degradation – In My Own Words

You Know Who

He emanates an ugliness beauty parlors couldn’t fix

it’s not imaginary that victims hear his psyche cackle

his every breath spews a malevolent excretion

A most prized possession being a mirror bloodied and in shards

Grievance bleating his perpetual static state

warped by depraved and inconsolable neediness

his vessel always on the ready with decomposing bile

branded the mega alpha and omega but of the self-con

All life viewed through a prism transactional

a life long loser incapable of addressing reality

Solomon once wearily shrugged after saying,

“you can’t fix evil, it’s unrecognizable to itself”

Blinded By Perpetual Neediness

The genesis: — “Bush On The Couch” by Dr. Justin A. Frank

It’s your station in life commanding fear or respect

a quality forged by bridges built or wrecked

to aid the weak or succor the powerful

it’s a mantle earned by who you call and cull

Being so broken, drink or dominion offer no fix

the holes and flaws become your dominatrix

the higher you go harming on a grander scale

the naked light of failure a darker shade of pale

Scuttlin’ from reality, gripping your demon shield

blissful sadism and omnipotence to wickedly wield

tethered to a megalomania writ oh so divine

fostering a callousness of the impervious kind

Running and hiding when it was your turn

keeping the VC out of downtown Galveston

as commander, you tell who to kick ass

but in your time to serve, you took a pass

An entire life riddled and riven by grievous need

drunk or sober bathing in moral bankruptcy

the U.S. presidency so way out of your league

or a brush cowboy Al-Qaeda-failure-to-heed

3,000 people perished in infernos today

code red intel spikes spelling a fray

yet tragedy’s lesson ends with this call

you’ll just need to head out to the mall

Because it doesn’t matter what or how

winning the moment, your sacred cow

in your empty suit which you so belong

just bang a gong, getting your war on

Chaney and the rest spun you like a top

with a wink and a nod to a virtueless sop

them knowing just what to do and say

GeorgieT got asked to come out and play

Sending soldiers off to your madeup war

sexing up the terms, stacking the score

bodies come back, maimed or boxed

your crocodile tears smudging the cost

Jesus ain’t served by your lies and war

or trying incessantly to top Daddy’s score

never saying sorry ’cause nobody else mattered

the dead decomposing, their being splattered

Just go with the gut, light on the fact

to hell with looking forward and back

no need for analysis and surely no debate

that’s work and carries too heavy a freight

New Orleans drowns in water and wind

while who’s pickin’ a guitar, flashing a grin

What was predicted sadly came to pass

“Heckuva job Brownie” is what’s heard last

Tryin’ now to counterfeit what is history

judgment lapses for all to feel and see

truth as mangled as your brand of compassion

making selfless good something to ration

Dylan, yes, he was spot on back in 1965

telling us with a wink and his loquacious jive

it don’t take a weatherman to make the deduction

GWB, yes, he’s a weapon of mass destruction

(written in 2011)

Family, or Not

* Inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song “Highway Patrolman”

We was raised on a family farm way out of town

croppin’ wasn’t easy but the lifeblood we found

two boys, me and Jed, our sister Rose died at eleven

buried past the barn when he was twelve and I ten

one day here, then gone, Mama said it was the fever

told me not to say a word and everyone believed her

Jed soon turned dark, just ugly treating others

we was the same but so unlike blood brothers

he earned a reputation, it spread and soiled me

kids would quietly edge away, watching fearfully

but Becky Cook took to likin’ me, be it luck or fate

with her I felt alive, a liftin’ of the heaviest of weight

Chorus

Life moves on but absence ain’t just not being seen

Darkness shadows families, we claw at the holes in between

My parents said don’t you dare bring her around

When I’d ask why, they’d say you just calm down

Jed told me to do it, with a look like he knew more

Then he’d smirk and continue on with his chores

one day Becky called wanting to see me by myself

Daddy and Mama in town, Jed to parts unknown

She showed up and I told her I liked her smile

I went to find my favorite book, floatin’ all the while

when I returned, she was gone less a single shoe remaining

I called her name to no answer, silently spittin’ out a prayer

then I heard a scream outside and tore into the yard

Jed was draggin’ Becky away like a corpse to the boneyard

Chorus

Life moves on but absence ain’t just not being seen

Darkness shadows families, we claw at the holes in between

Jed turned, let her go, then ran into the barn

Becky shaking, her dress dirty and blood adorned

Daddy’s truck appeared, he asked “why’s she here?”

