[Newspoetry] Re: Colin-O-Scopy

[Donald L Emerick]

As I can't MIME pictures, but as I wrote
this little note to my friendsoncritic Ben,
back at the start of February, commenting
on a remark of Powell's taken as the NYT
quote of the day (02-02-02), I thought it
might go with the picture that I have
in my head of Colin Powell speaking
in Decatur, three or so years ago
and endorsing for the pampered
audience, among other things, spankings
and forms to physical abuse of children.

As a hapless, hopeless victim
of such repeated cruelty,
of excessive "punishment"
(for it was in truth nothing
but the uncontrolled rage
of an alleged adult,
far stronger and far more confident
of his ability to hurt me substantially,
as an incidental object of disaffections),
I carry physical and mental scars.

A general would know nothing
about the wrongness of using force
as a way of getting what you want,
of having it your way and no other.
A general would only be good
at calculating opposing forces,
to find how much is enough
to destroy totally anyone
who might oppose you
for any reason at all.

In the movie StarShip Trooper,
we are presented with Heinlein's
hawkish view, that a good society
grants the vote only to soldiers.
I happen to be of the opposite
opinion, that a good society
would strip any person who
has learned to follow orders
of all political rights such as
the right to vote or to serve as
an elected or appointed official.
Anyone who follows orders
has shown that he (she)
has lacked the courage
to think courageously
like a citizen who rules,
but only out of necessity.

Now, a few short weeks later,
you should know that another
"black leader" came to Decatur.
He did not pamper the pompous
and over-privileged plurality
who think they are, by divine right,
the ruling majority for all morality.
I mean Jesse Jackson
came to Decatur town.
He came to show sympathy
and support for victims of
excessive vindictiveness
that thinks itself self-justified
in its pretense at vindication.
Jesse came to help some students
who had, unfortunately, carried on
a purely personal fight
(inexcusable itself,
these squabbles of pecking orders)
into a public setting,
which violence between blacks
prompted the mostly white crowd
to act irresponsibly and
to seem to be a frenzied mob.
So, rather than saying that
the many that were the mob
should have acted responsibly
and intervened against the boys,
to restore tranquility and civility,
our Decatur School Board
vindicated the mob's frenzy.
As good as a man as Jackson --
better (perhaps) than Powell,
to my way of thinking,
because one does what he does
out of a sense of love of others
that does not rest on a sense
of inner hatred of self, for who
that self may once have been --
was despised and rejected
by mob's powers that be.

(I overheard, too, darker forces,
white noise undertones
of the lynch-mob
hanging on the central edge
of a civilization that condones
violence as its primary way of life,
that is always already to hang,
always already willing to stone
anyone opposing "the right"
in their self-righteousness,
speaking around Decatur,
at barbers, diners and shops.)

I'd love someone to write a play,
a poem, a story, anything
on these contrasting scenes
of how Decatur is too much like us.

In short, my "newspoem" below
resists the idea that terrorism
is to blame for its own sad state
of existence, when it is as easy
to see that it is the absence of
any true moral responsibility
of those self-satisfying suburbans
who cause economic shortages
and shortages for all others
because of their greedy ways.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick

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"Terrorism really flourishes
in areas of poverty,
despair and hopelessness,
where people see no future."
COLIN L. POWELL, secretary of state.

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AS IF SUBURBS WERE NO SOURCES OF TERROR