Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Boobie Pledge of Subservience

(from: "Fernando Po, U.S.A." - America's post-linguistic retreat to Plato's Cave)

I offer my obedience
I pledge undying love
To any symbol formed to serve
The needs of those above
Who rightly feel that I deserve
The fist inside the glove

I stand and mumble publicly
With fear upon my brow
Lest some mistake my silence for
An insufficient vow
Let all who see and hear me know
How easily I cow

Authority need never fear
I swear I know my place
I pledge to take the gauntlet slapped
Across my beaten face
The Seizure Class knows I'll accept
Chastisement with good grace

About such things as freedom
I Have not the slightest clue
By birth and class it's come to THEM
I know that it's THEIR due
To hand me down instructions as
To just what I must do

And so I promise faithfully
To play my scripted part
Each day I'll chant Two Minutes' Hate
To finish, from the start
Until I love BIG BROTHER from
The bottom of my heart

I swear to do as I am told
I will not think too deep
I'll huddle in conformity
Just like the other sheep
To take my whipping like a slave
And utter not a peep

I pledge to stand up every day
Within my schoolroom class
And mouth my mantras on demand
Without backtalk or sass
Until the program makes me a
Compliant, docile ass

I swear upon my loyalty
To stuff my head with fat
And place my nation "under" "GAWD!"
Supinely prone and flat
With me then going "down" "beneath"
And "lower" "under" that

I swear to go to Sunday School
Upon the public dime
Each morning in my homeroom class
I'll mouth my dreary rhyme
And if I leave out words
THEY can Indict me for my crime

I pledge and vow and promise that
I'll swear from dusk to dawn
And never fail to chant or moan;
To never blink or yawn
And with each cry of "GAWD IZ GRATE!"
My own soul I will pawn

The Papal bulls and fatwas tell
Me all I need to know
Which isn't much because I see
I've nowhere left to go
I swear to never set my sails
Against the winds that blow

The Popes, Imams, and Rabbis tell
Me what and where and how
The master's overseer tells
Me which row I must plow;
To toady, genuflect, and crawl;
To grovel, scrape and bow

I'll train to "hurry up and wait"
And do the Bulgar drills
To stand at rapt attention dressed
In military frills
Just point me and I'll drop the bomb
No matter whom it kills

I pledge and promise on my word
To do the things I ought
To work for lower wages
So my labor comes to naught
I swear to vote Republicrat
To prove I can be bought

The Party keeps us all at war
Which makes us quake with fear
And so we give up all those rights
Our ancestors held dear
Which saves our enemies the need
To take them from us here

But I won't think of bygone days
The past I'll just rewrite
I'll call my history "old news"
To make it pat and trite
Which sleight of mind will help me keep
Its lessons out of sight

With this capitulation I
Agree to sell my pride
Before I even own it or
It grows too big to slide
Inside the shabby, craven cave
In which I must reside


Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005

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Friday, April 04, 2008

Endless Precipitous Hasty Procrastination

I’ve heard the angry bumble bee buzz by
My ear, to leave me thinking with a sigh
How just a few more inches to one side
And I’d have lost an eye, my brain, or died.

Someone whom I had never met or hurt
Could well have left me lying in the dirt.
From somewhere in the tree line taking aim,
He barely missed collecting me as claim

To all that I had known and loved and been
As well as what in future I might pen:
A tale in rhyme of what Misfortune’s due
When dupes and tools of “leaders” misconstrue

Their duty to “watch over” and “instruct”
Those independent foreigners they’ve fucked.
But even pooches screwed can turn and bite;
Their “handlers” sick with hydrophobic spite,

From such “non-hostile” causes often die
In consequence of labor for a lie.
They kill us; we kill them; and so it goes;
For nothing but to hide the crime that shows.

The perpetrators of this folly know
That they’ve once chance alone: and that’s, “Go slow!”
In time, all memory they hope will fade
And then, once more, they’ll call a heart a spade:

More life to dig more graves that they require
To fill the minutes of their manic hour.
Upon the stage they strut and fret and then
Refuse to exit where and why and when

We tell them: “You’re not wanted. Time to leave.
You’ve stalled for long enough while victims grieve;
Our mothers, sons, and daughters -- fathers, too --
Want nothing more than nothing more from you.”

Yet still the ones who spread again war’s waste
Claim we should not act swiftly, or in “haste,”
To stop the drowning years and years astern
Of their Titanic passing: “Never Learn!”

Our rulers call “precipitous” all acts
Of sanity proceeding from the facts
That they deny or simply cover up:
A thin disguise capsizing in a cup.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008

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Wednesday, April 02, 2008

A Vicious Circle Villanelle

Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.
The perpetrators of the crime command:
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

Their troubled foreheads, wrinkles deeply crease
With consequences that they never planned.
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

No logic brings intelligent release.
The unforced errors earn no reprimand.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The mounting costs leave few sheep fit to fleece.
From where will come the profit contraband?
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

Yet still, no answer to the sophist’s grease;
Those ancient fallacies the flames have fanned.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The lies add up in thousands dead apiece.
The questions begged, both trivial and bland:
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease?
More dying, please? We can’t afford the peace?


Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008

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