“Jed hurt Becky” and Daddy’s eyes displayed fear

“He’s in with the livestock and I want at him”

Daddy had Mama take us inside, him pale and grim

A single shot rang out, Daddy took two hours to return

sayin’ “there’ll be no more problems, nothing of concern”

an hour later, he spoke again with “it’s time for the truth”

he said, “Emory, this is gonna taste like bitterroot

it was evil but family, what Jed did to our sweet Rose

but taking it outside us left me nothing but what I chose”

Chorus

Life moves on but absence ain’t just not being seen

Darkness shadows families, we claw at the holes in between

The Past, the Present and The Future

Introduction:

Not final thoughts, call them edible words

written hard in mind and put away wet

Evil is, yes, the world’s purest desire

and humans will never break from its twining

it’s a backwater oozing enchanting siren songs

laden with devil hybrids and soul strip mining

Long before this nation’s so-called founding

chains were placed heavy across human hearts

call it the original-est of mankind’s sins

the scars on the Blacks in order to tell them apart

Death freighters sailed across the dark seas

Lower in the water, burdened with heavy hate

the ticket-less cargoes bound for King Cotton

timeless auction blocks still the South’s soulmate

Label them holy shrines or places of the damned

hellholes of Wallace, Maddox, Connor and that filth

the reality is there’s a new generation always bidding

the latest now nattily dressed in suits and ties of silk

Oh, come one, come all to the public lynch

it’s a swing and sway of the three-fifths faction

for when it’s a state’s right to maim and then kill

you cannot emancipate solely with a proclamation

Call it an alignment with the status quo gospel

brewed and marinated in feral and fetid DNA

always remember, ‘it’s Mr. James Crow to you boy’

for the genocidal will never stop seeking prey

Yes, human giants climbed many of the mountaintops

alerting and and warning about fires of five alarm

challenging the plaintive ‘we’ve always done it this way’

battling malignant foes laden with a love to harm

But this ill extends far beyond the southern seceders

to constituents professing kinship with the Golden Rule

but when human innocence is profanely slain

the thirst of all is quenched by the vilest of cesspools

Have black lives ever really mattered?

only in the futures market of the enslaved

angels yes, but among us there are no better devils

much history is home sweet home for the depraved

Testing … testing

We are tested many times everyday. 24/7/365 (366 in certain years).

Likely not in the manner of Job, Abraham or Donald Trump’s many wives but every test is indeed a challenge.

It arrives early: Do we rise from bed or succumb to the beckoning siren of more supine time?

If I say chose the latter and later detailed to my wife and later my boss that I simply selected the more spiritual option of the moment and didn’t make it to work, would that be honest but doubling down on malformed decisions? Politically incorrect in a proletariat/bourgeoisie paradigm or blasted stupid in lieu of having 20 years remaining on the mortgage?

Plus that later I ascended to a celestial establishment and rubbed elbows with various heavenly beings, partook of religious libations, heard angels crooning — quite the holistic religious experience — and then — my, my — it was 5:00 p.m.

Consider my options: dragging myself from horizontal slumbering, getting semi-presentable utilizing the never fail no smell-no foul clothing test, contributing to global warming by plying along the roadway for seemingly forever in our 10-year-old mini-van, cutting off a white-haired, older lady in order to nab the last parking spot (receiving a gnarled middle finger in response), plopping myself down at my desk and attaching the ball and chain for yet another uninspired eight hours.

This versus brushing up against the divine?

It is often said God works in mysterious ways. Who am I to argue?

— inspired by a poetry writing class prompt about tests

Interpretation

Side One: infiltrating the mindset, of the evangelical/Tea Party political movement

While waiting out faithfully for Jesus to return
we’re conveniently ignoring his being foreign born
because we know dark and dirty ain’t going set us free
the preachers have promised us that could never be

Now our Lord doesn’t believe in government taxes
but some swear of his emailing and sending faxes
we know he righteously did heal and then tout
“I’m a miracle worker, all because I lack doubt”

That crap about his rolling with harlots and whores
it’s a campaign of hate by poseurs and bores
from those Beezlebub purveyors of the 666 code
come Judgment Day they’ll burn and explode

Crowds will swarm the bonfire, making it most large
reveling in the special appearance by Madame DeFarge
but for heaven’s sake ’cause there’s no good reason
Lord, please make it a-f-t-e-r the football season

