This is Abebe Bikila. He is from Ethiopia. He was overlooked and did everything wrong.

His was not an auspicious beginning. His father was a shepherd, and it was expected Abebe would be a shepherd too.

But, he decided there would be more food for him and his family if he joined the Regimental Bodyguards. He did so, but did not progress past the rank of private.

He was good enough, but nothing to write home about.

The Bodyguards held maneuvers. A Finnish fellow, Mjr. Onni Niskanen, was brought in to choose some men to train athletically. He noticed Abebe was pretty athletic and put him in his group.

Abebe did okay, but he was nothing to write home about.

It was 1960 and in ancient countries during those modern times, the training for athletes for the Olympics was not as organized as it is today.

The Rome Olympics were held in 1960 and at the last minute one of Ethiopia’s Olympian runners broke his ankle. Abebe was commandeered as the plane was about to leave for Rome. Abebe would replace the injured runner. But, no one expected much, for Abebe was nothing to write home about.

The athletic shoe company, Adidas, one of the sponsors at the 1960 Rome Olympics, did not have Abebe’s correct shoe size. They gave him an ill-fitting pair of shoes to run in.

A couple hours before the Olympics marathon, Abebe just couldn’t manage the poor-fitting shoes, and so decided to run barefoot instead, just as he trained back home in Ethiopia. All other runners would wear shoes, but no one objected to Abebe’s decision, cause Abebe wasn’t all that much to write home about.

However, his coach, the old Finn, Mjr. Onni Niskanen, advised Abebe the runner to beat would be the fastest one, a Mr. Rhadi Ben Abdesselam from Morocco, who would be wearing bib Number 26.

For reasons no one could explain later, the fastest runner Mr. Rhadi Ben Abdesselam from Morocco never picked up his black bib Number 26, and instead was wearing Number 185.

As the race began, the barefooted Abebe ran really hard, passing runner after runner, looking, looking to find and pass Number 26.

At 12 miles into the marathon, Abebe and one other runner, Number 185, had put a large gap between themselves out front with the other runners behind. Abebe was running his heart out, sure that the fastest runner, Number 26 must still be far ahead of him. Abebe put every last cell into running as he tried with everything in him, to catch up to the phantom Number 26.

Number 185 and Abebe ran and ran and ran, neck and neck up until the last 500 meters, when Abebe found a last reserve of power in himself and ran even faster, sprinting across the finish line ahead of the fastest runner, who unbeknownst to him had been running beside him all the time.

Abebe was the first African to win an Olympic gold medal.

As the oldest tellers in our family say to end stories, “So, here’s to us who have been given such a good story to tell,”

… and especially, here’s to Abebe.

i thank You God for most this amazing day
By e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

_______________

CODA: a picture of Abebe and his big beautiful feet. Abebe lived through various coups and wars in Ethiopia, and ran in additional Olympics contests and other big profile marathons and won many of them. He was given a white VW Beetle as a reward by Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia. This car was quite a stand out, as cars were rare among the people of Ethiopia.

During a civil unrest, Abebe had to swerve his VW to avoid a group of onrushing student protesters. He suffered in an instant from spinal cord injury, paraplegia. Yet Abebe vowed he would try to compete in paraplegics’ archery contests. But Abebe, the barefoot boy who ran his heart out, suffered a sudden stroke and died… this, only 13 years after his famous Olympics gold. This sweet man had had only 41 years on earth. But remains a giant in ever so many ways. A lot, a great deal, a huge amount of body and soul to write home about.

If you peruse this list of policy initiatives provided by The White House in relation to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last night (transcript is here; C-SPAN video is here), you may notice that two topics concern science and technology, two topics concern education and no topics concern the arts.

[NB: The final topic on that list, about worldwide compassion, stands out to me because I recently read about Compassion, which is a faith-based initiative that will use word of mouth blog power in Uganda next month. (If you’re interested in how non-profits are trying to leverage blogs and blogging and bloggers’ enthusiasm, you might want to follow Beth Kanter’s blog and read about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media; she is one of the top experts in this area.) But I digress.]

So, while it’s nice that President Bush leaves us with his thoughts on science-related issues and makes sure to mention education (given No Child Left Behind’s continued existence, it’s unlikely we could forget Bush’s role there), some groups are demanding (or trying to demand) that the presidential candidates pay attention to their specific issues: Science Debate 2008, Ed in ‘08 and Arts Vote 2008 are three examples. Read the rest of this entry »

Out of the bosom of the Air.
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

the morning paper
harbinger of good and ill
- - I step over it

- Dave McCroskey

That little gem of haiku has pretty much summed up my feeling of general news overload. When I’m sitting at the local coffeehouse/bakery and the average Joe or Jane talks to me about the news or some news they have heard, I’m all attentiveness personified. But when I see it on the television or read it in newspapers, I go into a fugue state. I feel like I’ve lost myself and my individuality. I’ve become a grain of sand just being carried away by la máquina de las noticias (”the news machine” for those of you not fluent in Spanish; thank you Rosetta Stone).

But I don’t enter a fugue state when I read blogs for news. Maybe because it seems like the coffeehouse/bakery. Regular folks (for the most part) chiming in with their thought instead of la máquina de las noticias blasting it at me. Local newspapers did have that personal, next door neighbor feel. But these days, they are weighted with Associated Press, Reuters, etc (what happened to the names of the writers; they are starting to disappear). Guess this is future journalism.

In being a journeyman futurist, I often laud the advances as THE WAY AND ONLY WAY and applaud them heartily. There is always room for improvement in many aspects of our lives. But has our current corporate news state improved the news or has it just improved the money to be made off of news at the expense of news?

UPDATE: Tomorrow’s The Hill: Obama pressured on gay ‘cure’ preacher and The Swamp: ‘No crusade’ to cure gays, says Obama’s gospel star.

UPDATE: Hear Pam Spaulding of PHB and Mike Signorile on Sirius Out Q discussing the issue.

Does Barack Obama want to portray himself as either P.C. or consistent? He appears to have got himself into a situation where he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

Pam’s House Blend: Why is Obama touring with ‘ex-gay’ homophobe Donnie McClurkin?

AMERICAblog: Obama campaign asked to distance itself from anti-gay singer invited to perform at Obama event, no reply yet

AMERICAblog: Obama says won’t pull anti-gay bigot from big campaign event

Pam’s House Blend: Obama won’t back down from SC concert with homobigot ex-gay Donnie McClurkin

AMERICAblog: Reader mail on Obama’s embrace of anti-gay bigot McClurkin. It ain’t pretty.

AMERICAblog: Obama needs to explain his hypocrisy on asking for Justice Dept official to be fired

Shakesville: Obama and the Ex-Gay

Pam’s House Blend: Donnie McClurkin isn’t the only homophobe on the bill with Obama

This issue is being covered by the Mainstream Media too:

LA Times Blog: Obama’s link to gospel singer sparks controversy

Rev. Irene Monroe at Bilerico: Obama the vote-whore with ‘ex-gay’ at his side

Oh well, Giuliani, Romney and Kucinich have been having a rough day too!

* someone with a burden or obstacle is said to have ‘an albatross around their neck’

Like the Burmese presently, like other innocent groups risking their lives for true liberty just to be allowed to live in free and decent ways without governmental oppression… in 1956 the Hungarian young, middle-aged and elderly, took to the streets to rail against the Soviets, fighting for freedom for Hungary.

When the marchers were met in the streets by Russian soldiers in iron tanks, the Hungarians fought with rocks, with wine bottles filled with benzene lighter fluid and stuffed with doilies made by the old women. When the people ran out of their munitions, they fought the tanks with their hands.

President Bush issued a proclamation honoring the 1956 Hungarian Revolution… “The story of Hungarian democracy represents the triumph of liberty over tyranny. In the fall of 1956, the Hungarian people demanded change, and tens of thousands of students, workers, and other citizens bravely marched through the streets to call for freedom. Though Soviet tanks brutally crushed the Hungarian uprising, the thirst for freedom lived on, and in 1989 Hungary became the first communist nation in Europe to make the transition to democracy.”

