the sea joining the sky

vague and indistinct.

Today, God, (full of love, mercy and kindness)

is gray.

HALF WAY AROUND THE WORLD

Half way around the World, you called today,

where your chin is now stubbled and needing a shave;

where your mouth is so quick to break into a grin;

where your Mom’s kind brown eyes shine inquisitively;

where your face really is, which I encounter everywhere I look;

where your infectious laughter is spreading merry epidemics;

where your intelligent touch is strong and manly yet gentle and compassionate, too.

In my mind I find you several lovers not as dulcet sounding as you are to me,

nor as fair as you are to my starving eyes.

Its amazing how unimportant all your petty irritations

and all your major vexations now seem to be.

I think how well you weathered

all the stormy frowns, and,

how stupid only a well intending parent can possible be.

And, knowing how soon your room will fill with careless clutter

and the kitchen be left a complete wreck,

I’m filled with pensive wonder at this foreshadowing,

when you’ve finally left our happy home for good.

A WIDOWED GULL

A widowed gull wandered lonely

through the infinite blue sky;

it was a cold bright morning,

more like unborn early spring than winter

that had somehow become lost,

while rambling through the middle of December.

Ice formed on the streams

and a slight bitter breeze blew

softly through the leafless trees

where frost had frozen fast

to all the leaves of grass and palsied barren branches.

All was silent except for an abandoned cottage,

whose gate kept bitterly complaining.

ANOTHER NIGHT

Random numbers glare out of the dark; the sound of rain,

and insects lazily murmuring on a hot afternoon; a stream

cheerfully singing sliding gaily over a bed of rocks,

wind in the trees and waves playing along the seashore –

I’ve tried thinking about everything imaginable, one by one;

a city’s white noise, a solitary cloud drifting across a blue sky;

and, still I lie awake ensconced by pain, in a womb of darkness,

waiting to hear the first bird’s melancholy note.

And then, day begins again, a car goes down the street

accentuating the silence with its sound; and, the neighborhood

wakes up amidst its morning music, and, as for me

I steal by stealth three or four hours of sleep.

I couldn’t gain any more of health giving rest, lodged firmly

between pain and sleep deprivation each tired day

wearily follows the preceding, and I achingly greet

the myriad miracles and countless treasure of each uniquely precious day.

A VAST MULTITUDE

Alone, I drive through desultory time,

as a lark flying high over fields and forests,

when suddenly scattered in random clusters along the way

were a vast multitude of daffodils.

Above the city among the trees,

cavorting merrily in spite of Winter’s worst storm.

Numerous as the city lights that gleam

from the dark valley floor

they happily splashed continuously alongside my car

meandering parallel to the ancient flowing river

countless clusters kept jostling past

in gay splashes of bright yellow color.

The solemn old trees starkly stood beside them, as they

contrasted brilliantly with the green seas of deep shadows

covering the sylvan hillsides:

my spirit simply soared joyously

surrounded by such wondrous beauty!

And, my eyes tried greedily to absorb everything,

the little gold coins of sunshine infinitely enriched my life!

For ever since then on cold dark days,

when I sit pensively reflecting in a melancholy mood

there they are within, running along beside me

brightening up the good company of my solitude,

and then my heart warmly smiles

and takes off flying along with those thousands of fleet footed daffodils.

WELL MET

Darling what we’ve got is rare!

I love all that you love,

the fresh scent of Earth after a rain,

Autumn leaves and starry skies at night,

the rarefied light of dawn and twilight,

when mists rise from rivers and hollows,

and all life seems delightful.

I love snow with its pure white sculptural forms,

and frost feathers radiant on windows,

I love balloons playing with the invisible wind,

the ocean with its waves of foamy long hair

blowing freely in the breeze, and storms.

In short I love all of Nature – almost.

The Earth is a beautiful place,

unspoiled from human misery.

I like company and conversation at a leisure pace

that’s good, wise and knowledgeable, devoid of hypocrisy;

almost as much as I enjoy my own company

spent in tranquil, solitary hours.

I love Art

long lit galleries that stimulate the mind;

the concerts where beautiful music surges through flooding the air;

and the libraries with rows of tomes quietly murmuring away the dusty ages

of pain wearied time

then amidst mankind’s greatest minds universal struggle to dare to know and to be free

life feels joyous and fair.

Everyman’s life a circle in the great stream which travels through eternity

ending where it starts.

All ideas stated in these essays are the express opinion of the staff of the Mockingbird.

