[Newspoetry] Mythgology: The Science of Emotional Feelings

[DL Emerick]

*Extract* http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081707M.shtml
US to Give Israel Record Military Aid; Aron Heller; The Associated Press;
Thursday 16 August 2007:  The United States offered Israel an unprecedented
$30 billion of military aid over . ensuring the state's military edge over
its neighbors long into the future. The package was meant in part to offset
U.S. plans to offer Saudi Arabia advanced weapons and air systems that would
greatly improve th[at] Arab country's air force. Israel has said it has no
opposition to the Saudi aid. *End-Extract*

We aid our co-belligerent allies,
momentarily put private disputes aside,
and thus get our aid to arms.

Our enemies have faces and names like Iran:
nationality figs cover up common humanity,
politics embraces blood-lettings,
as old doctors of the past did --
bleeding a patient when ill.

Our enemies are faceless names, as well,
spooks of our minds, spoofs of reason --
Al-Qaeda metamorphs in spawn "of Mesopotamia".
Conservative believe vests in totems --
Individuality fears signs of collective identity,
when it not conservative's self-owned belief ID,
fear of the other is deeply into death,
Thanatos morphs his brother Hypnos --
while we sleep, death steals upon us --
could brothers more resemble one another?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatos)

To rival Death (the work of science)
and Sleep (the work of religion)
there is another possibility,
of Eros and Psyche, linked in love,
fruiting as (re-)birth and (re-)growth:
practical regeneration recycles us:
the work is thus that of Art, from Labor,
the work of Life unites Love-Heart-Sex-Soul,
and Pleasure is the child we most desire --
we must live as children,
in love with stages of work,
as it is all a child's play.

Cain would creep up on and kill Abel,
rather than name and face him --
or live with him and learn from him --
foundational myth in traditional terms,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel)
struggle against nature,
noble hunter-warriors against cheap-as-dirt farmers,
of life and death and of life and death again,
resurrection and eternal return.

Yet Cain dares complain:
"If all know me to be guilty,
All shall seek my life, to end it!"
God is ever Allah the all-merciful?
"So, Cain, I place my mark on thee;
It shall shield you from revenge,
For no man may kill another,
Not even in false claims to justice,
As justice never sanctions murder,
Not even as man's revenge on others."

Names on faces risk familiarity;
All relations are kinship matters --
Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters --
to name just a few social classes,
all brothers and sisters, horizon to horizon,
wall to wall are husbands and wives --
generic family of general metaphor.

Mythology is the terrain of terror,
when mythology fails, terror rises,
as Fear that None shall Avenge me,
when I am Dead and Gone (Henry VI) --
Terrorism justifies itself as revenge,
In the name of God, or Allah, or Zeus:
wrongful name-taking in wrongful cause --
and War-on-Terror justifies itself
as preventive blood-letting,
bleeding a patient to death,
to stop the blood-letting --
they have no belief in God-Allah-Zeus
who commit such mass murders,
as they ever call their wars.

Mythology would have taught them,
if anything could ever teach man,
this vast Science of Emotions,
of good and bad feelings,
of pleasure and nihilism.