THE TELEVISION WARRIOR

My foster father is Magyarok, a Hungarian born Hungarian. He came to ‘Amereeka’ with a sewing machine under his arm. And now, he is in the living room yelling at the television again. He thinks the people inside the TV can hear him.
Hollering is a form of Hungarian aerobics;
it’s kept Dad strong all these years.
He immigrated to the USA before World War II.
Afterwards, the small ancestral farm still worked by
his mother and brothers and sisters in Hungary,
was confiscated by Germans, then Soviets.
The men dragged onto freight rollers,
the women, their children held like empty rifles,
were marched to Russian labor camps,
the rest forced from Hungary to Germany.
No children survived. Dad found
his people in the camps, brought the tiny band
one by one and oh so filled with bad night dreams,
to ‘Amereeka’.

My much older cousin had fallen in love with a man
she’d met in the refugee camps.
They’d married in secret there and she was now pregnant.
Now, in ‘Amereeka’, the old people watched over her round belly
as though a ghost Bread of Life
was baking there. A child, a child, they all
sighed, and said hope makes people cry harder than hurt.

So, we all lived together in our little house with Dad going toe to toe every night with the evening news. He’d yell at the TV in his broken English, “You e-diots, you fools!” and heave back in his chair like a soldier thrown by a blast. Dad was the intimate enemy of Vyacheslav Molotov who was a protégé of Stalin; the fascist Franco; Nikita Khrushchev, any dictator who said he wasn’t.

In 1956, so distraught was he seeing the first news reels of Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest, and the young and elderly Hungarians trying to fight the iron tanks with rocks and bare hands, that Dad waved his arms like windmills and threw himself down on the living room rug, daring the tanks to come run over him, “Come get me, you cowards, Come! Get! me!!”

In the ‘60s it was missiles in Cuba and these last many years he has had a yell-fest with apartheid and ayatollahs. He warned Ortega, “Hah! Roll yourself in a tamale, let the comunistos eat you. May they all suffer indigestion.” To the lone student in Tiananmen Square, he waggled his finger, “Ya, ya, I told you so. Ve haf seen dis before. So run him over already!
Get it over with! Dere are no living heroes.” Dad’s eyes watered and watered — he said — from sitting too close to the TV screen.

Last year when Dad was 80 years old, he went hoarse from indicting the televised Ceausescu.
“He vants to bulldozing 7,000 farm villages?
You vant to tear people away from their trees??
You craze man! You want to stack them like chickens?? Read the rest of this entry »

You can probably put all of the people who actually make a living being poets these days in a broom closet with room left over for the brooms, and improbably one of those poets is Frank Messina.

I’ve known Frank for years and have watched the upward arc of his career with a combination of awe and bemusement and, I suppose, a little envy.

Frank is the progenitor of “Spoken Motion,” a band and concept that melds lyrical content with jazz and experimental rock music. He has received the prestigious Woolrich Prize and Playboy magazine called him “one of the most widely recognized young poets living in America today.”

But now Frank has outdone himself in going where not even Walt Whitman or Ezra Pound trod:

He has been designated the official poet of the New York Mets, which probably inevitably kismetically landed him on the front page of today’s New York Times.

While Frank is one talented dude, the reason for his star turn in the Times is pretty simple: After occupying first place since early May, his beloved Mets are tanking and have fallen a game behind my beloved Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East with only two games to play in the regular season.

The article includes Frank’s latest poem, “Victory’s Door:”

Do you know what it’s like

To be chased by the Ghost of Failure

While staring through Victory’s door?

Of course you do, you’re a Mets fan.

Sigh. More here on Frank.

I saw ‘Persona’ with my aunt Terez who was wearing a hat with practically an entire pheasant sewn onto it. The Notre Dame students behind us kept saying, ‘I don’t get it, this is nuts, what’s this movie about?’ Terez who had just learned to speak some English kept saying ‘Shhhh, eets abowt drrreems. Go to sleep and you’ll understand it.’

What Bergman himself, the grand mind of another time and place, said: “Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

His crown was not like some directors, massive laden with tormentuous gems of a zillion gleams, but really, just a handful, a bracelet of films, most igneous… like ‘The Seventh Seal,’ a dream about the time of the Plague and the Crusades and Death being challenged by a Knight at the river to play an intermittent game of chess over a long period of time, a black and white film that near any frame, would be considered art for the walls of any museum of future-past. The film is drowned like a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia in slimy water with fresh flowers floating by… the symbols, related to spirit and death and life, are, well, rife with pagan and Christian leitmotifs. Yet Bergman said: “I hope I never get so old I get religious.” He was dreaming in his film, that’s for certain.