RUMOR MILL

ELECTION 2004 REVISITED

There exists enough independent concrete evidence of Republican campaign improprieties to suggest widespread election fraud. The Republican expenditure, well in excess of $300 million, establishes ample motive for misguided, unethical efforts to have been made, to protect that considerable investment. Unfortunately, nothing seems to be happening to correct this intolerable situation. At a minimum, a bipartisan investigation needs to be convened. The simple truth is that the results of the last election are compromised. The public has only one choice if we are to continue functioning as a free Democracy; we the people should call for a new election to be conducted as soon as possible, under parameters which would minimize expenditures and maximize equal public access to the major party candidates. Impeaching Pres. Bush will not correct anything. It leaves those involved in the improprieties, the Republican Party, in office; and, for the people of the United States to expect the Republicans to monitor themselves and clean their own house, and correct the transgressions made against the United States of America’s Democracy is unrealistic. However, the current situation is one which should not continue, because, no less than the integrity of Democracy is at stake. Free elections form the basis of selecting the participants for our government, if the elections have been compromised and the American people defrauded, then not only has the government no legitimacy, but the American citizens must realistically expect the government to be conducted at their expense instead of for their benefit. Otherwise the expense and risk involved in negating the national elections would be superfluous. The American public needs to face that fundamental fact, and it needs to call for another election - anything less is an empty illusion with a phony façade.

Before any more elections are held, the USA needs to take immediate, strong, and concerted action to guarantee the institutional integrity of our so called free elections. First, election procedures and technology that do not leave a verifiable paper trail (countable ballots) should not be employed. The companies involved in manufacturing the contemporary electronic voting machines and the partisan public employees in charge of their correct operation must be carefully monitored, to guarantee that the citizens receive nonpartisan products that produce honest results. Second, realistic and fair spending caps must be established that guarantee equality between the two major parties, in presenting the respective parties’ platforms and candidates to the American public. The current system represents money and not people, when in point of fact the US government is supposed to be comprised of “WE THE PEOPLE”, which in turn is supposed to represent all of the rest of the people of this great nation. In this age of international conglomerate corporations who have more wealth and assets than the vast majority of the World’s nations, it is necessary for Democracies to recognize and adjust its procedures in order to protect its citizens from abuses of power as our fore-fathers who wrote the Constitution intended. Third, no independent political support from the media can be allowed, without equal time being provided to its political opponents, who will be free to respond in any way it wishes with individuals that the political party provides, at the expense of the private corporation; because, the inherent tremendous advantage that the Republicans currently enjoy, by maintaining a dominate position in the media by controlling major media participants (see last months essay, or the movie, Out Foxed) in the oligopoly supplied media markets, which subverts the necessary parity essential for a viable Democratic process. Fourth, the country’s legitimate Third Party participation should be encouraged based on a formula of demonstrable public support, with careful attention given to potential forms of manipulation by the major parties. The current cynical manipulation of third parties by the Republican Party, to fragment Democratic voting constituencies, and to provide a means of making the Republican party look less extreme and to provide additional means for opportunities to present portions of the Republican party platform without splintering its own constituency is both unfortunate and dishonest and impairs the legitimate functioning of our Democracy. The public has a right to be warned - caveat emptor.

Please, join with the staff of MOCKINGBIRD in calling for a nullification of the last election. If that isn’t politically possible, then call for a new election. If, neither a nullification of the last election, nor a new election is possible; then, a bipartisan investigation into the improprieties of the last election is imperative, with meaningful realistic campaign reform measures as its primary political objective, which adequately address contemporary concerns about international conglomerate corporations’ massive concentrations of power and the potential for abusing that power to corrupt the necessary and legitimate functions of Democratic governments and to compromise a Democratic country’s citizens’ inherent God given Civil Rights. Efforts to impeach Bush will not accomplish what should be the focus of effective immediate political action, which is the necessary and desirable goal of dislodging the dishonest Republicans from the White House. Impeachment should only be tried if it becomes necessary to bog down the radical right’s private, exploitive, political agenda for the United States. Impeachment will not negate the damage done by the Republicans whose radical revolution towards national governments seem to have defrauded the American people during the last election, nothing short of nullifying the apparent fraudulent results of the last election will undo the damage done to our Democracy.

