CONFESSION ZERO

Once upon a time in America, a father gave a gift to his young boy. The child had hoped for a gun, instead it was a globe. “What is it, Daddy?” the boy asked? “It is the world, my son.” The boy sat on the floor spinning it `round and `round, watching as the oceans and land blurred into one. Soon the boy grew tired of spinning his new gift and asked, “Where is America, Daddy?” “There is America.” he did say. “What about Vietnam, Daddy?” “There will be plenty of time for learning, now go outside and play.” Time began to pass by quickly and with each passing year the boy would ask his father, “Where is Vietnam, Daddy?” and each time the father would say, “There will be plenty of time for learning. Now go outside and play.” Then time lunged forth so fast that the boy was a soldier heading for a war in Iraq. He stood now before his own young son, “This is what my Daddy gave me when I had just turned five.” “What is it?” “It is the world, my son.” “Where is America, Daddy?...

I compel you to love your country. To draw her into your arms ever so tenderly, to embrace her softly, dearly to your heart, to huddle close, near together her masses and sense her least sustained yearning. I compel you to love your country. A nation that lifted the breast of humanity caressing it tenderly toward equality’s rapture with gentle fingers of selfless, searing desire exploring over her ever toward paradise. I compel you to love your country. Freedom lovers damp in stiff-limbed writhing stumbling kisses upon red-barreled bravery, softly probing her robust and supple liberty, heed now her cries of woeful sovereignty! I compel you to love your country. Between her Trail of Tears and Mount Misery she still waits upon the coupled plains of affection ready for our design and mastery of this worlds love panting heavy expectation upon her shape. I compel you to love your country. Perched upon the shore of Rolles Creek she waits with Mount Pleasant in reach of her ...

With the minuscule world’s squalling stillness erupting solidly through the callous smoothness is it possible to downright believe the upright deceit, to misunderstand its audacious correctness? This finite universe lashes kindly against its void. Words are meaningless in the silent pertinence, the smiling and dismal days writhe still of wishes and turn back goodness upon their deviant constancy… How could words have lost their meaning that day? Why is nothing to be believed after the plane’s shadows? Have they so ruthlessly shattered principles that even language holds no meaning? Is it possible to conceive serenity lying in the fatal position? Is it possible to erect peace with words bent in war? Fighting for freedom while freedom itself falls away is sign that the shrieking birds toppled more than just the towers… Copyright © 2006 markrprime / thepoetryman 

For this flight is there enough food to nourish the dark and horrid famine? Plenty water to ease across the razor’s barren edge? Sufficient breath to coax this; a collusion deep within? Is there ample shelter from this; a deceitful tomb? (Truth. Is there none?) Who needs the truth? Lies are more valuable, made to easily pass through the takeoff's devising eyes. It’s the clever packing of truth and lies into a single carry-on that is the trick. (Lies?) Yes! It won’t turn the plane’s shadow into flame. (Flame?) Yes! It won’t cut the neck of slipshod freedom. (Freedom?) Yes! It won’t bring massive terror to the shores. (Terror? Freedom? Flame?) Yes! Lies! Lies; packed together as one, more easily sound round, edging near enough to truth. Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

She eyes the richness of faces longing for home, rucksacks and rifles tossed over slumped shoulder, traces of flags and banners and wood; fruitless. This flight out will be the last toward survival. She will not be going, she still looks for her children, she is citizen of the killing zone. Her husband’s fate went uncounted from the outset of steel-humanity’s broil. Saddam broken, alive, murderer waits, tamed in a ruler's land by would-be king of another. She smiles upon them as they exit breathing sighs of relief danced in mourning. What will become of the roses and the waters? The ancient ruins, the culture shattered? Might it request another day of its soul? Will this become death’s chart and dark-boiled lure? (A few of sands ruddy cheeked questions birdsong aloft of the broken firmament.) She smiles and waves goodbye to friend and foe, liberator and murderer, husband and wife, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, love and hate. A distinct, sudden, and brief click sensed unde...

Teach us something, if you don’t we’ll not know that this war never ends, that we will be breathing the eternal war of our forbearers. We’ll not know that we exist in the bomb-tripped retaliation of hostilities not taught in history books or churches, not discussed at town hall meetings or in our homes. A history that will be neighbor to our children’s duration, whose marrow will be dust settling upon their bitter air of which their children breathe and envelop its despair. How much more will it take for us to tell the truth , to teach the truth, to sing the truth, to change our “truth”? We are a rigid-plated contraption, our engine’s dry of a useful knowledge, we are bred as a warring machine, the blades of our rhetoric based on lies, bullets in our history stamped “friendly fire”, arias of aggression harmonized to a drunken two-step. Our feet at birth tap out its refrain, our hands move in trigger-pull simulation, minds filled with jingoisms and fast food and television. And our...

I dreamed I had colossal hands. I mean the size of hope! Someone asked, “Are those your hands?” and I said, “No. I wish they were, my friend… If I had hands that big I would have held Iraq before the war and kept her children in. I’d have put her in my hands and ran so far away! Away from empire! Away from conquerors and maddened men! And while I ran I’d have held her close near my ear and I’d have learned to speak her language, and heard her people dear.” Then someone asks, “What of Saddam and his sons ?” And I say, “I’d Leave on a ranch, I'd have dropped them off In Crawford, Texas! I hear brush is cleared there more than not!” Then my hands started to shake and I heard the people in them begin to slake, `Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! الحريه الحريه الحريه الحريه A small boy then stood upon my wrist and declared to me, `You can put us down, my friend, we are finally free…’ يمكنك ان تضع'نحن الان علي صديقي. نحن احرار I awoke suddenly! I could still hear the echoes of `freedom’...