Sherman Alexie, the Seattle-Coeur d’Alene poet, author of ‘Indian Killer,’ and whose poetry has been made into two films, ‘The Business of Fancydancing,’ and ‘Smoke Signals,’ told me that the essence of screenplay is to write the best most spare poem you can so that the director can fill it.

Like cloisonné, I thought. Far earlier when Alexie was still a mote, Bergman said: “I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.”

What kind of artist poet was he? His films never got the pretty-gloss treatment, but rather always had something whipping its tail around underground… “Theater is the beginning and end and actually everything, while cinema belongs to the whoring and slaughterhouse trade.”

There, there it is. The thing great art cannot be without. Some version of primal. Bergman was an oddity in that he could describe in just a few words, the essence of night dreams, that too, does not come from the alpha and omega, but from the shadow. Dreams come from what cannot be seen in daylight at high noon, only aslant.

Reading the various critics of Bergman, those who hung his lights over the moon, and those who took ten books to say, ‘He is good,’ and those few, who seemed to have their own preservative ‘issues,’ and seemed to have preferred times gone by more, or times not yet arrived… still, Bergman would perhaps have a question for us… who dreams for us collectively now? Who are the great deep dreamers of our culture now?

On Mother’s Day, this libretto excerpt is offered to those who were lucky enough to have had what I call, “a beautiful, imperfectly-perfect mother,” but one who too early passed from this world… especially hard when she has been the ground note for her sons and daughters. Some of us did not have a mother we can remember without fear, but that doesn’t keep us from recognizing a special bond between many mothers and their children wherever we see it… and blessing that it came to pass for them.

This is just to place a hand on the shoulders of those who might miss their mothers, only for a moment to say, even though your mom is gone, even though we don’t know one another face-to-face, many of us who are living mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers, and just plain good souls who scan the world with prayer every day) … we are thinking of you …

WHEN A GOOD MOTHER SAILS FROM THIS WORLD
When I say, “My mother has died”,
I mean my “most beloved”.
Leave me to myself now,
for I am a ship who’s
lost her riggings;
suddenly
come unmoored.

… my mother has died;
She has earned her resting now,
waiting only, and proudly so,
for her sails
to be taken down.

I, the daughter,
mend my mother’s sails;
I seek her
worn and broken
threads of light,
reweaving her dazzling linen…

And though there be broken threads
not able to be rewoven,
I will gently pull the edges together
and stitch one side to the other…
and if not able to be mended,
then I will patch with parts
from my most earnest life
over the places where my mother’s life
was worn through,
. . . or never was.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite literary websites is Cosmoetica. It has something like 50,000 hits per day I believe, so it is fair to say that I am not the only one who thinks highly of Dan and Jessica Schneider. A little while ago, they e-mailed me saying that they were asked to do some work for a great website called Monsters and Critics (you’ll find a link to this website in the right sidebar of my blog, under “Literary Links”), which has approximately 150,000 visitors today if I am not mistaken. Of course I have congratulated the couple with this privately, but let me also do it publicly: it is a great opportunity for them, and… they deserve it. Well done, congrats.

Monsters and Critics might also publish some reviews written by me in the near future. Not reviews of novels, but of political and historical books. Ten days after a review will be published at C&M, I will publish the review here and at my personal blog.

Anyway, the above as an aside, the purpose of this post is to share the following poem, written by Dan Schneider:

ANOTHER LIFE

An electric wire holds life, like this dawn,
high over the gutter, of the infinite
city, where Jacob Schwarz sees his only Keds,
dangling above him. He cannot get them down,

though he shakes like the dark wing of an unmade
bird, under his bosom, for a wind to blow
him to freedom. He learns, like others, the way

they multiply, and rot, on utility
wires, and that Zebby O’Toole runs the show
on Harmon Street. In a few days they will be

worthless, for the weather, and the sun-blanched white
Jacob mouths vague locutions. His curbside seat
ends any thoughts of what loss is. For his Keds
his head moves 80° in the starsight.

Copyright Dan Schneider

I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH

I met Nikki Giovanni when our respective book tours crossed paths many years ago. She is one of the most accessible, generous, and fierce warrior women on the planet, definitely written into my Book of the Blessed.