Flip Side: A stream of consciousness

The Fox folks at their extra best idiot savantin’
while the radio fatboy spouts pure Oxycontin
they’re all parading around like virgin whores
who long ago played the quit card in keeping score

Yes, the drawing and quartering of commonsense
a perimeter of ignorance led by the willfully dense
declining sharpening tools for their dullest of minds
continuing to belly up to the buffet where haters dine

As war is now a status quo component of modern life
with huckster marketers waving the profitable flag of strife
as bodies appear double-stacked in the old tombstone corral
more enemies are created to boost our slipsliding morale

Now some are saying corporations are just like people
and they can’t wait for the Sunday sermon prequel
causing the hounds of whoredom to eagerly bay anew
as our religious speakeasies divest of the Golden Rule

The dirty little secret not taught in our purest of schools
challenging conventional wisdom – no that wouldn’t do
it’s ‘apostate heretics’ fighting to change the ties that binded
but was it Gailleo or the Church oh so woefully blinded?

Late Brother MLK brimming full of sacrifice and desire
sparking the kindling, setting off the holiest of fires
yes the powerful must eventually stand solitary nude
despite the rush to clothe them by the apologetic lewd

yessiree, of thee I do sing of the need for a USA spring

Johnny Spillane

Got to have at least one olde Irish ditty in the repertoire.

Johnny Spillane be my name
I’m neither of fortune or fame
but with my able hardy back
I climbed out of the potato sack
and made a family and a living

Life was bleak in County Cork
me the twelfth arrival of the stork
my family had neither land
nor any opportunity at hand
so I shipped off to Ameri-cay

Having no papers or money
oh, that land of milk and honey
she was mighty, mighty harsh
it being ‘no dogs and no Irish’
so I did what I had to do

Getting off that bottom rung
was no sweet song sung
the dollars and coins were sweated
as I obeyed and marionetted
biding my time all the while

Then I caught me a lucky break
an offer from a Mallow rake
to supply the needed muscle
enforcing his wayward hustle
and my pockets began to fill

Now, I sit behind a desk
others working at my behest
a society respected man
who started with nary a plan
blessed, if there be a God

My past, I keep it well hidden
when I was doing others’ bidding
for no one would ever believe
what I did so I could achieve
and drag myself out of the gutter

Now I’m acting like the Cromwell Brits
it gives my elderly parents fits
scorning the powerless once like me
though they’re not truly a threat as I see
all they want is their dreams to be

Book Review: “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” by Carol Anderson

Carol Anderson’s book “White Rage The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” considers the myopia, if not chosen ignorance, of most United States citizens who can readily recite such historical events as the murder of Martin Luther King and, to a lesser degree, that of Medgar Evers, as well as nine worshippers being murdered in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, the 1965 conflagration in Watts as well as in Detroit during 1967 but fail to see the daily root causes-and-resulting effects vis-a-vis minority life in this country.

The failure of a broad percentage of our populace to connect-any-of-these-dots along the racial spectrum to both historical and more current events sits alongside the majority’s primary reaction to such being applause for the application of greater oppressive law and order, and worse. Perpetuation thrives.

Anderson details what is conveniently overlooked: the unacknowledged daily violence in all its forms conducted by courts, legislatures and all other elements of government against minorities throughout United States history.

A critical point: ‘Black rage’ has long been applied pejoratively so why minimal, if at all, usage of ‘white rage’ alongside no negative connotation?

Throughout her book, she utilizes past and present day critical truths in making her points, including:

The historical undermining of democracy via systemic and institutional voting, employment and housing restrictions
Black Codes with the sole purpose of eliminating self-sufficiency
Voter suppression to this day with limited or no early voting, the requirement of ID cards while DMV posts which produce such identification are shuttered
In 1860, 80% of America’s GNP was tied to slavery
Southern whites tried to stop the Great Migration
Not including suffrage was a fatal omission in Reconstruction
Any terms of surrender would have been accepted by the South, thus a missed opportunity
Chief Justice Roger Taney declaring in the Dred Scott case that “black people have no rights which the white man is bound to respect” (this from an individual holding the most esteemed legal position in the nation)
Spectacle lynchings included promotional trains bringing spectators to the events
The Republican Southern strategy of Nixon and Reagan designed to denigrate welfare recipients (always referencing people of color) so as to keep and promote racial tensions

Anderson provides so much missing and important history which won’t ever be found in high school textbooks.

Anderson also has a new book out titled “One Person, No Vote How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy”