Broken China & Speed Limits

Its that time again for me to break out the poetry. It's not like breaking out the fine china. It's more like breaking fine china. I never like my poetry until months later after rediscovering it. Then it becomes this stranger time made, remeniscent of some life together long gone, and I am left discovering the meaning in my own words. I need to desperately brush up on the rules of poetry. Don't get me wrong, I have every intention of breaking them. I figure I've forgotten enough that I may need to review, just so I know exactly what rule I am breaking at any given time. It's like speeding, I personally like to know exactly how much I am going over the speed limit when I am doing it.

Anyway, here are two poems from the past. The first is a stanza about a person I met this summer who drank way too much whiskey. The stanza says enough I suppose. The second one is something I wrote when Saddam Hussein was killed. It was actually written in a different format, but I have no clue how to make anything indent in this blog world. Blogville gets the original version. So there you go.


Saturated Spaghetti Western Take1
A fifth of whiskey riding shotgun in her hand,
She rides into view.
Like an outlaw giving up the good
Just to feel the good in being so bad,
She traded in appropriate other gyrls wear like dresses,
Never doubt’n this Jack knows what to do.


Noose. (written 01.01.07)
Noose. She said it was huge. Did the job instantly. Snap. He was dead. Emails poured through, 3000 dead. It was time to hold a vigil. Form a circle and meditate on another soldier dead, another brother, sister, son, mother, father, daughter affected. The key word here? Dead. That’s war. War is not a pleasant peace pipe, puffed and passed. War. As we finish our holidays, start a new year, go back to our jobs. We are at war, hidden behind insurgence and reconstruction. While we play our civil duty obedient and submissive, lapping up our long holiday weekends, peace written in the glowing star of David on the street corner WAR happens. This nation, we citizens are at war. It didn’t stop the day they tied the noose around his neck. Snap. Instantly. He was just another number of war. It didn’t stop Darfor. Didn’t stop global warming. Didn’t disabuse the pain. Snap. Instantly. And the war goes on.