Below is her chant-poem she spoke this morning at the convocation, the first meeting of the student body, faculty and administration since the massacre yesterday. (See and hear her high oratory at http://www.cnn.com/ under heading “Cheers, ‘Let’s go Hokies chants memorialâ€?.)

Prior to her speaking, an Imam spoke, a Buddhist, a Christian minister, and a Jewish woman Rabbi spoke eloquently accompanied by a soulful woman Hebrew reader, reading the couplets of the poem from Ecclesiastes, “For Everything There is a Season…â€?

And then after all others had spoken, including the President of Virginia Tech, the Governor of Virginia, and The President of the United States, George Bush… then Nikki took the stage…

Her chant-poem from the powerful broadcasting towers of her heart and mind, spoke of real and far-reaching thoughts….. and she and her words received the long, longer and longest standing ovation of the day… Why? I think many would say because she reached authentically into the souls of those present, with thoughts gallactically beyond the usual ceremonial words that seem nowadays, so rote and impersonal they could fit any solemn occasion.

Her poet-words were not only specific to the soul of her community, they were specific to the world soul. The headline of my article here could as easily have been: “Poet’s Words Far Outshine Those From the Leader of the Free World.â€?

Nikki Giovanni’s Chant-Poem

We Are Virginia Tech
We are sad today
and we will be sad for quite a while
… we are Not moving on
We are embracing our mourning
We are Virginia Tech

We are strong enough
to stand tall tearlessly
We are brave enough
to bend to cry
And sad enough
to know we must laugh again
We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it
But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS
Neither do the invisible children walking the night away
to avoid being captured by a rogue army
Neither does the baby elephant
watching his community be devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night
in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands
being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized
NO one deserves a tragedy
We … are Virginia Tech

The Hokie Nation embraces our own
and reaches out with open hearts and hands
to those who offer their hearts and minds
We are strong
and brave
and innocent
and unafraid
We are better than we think, and
not quite what we want to be
We are alive
to the imagination and the possibilities

We will continue to invent the future
through our blood and tears
Through all this sadness,
We are The Hokies!

We will …prevail!
We will prevail
We will prevail
We ARE… Virginia Tech.

(Transcribed from rough audio by cpe: any errors are mine and not Dr. Giovanni’s. Line breaks, capitalization, and punctuation therein are only speculative.)

And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:

Should we outsource the printing of U.S. hundred dollar bills to North Korea? Heck, why not. They already make almost as many as our own Treasury, the quality of their product is excellent, it would bring them into the world economy in a big way, and think of the printing cost savings for American taxpayers!

Making Friends With North Korea

If we want a first rate job done
When it comes to C-note printing
Give the job to North Korea
On this work there’ll be no stinting.

They’re already in production
With presses running overtime
In the realm of counterfeiting
Here’s a country in its prime.

Yes, this idea is a new one
And may leave some in confusion
‘Bout a currency transaction
With its odd two-nation fusion.

But in truth the goal is simple
Turn relations far more sunny
Share the one thing we’ve in common
A shared love for Old Sam’s money.

To North Korea we’ve long said
Your phony bills we’re gonna purge
Why not now try a softer line
A smile, a hug, a moola merge.

Copyright 2007 Michael Silverstein

And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:

The Frat Boy’s Legacy

A country…
Whose polity is fractured
With divides he turned to chasms;
One the world now views with horror
Waiting for its next dumb spasms.

A country…
Hooked on public private spending
Foolish short-lived mindless benders;
Turning all to debtor addicts
Prey to whims of foreign lenders.

A country…
Where common sense once trumphed
Clearing all the paths we trod;
Now a place where sense gets sidelined
By bluff jingo, one man’s God.

A country…
Where once all parties recognized
The same good creed, democracy;
Replaced by a new ‘rithmatic
“There’s one decider, and that’s me.”

A country…
That will look in future eras
At how frat boy played its fears;
At his reckless run of failures
With disgust and anguished tears.

Copyright 2007 Michael Silverstein

Dan Schneider, of whom Joe publishes a review every now and then, agreed to let me publish one of his poems every couple of weeks. Today:

YOU ARE ALL DESIRE

My needs, they fall away from me. (Dull flesh-
can it convince itself?) They are: oxygen-
to flame each breath; sources of food and water-
to quell the instinctual ravening
brought by you; sources of clothing and shelter-
to protect my body from the world’s duress.
My needs, they fall away from me. Not you,
my love, for you are verging on somethingness,
like the full beats of my growing heart, which falls
likewise itself, in infinite crashes
into conflagrations which are only all
that keeps my sonnetry in this small purview

which falls from me to you. Should you inquire:
You are not a need. You are all desire.

