Divided by the Cost (slam)

Anytime I say the word “laughter” I want you to laugh out loud, okay? “Laughter”…

4,731 U.S. and Coalition forces killed in Iraq divided by the cost of the occupation to date, equals 200 hundred and 78 million, 500 and 99 thousand, 800 and 82 dollars per death! Add in the number of Iraqi civilian casualties and the number of Iraqi Police killed and the individual net worth is around 1,284 dollars! By the time we leave here tonight, the net worth of every single human being killed in the Occupation of Iraq will be worth less than… 0 (zero)-

1, 2, 3, yellow pine, aroma aloft, the stench of a war crime I’d watched. 5, 6, 7, these three boxes suffered the horror of a million gutless tongues, the marching numbers are a mausoleum of shattered year. 11, 12, 13, they track existence down and crush it where it stands and they wait and wait and rapidly they spring- 16, opening fire, winding the clock of flesh with invariable death, and the laughter? Well it calls out for another set, so politicians can sleep amid the screech of striding tombs!

69, so the oil baron can sleep in his moist sky!
92, so no good son-of-a-bitches can cackle doom in one breath and liberty in the next!
103, if only they could see the true numbers glee dripping down my skin
with the tongue of panic, over the teeth of terror’s shriek!
209, bulletproof vests are for the living.
400, armored hum-Vs are for the red cheeked fortunate and breathing
placing their bets on Wall Street as they wait and wait!
1,038, the poor get poorer and the rich polish the war machine,
the IED, the RPG, Boeing and Lockheed slinging death like seed.
And the laughter? Oh! The madness in unbridled glee!
2,043, so some arrogant son-of-a-bitch can roll his H3
up to his plasticized life and plop his jangling ass down and smile!
2,865, march on by as our twisted faces turn away and peace is murdered!
3,056, shot between the goddamned lips, lips shrieking peace against the laughing numbers!
Wait, wait...
4,508
waiting for the rapid pounce of bombs to stuff them under.
The climb is steep and there’s no ladder to lift them to love’s agreement.
And the laughter? The laughter’s like thunder!
4,600, man-made and flinging their final flesh!
4,608, slain and this just amuses the golden cockeyed Caesars.
The wealthy cowards won’t cease death’s dying glee!
4,703,
The knee-slapping boxes march by on their way to the gallows-
4,720, so some low-life degenerate can snuggle up against his tyranny!
4,724
And the laughter? O! The laughter’s forevermore!
The nauseating laughter under the damned sun!
4,731…

iCasualties

sdrawkcaB nruT (Turn Backwards)

I have been witness to the four pillars and see no reason to carry death there. Doesn’t the world know that life moves for more than just the sons of Abraham? O! I see the stunned throats floating by in the dusk to their stiff-limbed sleep as metal rains down over the Jordan’s western prophet, children dying there. I am here, waiting, breathing in the dusk under the shadow of the patriarch, asking, can we again build the shrine inside the soul and leave our flesh to time? © 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

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Waiting for It

Why do they stay there, between war and peace? Sky’s tapestry doles out guns, bombs and rocks while flesh and bone swim away from the ache yet live on as the food for the murder of peace. Why do we hide from the truth as if it were an ogre while death makes a home inside their living and war dispatches a raven to their door, smirking with the teeth of empire? Why do we wait, stooped for another wink? The sky’s drapery has tossed down ample clues, peace is breathing in harmony with war. (Road-maps are useless to blind leaders.) Why do they hold there, hunched in the gloom? Hatred’s bird cackling with bereavement needs end. Are we not rightly dishonored when we fill its trough with blood? © 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

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Laughter's Grip

They asked me to wait. To wait for God to come laughing, wait on His voice to destroy the golden temples of man, hold my tongue until His powerful breath was upon me, and from His loving casualties I’d at last know the Savior. They asked me to wait. To wait for God to come laughing, wait for His followers to die away their persuasive babble and the murder of Islam to breach the walls of the earth as the many damned souls drowned under holy laughter. “O! The Lord God is looming! On his way with God’s wrath! We are to take up swords and send evil howling back to die their well deserved and slow death! Their faces popped and spattered these words as they fell back, caught in His fiery presence, twisting their tongues into drivel and thrashing their minds in the glory of an Eden unlike any other. And then the snake planted his venom through the laughter of their gyrating madness. Tears emptied their pockets, spirits came crashing , and the anointed rapture of their making grew tire...

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CONFESSION ZERO

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