Dynamics of Oppression

Let us consider the nature of those who believe that they have come to save the World. Let us observe the radical right. We know that they contain a large contingent belonging to the religious community, and function as today’s contemporary Pharisee, “A fraudulent consultation is exposed by a marvelous decision filled with truth: Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God.” (Mathew 22). They have been around for a great long while, St. Luke described them as deceitful men, fit to set snares: they were so prevalent in politics during the demise of the Roman Republic and during the subsequent Empire that the Romans had a name for them, Insidiatores. And, St. Luke adds, “who feigned themselves just” (Luke 20). Today, like their historical antecedents, all the radical right pretend to be just, for they pretend to be representing the correct way of doing things, which is to say they believe that only their extreme way is right. They represent Truth, and “you are either with us or against us,” which is the litmus test of religious fanaticism, the failure to recognize alternative perspectives right to exist. It is an irrational extreme position, and always has been, and it defies reason; but, reason is not the extremist elements of society’s strong suit, they are motivated by their strongly held passions. Unfortunately, under this virtuous façade, there lurks a great deal of deceit: traps are set for others, as in the quotes mentioned when traps were set by extremist elements of society for the Savior. At times they even set traps for themselves, when it serves the power elite’s needs. Nothing is more mixed with fraud than the radical right, because they all want to be answered according to their own prejudices.

Those designated under this heading in St. Luke’s day were Pharisee, and their contemporary counterparts are still with us today. The radical right is active in American politics as well as religious circles, with the Republican Party being the organization which primarily pursues their political objectives. Their malice and hypocrisy is well known. They are the politicians who set themselves up to honor the USA, while impoverishing it with lower paying jobs and third worldizing American labor markets. Further, they bleed the USA with foreign wars, which enable them to steal other country’s resources while impoverishing the United States government with their industrial-military profits, so they can try to privatize American entitlements (Medicare and Social Security) which enable them to provide a free ride expanding corporate welfare to their own factional interests in the Insurance industry and Mutual fund industry, too. This erroneous policy is blindly taken so that money can be taken from the public’s pockets and placed into a few very wealthy people’s private investments, and so that certain members in the power elite can compete, they mistakenly hope, with other members of the radical religious right, whose tax exempt status and guaranteed annual contributions provide them with, what their competitors in the power elite feel are, insurmountable competitive advantages. This brings us to the unfair and poorly timed tax cuts, which in four years have not rejuvenated the US economy, and, which make the rich not pay for government services which benefit their companies and themselves the most. Yes, the right wing politicians and hypocrites understand one another very well, as they conspire to bleed the US public.

Let us pause and reflect on the injustice of mankind. This is greatly facilitated by doing away with equality as a social characteristic of American society. The more a person becomes opposed to the oppressive policies of the radical right, the more they are set up and the more the radical right tries to ruin them. This is particularly true if they are demonstrably right and Truth is on the opponent of the radical rights side, which unfortunately is generally the case. Remember, a central characteristic of tyranny is to attack all political opponents and make negative examples of them. This tends to generate certain social consequences; it makes society uniformly mediocre, it motivates large numbers of people by fear, and subdivides society into small isolated units: all of which are significant social characteristics exhibited by tyrannical states, and, all are prevalent social characteristics of the United States, which are increasing in America today. Unfortunately, societies that manifest these social characteristic also tend to stagnate as do their productivity rates, and progress slows down to a crawl. Tyranny always professes to be for freedom, and outwardly, the Republicans profess to be for freedom of the people, too. Isn’t that how Pres. Bush Jr. repeatedly said Democracy would beat terrorism in the last election? But, the Republicans, under Bush leadership, placed a CIA operative at the head of Iraq, after twice failing to fill that position with US generals.

Let us dig deeper into the human heart, and learn to recognize the current injustices in it. Those who pretend to oppose terrorism will start a war to rob one nation of its resources (Iraq) and then bomb a Western European nation five times (Spain) to quiet outspoken criticism and increase sagging USA influence, which is currently viewed in Western Europe as the single biggest threat to World peace. In the United States the public is told by the media that it’s the work of middle-east terrorists. But, this story doesn’t make any sense.