Copyright 2007 by Dan Schneider

Every now and then we like to pay some attention to literature here at The Moderate Voice. Today, I would like to publish a sonnet written by Dan Schneider:

Pascal [in a box] rolled the dice one day,
then passed them to Fermat, who decided
not to play. He then palmed the pair of cubes
and started to say…. but decided no
way would be better. Newton, however,
shook with excitement, even as he shook
the dice, and rolled them half-way down the felt,
where Einstein played nothing in his brief smirk
(to Heisenberg surely some sort of scheme)
to knock von Neumann out of the saddle,
and into the game. But, damn! Then Tipler
proved them wrong, and showed Pascal had been right
to pass the dice, because Archimedes’ game
was fixed to the last breath of recorded time.

Copyright by Dan Schneider

And now it’s time for another gem from TMV’s favorite poet, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:

By Michael Silverstein

Hundreds of thousands of Americans now get discount heating oil from Venezuela to help them through the winter because our own government’s heating subsidies are falling short. What’s next? Food shipments from Iran? Coal aid from North Korea?

George & Hugo (The Poem)

In truth I’ve got a few concerns
‘Bout Hugo C’s behavior;
The guy seems overburdened with
A need to play the savior;
But to be fair you gotta give
The man a bit of credit;
He aimed to make Sam look the fool,
That was his goal, he met it.

It’s shameful poor Americans
Get aid from Venezuela;
We hadda take some nasty turns
To end up with this failya;
‘Cause few things are more basic
Than to keep your people warm;
No government, compassionate,
Would wander from this norm.

In general, George Bush, the world
A poor fit vis-à-vis;
Indeed, embarrassment and worse
His legacy will be;
It won’t improve in days to come,
There’s more bad times to mourn;
In bungler’s rut we’re firmly stuck,
Till Bush and crew are gone.

©2007 Michael Silverstein

Dan Schneider, who owns one of the biggest and most important literary websites on the entire Internet, Cosmoetica, published a poem he wrote, in the comment section of my post Futile yesterday.

It is a bit silly in my opinion to publish great literature in the comment sections while it can also be published on the frontpage, so here you go:

There are years to go before the last perfect day
on Earth. Then the sun will begin to swell, and life
will cease, shorelines will retreat as oceans boil,
and all will glow a barren red and airless gray.

By then I will be shadow, long dead. Now, I live
amid joys and sorrows, with the love of a girl
in a backseat, behind her mommy and daddy,
as they pilgrim to a motel in New Hampshire,

blowing kisses out her window to teenage strays,
drunk in a sportscar, honking and cursing at her
family squareback’s pace, as they are full on passing,
as if they are ready to face eternal sleep,

as they leave her family behind on the highway,
that is endless, and endless, and everything.

Another poetic gem from TMV’s favorite poet, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:

The Federal Budget Poem

We have a foreign policy that makes us lots of enemies
Which mandates buying battle gear that lets us master land and seas
To pay for all these war machines requires lots of borrowings
And that, in turn, requires we ignore painful tomorrowings.

The elderly keep crying for more help to pay their big med bills
(Who would have figured codgers had so many costly aches and ills?)
We can’t ignore them wholly cause they show up at the voting polls
So what the heck, we borrow more, to keep them happy with their doles.

There’s nasty costs of hurricanes, that lead to spending deepening
There’s infrastructure maintenance, a can’t ignore upkeepening
The folks who give out campaign cash, expect a payback myriad
And budgeteers who don’t play ball ain’t reelected, period.

The things we use increasingly come from another hemisphere
The money fer’ners make on trade comes back to us as loans most dear
So servicing our debt costs more, expenses we can’t seem to thwart
A household budget done this way, you end up in a bankrupt’s court.

The fed’ral budget we now see, can’t just be viewed financially
In truth it mirrors who we are, and who we think we ought to be
And what is clear, in red ink writ, are can’t escape conclusions dire
Our power dreams, our bloated schemes, stoke history’s delusions pyre.

©2007 Michael Silverstein