[Newspoetry] Coming Soon to A Neighborhood Theatre of Operations Near You

[Donald L Emerick]

Anon the New York Times Headlines

President Is Emphasizing Wars at Home and Abroad
President Bush is finding himself suspended between fighting the war on terrorism and a war on recession and rising unemployment. 

Democrats Say Bush Aide Uses War for Political Gain
President Bush's chief adviser, Karl Rove, was assailed by Democrats for telling Republicans to focus on Mr. Bush's stewardship in the war on terror for partisan gain.

Rumsfeld's Moment 
By ROBERT WRIGHT 
Does the defense secretary see the larger contours of the war on terrorism, a war that goes well beyond the military campaigns that are the Pentagon's specialty? 


A barber's logic clips the movie
A critic clips films
That grow and growl like fuzz
Over some facing Osama
In the mirrors of reflection --
Thus showing us
A Greatest Show on Earth,
the Only Show in Town:
Self-enamored,
Narcissistic self-enemies,
Hating others as ourselves.

I clip for your viewing pleasures
Or pains
A seeing, forecasting,
Speculating, hypothesizing
Prognosticating, prophesying
Of what may be
Coming attractions
In local Theatres of Operations --
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Some, of course, think
A projection of an assault,
Advertised upon the airwaves,
Cast upon the silver screens
In black and white images,
In shadows of silver and gold,
Moving and dancing flickerisms,
Is a moral equivalent of a war itself,
In psychological terms.

Projectionist:
Producer,
Director,
Distributor of films,
Matchmaker and Dealbreaker.
Projectionists stand as God.

PsyOps projects itself
As setting the truth conditions
For any lies that it might want to tell;
Propaganistan campaigns work best,
When such diseases of the mind
Are to be spread,
Here and there,
Everywhere even,
By infecting the terms of discourse,
Breathing its odd meme-based agents,
As corrupted ideals in rotting ideas,
Whose wounds fester untreated,
So as to introduce AIDS to thinking,
Making reason unable to resist --
Inhibiting the immune defenses
That community should have.

In viewing surreal news serials
That stand as prologues do to sequels,
In viewing leading opinions,
One requires a defensive logic
Against invasions of reason,
Evasions of truth.

What do they want me to think?
A question to ask
Of what passes for thinking,
Of what sets the tasks for thinking,
Of what sets the mind to thinking
By setting it against itself,
Upsetting its reasons for being,
Clouding its terms of reason
Emotionally filming over facts,
Fictioning out all truth functions,
Prescribing provocatively
Succoring sucker conditions,
Converting self-fulfillment
Into a new ecstasy drug.

This dragging through the streets
Of the bodies of our beloveds,
Empathetically received,
Transfigured and transmuted,
As our beloved bodies
Broken for you,
Blood shed for you.
Blood shed on you
Breaks over your head,
Splashes down from your neck,
Fills the Guillotinian breadbasket below.
You are baptized in the names
Of fathers and sons and spirits
Whose names you do not hear
Whispered in the voices of winds
Whispered on the wings of prayers
Whispered into preyers on your mind,
Sibilant purveyors of truths unkind.

If I were at all in love
With this white and black world,
With these Ways of the World,
These ways of all Flesh,
These weighings of the weighty,
This pendulant fat of the Times,
This fact of the Times,
This fiat of the Times.
I might remember
Some difference of loving
In forms of couples
Come together,
possibly together,
being fucked and carnally consenting:
Are two being made into one willingly?

One plus one may be two -- or not.
One has to look at the other --
Before as well as after --
To see what is gained or lost,
To see how the operation
Succeeds when it does
Or fails when it does not,
For no mixing
Of black and white images
Makes Grey the color of the day,
Makes khaki mud our ground.

If I only had love enough
If I only had loved enough,
I'd live eternally --
Hegelian free spirit over world,
Der Mensch uber Allahs,
In the Mind of God, God is
Only God could mind Himself
Enough to love a mess of His
The messiness of messianic ages:
Medusa masseuses messages.

If only I love enough
do I love too much?
Charitous rape begins
At home, alone --
Simulating copulating --
Masturbating against lurid images
Of simians co-populating:
How does love count her ways?
She loves me (unh)
She loves me not (unh-unh),
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Imaginating it to be so,
The CheerLeaders of the Times
Taunt and tease us,
Trick us as only tricks to pricks,
Pricks to obscene tricky dicks
Unseen, unspoken, unheard,
Locked onto embracing images
On black and white ink-stained sheets,
Locking in on lacking condom sense.

So, I read the news today,
Oh boy,
Of good old boys,
And bad old boys,
And of girls, good and evil.
The stories are all true,
As told by whom to who,
A one-way relationship,
Endlessly repeated,
Reflecting images
In genetic halls of mirrors:
Father to son,
Mother to daughter,
Parent to child,
Sister to brother,
Sibling to sibling,
Brother to brother,
Vice versa vice
As advice or avarice.

How do you come
To the End of Infinity?
Say it does not exist,
Say it,
Mean it,
Lie if you must,
To tell the truth,
For Man has no greater love,
Than laying down his life --
Lying down,
Laying,
Relaying,
Laying out,
Replaying his life --
For another --
For his edification,
Amusing entertainment,
Torturous mortification
Retold in ratholes
By rat-holding Times,
Rat reading rat-writing,
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-tat:
Ratty tatty tattle tales rattle rails.

(Infinity dies, here,
Off-stage, as always,
Never on-screen,
Stopping by a snowy woods,
On a mid-summer night, evening,
Watching snow fuzz dark images,
An evening made most glorious
By wan sun of dawn to come.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/newspoetry/attachments/20020122/d360c619/attachment.html