CONFESSION ZERO (The Weaver's Song)

I’m...

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 years; 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; where the climb is steep and there’s no ladder to lift them to love’s agreement; …and the laughter; it’s like, the laughter’s like thunder; 4,600, manmade 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, knee slapping boxes marching 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 goddamned sun; 4,731…





iCasualties

It was after noon, because we’d just had lunch. She asked me to walk her home, but I had to get back to work. She was a dear friend of mine. Other than that, all I can tell you is that it was bright that day, not a cloud in the sky. I can’t tell you more than that because that’s all I know.

She could’ve told you the weight of his fist on her mouth or how his anger leapt out and the impression it made on her soul, but I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know. She could’ve told you that after a week or so her broken skin would creep back over the abrasions and only the gaping holes in the walls would attest to his maddened decorations and she could’ve told you how her heart would become a hungry child when his rage fed upon her fear. She could’ve told you, in her own way, that she knew, that she pleaded, that she prayed that his crimson rage and fist-fallen fury would grow weary and just walk away. Or how when he wasn’t even there that his hands still scratched at her breasts and thighs, but I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know the how or the why. She could’ve told you that his dreadful, pitching heaviness did meet such stiff and frightened jaws that her grief staggered out of the horror that licked at her swollen flesh and that it was her pain that ran out into rush-hour traffic.

I can’t tell you what moved in her heart, what truth marched across her mind with the gate of a dying animal. I can’t tell you why arid sorrow moved through her pores like mescaline fragmenting her visual veins or how her feet moved without her will as if Psilocybin unveiled death in her domestic film- eyes wide-shut to the horror of his fist. I can’t tell you anymore than this, not without punching a wall. I can’t, because, after all, I’m a man whose storm might rush forth like fearsome light leaving fist-split skin; a heart bursting into even tinier shards beneath the already horrified pieces. I could tell you everything I know, everything I’ve studied and seen, and I still couldn’t tell you when his rage became her shadow, a ghost rising with the pain at the foot of her bed. Only she could tell you why she waited on the moon to reveal the fog, waited on the mist to uncover the cause, relief to pay a visit and bring affection, a shoulder to cry on or to just kindly return the beautiful pieces of herself.

The only thing I’m sure I know, besides the sun and what we ate, is that when she told me she was leaving him that if I had paid more attention, I might have seen the light escaping her wounded skin. If I had paid more attention, I might have known that the cruelty of sorrow’s hemorrhage had run too low for me to witness and that if I had just paid more attention I might have known that the road back for her was too great a distance to travel alone...






Suicide.Org

A boy I knew when I was a kid was so skinny we called him “handrail”.

His tattered clothes fell around him like shadows at a funeral and no one ever saw him in the cafeteria, except on Fridays with his flop-over and his raw potato in an oily paper sack
where he’d savor every little bite as if the executioner waited with his ax.

I want to write an end of hunger love song where all the high note’s are composed of delicious meats to coat the hungry dreams and low notes are made of half eaten happy-meals, but not emptiness, and with endless verses carved from full tummies of sleep!

I have heard many other songs in yesterday’s mist shattering truth down like dried bones and clinched fist; a silent breaking, minds masked in private pain; man’s own howling and craving and loss; his bane. So please take note of the end of hunger love song and elevate it’s joy to an immeasurable tallness, lift starvation beyond the tapering gaze, our bones lay gently down, near enough to cuddle with.

In the end of hunger love song, hope will gather around to witness the pluck of death from the distended tummy. This song’ll be for the world, not just our eyeless span, but for all of man, a song made from the meat of escape, unlike starvation’s scrape with its dry stone from corner to corner, a pipe organ to dangle its howling from. It’ll be the most beautiful tongue for famine’s desire. Every creature will sing along, because it’s just easier to sing when the stomach’s not drowning out the choir! The song’ll be called, “End of Hunger Love Song” where the climb will recite all the world’s famished names and the chorus will hand out new clothes and shoes. There’ll be bridges of joy and a most nourished refrain and instead of tears and frowns, the coda will be covered with a tenderly falling rain.

Yes! The most beautiful sea green rain ever seen!

Every word’ll be nourishment, every note’ll be satisfaction guaranteed! It won’t be metal, or the blues, and it won’t be country, because this song won’t recognize manmade boundaries, it’ll fill all the pantries with food and water, it’ll traverse the world’s homeless streets and fill all living boxes with warm treats and everyone will know it by heart and sing it inside, it’ll be the number one song until time takes a ride.

We’ll recite the end of hunger love song and sing it out loud and watch it prevail, so the future won’t have need for any hungry boys named “handrail”.







ECO Localizer (the lens of local action)

Mankind must call upon bravery and conquer his ache for control. He is obliged to take the hair from the beards of all of his prophets and weave them as one within the wrathful garment of his god. He must take each flag on earth and knit them together… and with the final flame of his ego set his housecoat ablaze, for as true as the telling winds have engraved all living things, mankind’s story must be rewritten upon his failing storm.

In the garden of man’s war, upon his throne of mirrors, he has held sword and scepter against his brother and sister and miserably woven the hour of darkness upon his sun. Atop the breathing plains he has taken life from the living and exalted the dead. Within the temples of his wretchedness he has generously bowed to spineless rulers and smiled upon stolen pleasure whilst his mouth fell prey to the thievery of hunger. His frightened gaze into chasms of manifest doom shrouded in the cloth of his waking has curved his seeing sky and bent the tongue of his earth back into the barren clay. Beneath this emptiness coils a two legged serpent rising to greet the moon; this wretched and drawn pace hasn’t the will to breathe a new day, the strength to touch the lips in rain or fill the breast with milk, yet it holds the power to end all suffering.