The story that Middle East terrorists are attacking Europe presents many problems. If Iraq freedom fighters have Europe’s support, and they do in public opinion poles, then terrorist attacks mean that they are attacking their own supporters, which would undermine their own position. In Iraq there is an election coming up which will return a certain amount of control of Iraq to the freedom fighters. They stand to gain nothing by bombing Europe, and will lose a great deal of potential support after the election which could be converted into foreign aid if they spread hostilities to that region. If its terrorists that are attacking Europe, then the countries targeted should be those who’ve supported the USA. But, the country which supported the US most doesn’t get touched – England. And, the country the terrorists attacked is Spain, where the US radical right operatives have been very busy trying to overcome anti-fascist sentiment brought on by years of rule under the previous right wing military dictator Franco. Inversely, the only political participant who would benefit from bombing Spain is the US radical right. It serves to extort support for the official US military policy from the more passive European countries. Also, it helps move the American public on past the election without embarrassing the Republican administration, which a terrorist attack on either the United States or its active allies would, by making the US and its military allies look weak and ineffective. Finally, it would serve to simplistically project the dark skinned, Moslem, freedom fighters into the bad guy role and that of course makes the USA military, who invades Iraq in an unprovoked attack, the good guys! Now, who do you think caused the terrorist attacks (note, not directly did the actual bombings) to occur?

Let us never protest against the injustice of government, even though we are being oppressed. Rather, let’s advocate a return to Democratic ideals, and work harder to make government work for the good of all of its citizens. We need to make equality the corner stone for our Democratic government. We need to believe in the Civil Rights of all our citizens, even the hate filled iniquitous members of the radical right. This is what it means to be a Democracy that you respect the rights of all citizens, specially the ones with whom you disagree. An egalitarian society is essential for Democracy to survive and each citizen must have equal access to courts in fair and just legal proceedings, which are meaningful and not just a rubber stamp for an attack by the radical right, whose subliminal technologies established a predisposition to commit criminal acts planned by the radical right usually for purposes of propaganda and greed; and, which have turned the US courts into adjuncts of the radical right who persecutes its victims who have tragically been deceitfully tricked and trapped into committing their crimes, which further proliferates the victims of the radical right. To date utilizing subliminal virtual reality technologies, the radical right’s branch of organized crime have been able to function with impunity outside the reach of the law. The consequences have been quite severe, we’ve watched our legal system become displaced from one which protected the civil rights of all citizens to one which functions as a punitive weapon punishing those who dare to disagree with the prejudices of the extremist element that is the radical right; and we’ve watched widespread corruption based on greed become established, in the form of a double standard that has effectively eliminated equality as a meaningful social characteristic, which tolerates whatever it takes for tyranny to have its way that includes prostitution, perversion, child abuse, rape, murder, extortion and fraud; we’ve seen artificially elevated crime rates from the levels it should be with our aging population, and sadism established as a norm for compelling human behavior. What abuse of a personal freedom could match such a record generated by the abuse of power?

It’s been almost a decade since the USA has experienced Democracy. There is considerable evidence that we have been subjected to two consecutive fraudulent elections. The negative consequences of tyranny extend beyond equality and egalitarian safeguards. Our country is poorer than ever before. More children live in poverty. More families have no health insurance. Fewer children receive the higher education that leads to better futures. There are fewer good jobs available. A comfortable retirement, like owning your own home, is quickly and needlessly becoming a dream of America’s past. The USA is being actively sacrificed for influence, based on non-sustainable prosperity, in the third world regions of the World. It is prosperity based on destroying the very domestic American markets that are the foundation of the targeted areas’ of the Third World’s prosperity. Obviously, when the American labor markets are made competitive with the Third World, the American consumer market will be devastated, which will destroy the basis of the present Third World prosperity. It’s a course of action that’s analogous to making a feast from next year’s seed for planting. Unfortunately, the next bubble that bursts of radical right generated prosperity will be far worse than the last two Republican created depressions. I refer now to the Republican Reagan/Bush depression during the latter 19^th cent., and, the Republican Bush/Cheney crash and subsequent depression which started off this century when people observed up to 75% of their retirement portfolios vanish in literally an instant.

The first step back towards sustainable prosperity will be to reaffirm the fundamental characteristics of Democracy. On that firm foundation we can build the future prosperity of America and the World, by meeting the current economic needs of the World’s community of international conglomerate corporations by effectively interfacing them with stable happy productive societies under the stewardship of popular elected governments. Democracies based on Liberty, Equality and the rest of mankind’s time honored Civil Rights. A mutually beneficial future prosperity free from the demands of those who would yoke mankind to the tyranny of their vain prejudices, and a prosperous future based on mutual respect that is deserved because it’s earned. A future built on the bedrock of Democracy’s core values, where sustained prosperity is the basis for spiritual growth and human happiness.