CONFESSION ZERO

Gabon’s Vast Rain Forests at Risk If you looked hard enough you could see their wings on the rain, coordinated with the wet leaves. Within a single year they will have flown such a great distance. Everywhere, but upright and green. They shall speak but briefly as they’re lifted away, making such awful noise underneath the ground. A Letter From Ali Shafeya’s Sister O! No one upon this earth stays long- to heft such sorrow on the chest, death, is wrong. To spray the body like some liquid wall with the red and brown and blood of men and without so much as cause is sin. Dispatches From The Front Lines Of Economic Crisis Around our giant orb there will be no bread to share, nor child spared in crimson misery here, as all is dust and spent and only those few left might say, What a wonderful thing was man. Robert Gibbs vs Talk Radio Boom! Boom! Boom! Bang! Bang! Bang and a rat-a-tat-tat, and a thrum, thump, and squeak! Wa...

Paper apologizes over Obama cartoon The shooting of slack-uttered reason, the silent image of bullet-hole bigotry for what the truth is, and its color and love and their view of racism, and adoration of animal, and to cry and to breathe and to die, they do not know, they do not care to know, but we do… and we’re ready for the task, hoping for its whirling beast to drown. Nato 'can't allow Afghan failure' The futile bay of hounds in the sand and the valley, in the mountains and the sky, do we wait for its fading so we might fall off contented? Nearly 5 million Americans drawing jobless benefits It is huge inside of this, emptiness, penniless, hapless marching alongside the people in their tattered forms. Tall and razor-edged, rainbows of wretchedness. In this dark flood it weeps to scream and work again. Killer of Va. Officer Is Executed Bellow and wail in the wood, cry and shudder in the air, the hideous eye of an eye, looks back at us. Racial Profiling Latinos...

This Week: In Memoriam To the vast red glow that strikes the solemn stones we are destined to turn our consideration. They seem more like warnings than flesh and bone. Crash plane 'dropped in seconds' Behind the story, like the panicked thump of the heart, comes the expected statistics- numbers, velocity, cause. This comes as no comfort to those who've yet to fall. Japan economy in biggest dive since 1974 The rumbling shorelines are coupled by the seas and the waters are joined in their long and joyous swill. We are slow to see ourselves in these realities. In a Likely Obama Pick, Some Find Hope for a Shift in Drug Policy “Drug”, like “war”, has such a piteous and putrid sound. Perhaps we should not fasten the two together like we do, “war on drugs”, “drug war”, too often they’re waged against an erroneous foe. Guantanamo Cases' Fate Must Be Determined As the truth’s of the air are everyone’s so are the fates awaiting their paths to follow. But the lie’s of...

Obama: Stimulus bill far from perfect But no one wants a flawless crown dangling over the heads of state, reflecting off the Aquia sandstone- our leaders are blind enough as it is. Biden vows break with Bush era foreign policy The shoreline cinders of hell fiercely glow along the path of the departed band of thieves who look back hoping for a revival of their deeds. (O! If only they’d the eyes to observe such agony!) Baby boy savaged to death by family dogs ‘The baby is dead! He is dead!’ She screeched to heaven which faintly glowed in her mind. There the dogs shadowed winged beasts over the corpse strewn streets of war. Australian bushfires death toll hits 35 Ravaging, pitching, unyielding, the fires crouched upon the land like a hungry lion in the brush, where numbers mean nothing. Dominant Species? We see ourselves here in the great gleam, not adrift, but navigating our dazzling craft. In truth, we’re simply plotting our course. © 2008 mrp/thepoe...

The wormhole , paradise, hauls its wave above the injured in my spirit. His soldiers, with their blistering certainty marching forward with their cleansed bodies, upright breasts, asses and protruding masculinities, look down and see before them a naked and lifeless child on the floor. God, they imagined, placed the infant there as sign, glint of light shining down on the divine churches golden base. A few cradled the dead child while others built a pyre at the foot of their Christ. They laid the eager body upon its cradle and declared , “We are yours!” and lit the brittle timber. Falling to their knees and repeating their mantra they watched their sacrifice melt. First the soft hair of the child curled up with the flames , then sparked by the heat it ruptured into ash. Then came the tender flesh covering the ears which melted like wax, dripping down into the flame it sizzled and popped and drooped to its loss. Then the skin on the palms of the hands and the heels of the ...

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

Odd is it that I should think of clothing while looking at such horrific pictures. What ragged soul bore the tattered shirt I wear? What insistent thrashing from the fuming globe did the arms in these ragged sleeves undergo? Of their troubles... might I know? A second hand story, a second hand building, second hand smoke curling allegiance to breath, second hand food, second hand clothing. ...Death. Every piece of clothing I own has a hole in it somewhere, a tear, a stubborn thread, shrunken look, sedated color, a missing button, a snag, a raging crinkle, or furled collar, not unlike my heart over the genocide of a people. © 2008 mrp/thepoetryman 1. U.N. halts Gaza aid deliveries, blames Israel 2. The Green Prophet 3. U.N. Suspends Gaza Aid Operations 4. The Daily Banter