I will begin this post with a passage from Coleridge’s poem Fears in Solitude
We have offended, Oh ! my countrymen !
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven !
The wretched plead against us ; multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren ! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,
Even so, my countrymen ! have we gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul ! Meanwhile, at home,
All individual dignity and power
Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
Associations and Societies,
A vain, speach-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth ;
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
Yet bartering freedom and the poor man’s life
For gold, as at a market ! The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o’er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade :
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
Oh ! blasphemous ! the Book of Life is made
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o’er the oaths we mean to break ;
For all must swear–all and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court ;
All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man and the young ;
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel ; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler’s charm ; and, bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentious sight !) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringéd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, `Where is it ?’
excerpt from Fears in Solitude by S.T. Coleridge (April 20th, 1798)
On the radio yesterday they were discussing the Language of Terror. An interesting topic; language is the tool U.S. politicians used to lead the country into war. It is with words they sold their case of war in the name of freedom, a.k.a violent export of most ignoble national product. Kids trained on video games, driving tanks and posting footage of their romps in iraq on youtube. Since the 11th day of the nineth month of 2001, the word terror has been repeteted ad nauseum by the president and White House Staff, and kept spinning by the media, while we have terrorized a country that may have been living beneath a tyrants rule, as we are, but the children could still go to the park. terrorized a country for its supposed ties with the terrorists who flew jet planes into. but who had nothing to do at all with the events of the 11th day of the ninth month of 2001. Terrorism has been bullied, burned into everybody’s consciousness; and within the same breaths, the names of Terrorist countries and individuals are dropped, so subliminally the mind making dinner digests the partially hydrogenated truths which emanate from the t.v. news and regurgitates them unknowingly in tomorrow’s conversation at the soccer game. All the virtue words, the vague charges, the glittering generalities, the appeals to fear. Many words have there been, in the past 5 years, taken from the shelf, dusted off, and dispatched to the cause du jour. "War on Terror" has been around for the last one hundred and twenty-five years; it was last used by Ronald Reagan. Fascist productions. Mussolini’s shrapnel wounds. 9/11, potent metaphor, cast in burning jet fuel, office furniture, and human flesh; finishing work, the crude detailing done by the strategists in Washington with oily white paper bags of half eaten sandwhiches– men and women who actually sit around and figure out how to manipulate public opinion; and then the metaphor receives its dark-glowing patina from the minds and mouths of the people. All their words are poison. They said on the radio Washington has added some new words to it’s language of terror: Islamist fascism. How dare they use our word for ThEM.
SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA by Amiri Baraka
(All thinking people
oppose terrorism
both domestic
& international…
But one should not
be used
To cover the other)
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn’t our American terrorists
It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn’t Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn’t
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say? Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn’t insane
Who/ Who / Who/
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrid
Comments on this entry are closed.