image: An Iraqi man is treated for burns at a local hospital after insurgents attacked a civilian convoy near the western Iraqi town of Ramadi June 7, 2005. REUTERS/Ali Mashhadani
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support the troops and the Iraqi people
read `This is what John Kerry did today,’ the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s blog – `Bagdhad Burning’
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
witness every day
image and poem below the fold
A Vow
by Allen Ginsberg
I will haunt these States
with beard bald head
eyes staring out plane window
hair hanging out in Greyhound bus midnight
leaning over taxicab seat to admonish
an angry cursing driver
hand lifted to calm
his outraged vehicle
that I pass with the Green Light of common law.
Common sense, Common law, common tenderness
and common tranquility
our means in America to control the money munching
war machine, bright lit industry
everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids
of newsprint, Redwood and Ponderosa patriarchs
silent in Meditation murdered & regurgitated as smoke,
sawdust, screaming ceilings of Soap Opera,
thick dead Lifes, slick Advertisements
for Gubernatorial big guns
burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.
Dynamite in forests,
boughs fly slow motion
thunder down ravine,
Helicopters roar over National Park, Mekong swamp,
Dynamite fire blasts thru Model Villages,
Violence screams at Police, Mayors get mad over radio,
Drop the Bomb on Niggers!
drop Fire on the gook China
Frankenstein Dragon
waving its tail over Bayonne’s domed Aluminium oil reservoir!
I’ll haunt these states all year
gazing bleakly out train windows, blue airfield
red TV network on evening plains,
decoding radar Provincial editorial paper message,
deciphering Iron Pipe laborer’s curses as
clanging hammers they raise steamshovel claws
over Puerto Rican agony lawyers screams in slums.
– – – –
A comment from the person who submitted this poem:
back to – not because it’s my favourite war poem, but because it
expresses better than anything else this frustrated sense of rage I
feel for the arrogance of America. I love it because it brings out so
beautifully the contradiction, the hypocrisy at the heart of the
American way – the freedom it arrogates to itself and then, drunk on
its power, denies to others; the deliberate placidity of a world where
an angry taxi driver is the most dangerous thing you have to worry
about while the rest of the world burns to ashes to feed your
industries.
Ghost of Ginsberg, it’s time.
Aseem Kaul
which generated this reply:
and I will fight to the death for that right. But, after all is said,
he (or she) is still stupid.
Nick Hamilton
which generated this reply, itself a thoughtful poem (with pie among other issues in my mind):
I am not in agreement with Mr. Hamilton
I do not think that Aseem Kaul is stupid
Nor do I think that Mr. Hamilton is stupid
I think that 41 million people without health insurance
in the worlds richest country is stupid,
I think that the promotion of Libya from the relegation zone
of evil countries after it signed an oil agreement
with Europe and America is stupid
I think that the destruction of Central America through
Dictatorships that were never a threat to Europe or America
was and is stupid
I think that the dismissal of anybody who criticises
America as anti American is stupid
I remember when we laughed at the Soviets
when they called their dissidents anti Soviet
I think that only criticising America and thinking
that Europe is always good is stupid
I think that George Bush and Henry Kissinger
are anti American
I think that Allen Ginsberg is a true American
I think that stupid is an ugly word
But I think that maybe I am the one who is stupid
you can read more of the discussion here (scroll)
