Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Note:
Apologies in advance for this rangy poem-- well, not so much a "poem" but a rat-a-tat storm of riffs and rim shots, which took shape as I sipped a screwdriver and read a printout of comments about an article I found on AlterNet. So yes, it's apparently a true story. The "riffs" just came, pages and pages of them, "cathartic" and all that.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Skull ‘n Bones boy.
Visions of Apocalypse in 2003.
He even called the French President.
“Jacques, don’t worry, it’s God’s will!”
“Gog and Magog! It’s in the Bible!”
"Erase our enemies for a New Age!"

Jacques was baffled.
“I’ll think about it, George.”
Damn French surrender monkeys.
Wuss-ass Germans, Russians too.

Maybe George was drinking.
Heard it from some late nite preacher.
Ezekiel in the valley of dem dry bones.
The Bible is good; battle songs, wisdom.
Could use an editor though.
Maybe a translator.

You need a drink in you to parse it.
Now the poem writes itself
in parody, satire,
the big weapons.

Don’t fear the prophets, boys.
Ezekiel went out for a toke, that’s all.
Saw a dust devil or something.
Maybe The Lord in a whirlwind.

Too quiet in the desert.
You start to hear things.
Like fossils screaming at you.
Got your finger on the button.
Mountain on a mole hill.
Just smells like God.

Tap tap, hello? George, you there?
Can you mobilize the military against Gog?
I’d like that. Can you do it for me?
And quickly now, it’s getting hot.

Free will.
Determinism.
Free will.
Determinism.
Six lines of
destiny.

George was like Caligula
talking up war against Neptune.
Only back then it was sea shells,
not weapons of mass extinction.
Okay, so fear the prophets.
Shoot the messengers.

He was a real gone cat,
and we was a real gone race.
Made weapons from the tiniest particles.
Real big ones too, oh Lordy, picture it!
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Gog, Magog, Gog, Magog. Gog!
The economy runs on them.
Horrible creatures.

“He was drunk.
“He was always drunk.”
“It was the ultimate failure of journalists.”
“Couldn’t smell the endless liters of booze
sloshing through the Decider’s mind.”
Glassy eyed.

Apocalypse is a 24-year old tee shirt.
Some heavy metal hair band.
Some drive-thru disaster.
Old news, man.

God, these loonies.
Bounce bounce bounce.
Strange time signature.
Magog was a son of Japheth.
Hardly the stuff of Apocalypse.
So it’s the Twelfth Century again.
Go out and fight for my God!
Maybe stop at Dairy Queen.

God, these loonies.
All they do is write poetry.
They’re trying to get the bomb.
God help us if they get the bomb.
Everyone got the bomb.
Too late.

Don’t stand near shit we don’t like.
The bomber-planes, remember?
You can be the pilot next time.
Tough break.

Cogs in the overlord’s wheels!
Twisted, fisted, rolled out, sold out.
The usual tuna surprise meatloaf.
God help us if they get the bomb.
Let me at those bastards.
The poem writes itself.

Man we were this close!
Mineral wealth and oil.
Lions, tigers and bears.
Oh my!

They lead us.
Why don’t we lead?
Religion will beat itself up.
Strata whisper in the desert.
Gentle murmur of God.
Trouble ahead.

Apocalypse is not End Times.
Nothing us mortals could do
even if it were about that.
So, might as well be.

It’s too complex.
There can be no peace.
We shall complex ourselves
into a pretzel of tribulation.
Instrument of the Lord.
Hear me blow!

Here is the poem I was writing when the "poem" above spun off...


"The Last Sixty Years"

Sixty years ago Genesis inverted,
picked at the seams of creation.
We split the firmament,
cracked our conversation.
A few were here back in ’49.
It was a thousand years ago.

In '49 you could count on things.
Lumber was bigger, nothing was fake.
We won a final battle after the other one.
We had the bomb and no stones to end it.
Prophets had their fire and pestilence.
We came in a consciousness crush.

Minuteman silos only watch.
The Age of Classics is done, into echoes.
Into oceans where everything is borrowed.
Laid up strata, sedimentary echo, metamorphic.
Layered words, compressed, uplifted, faulted.
So many new eyes, countless iteration.
All those eyes peering through others.
Strata come alive in fat color!

Now everyone has the bomb.
Silos drift in their hard rock dunes.
Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones
The Lord in a whirlwind afternoon.
Somewhere on a frigid Russian plain
we were funneled into Apocalypse.
We were at war and the damn thing worked.
So many eyes, Genesis inverted.

(Jeez, aren't I just Mr. Sunshine this weekend!)

oh well, it´s sunday! gracias for the pretzel!!

Hey, this was terriffic!

Mousey one! Great to see ya around! Been missin' ya. Yeah, this rant's a burner. Not bad for something that almost wrote itself in a couple hours... And a true story, apparently, about that phone call to Chirac! Surreal stuff. Almost comical. Quite disturbing, though. Thanks.

Arcadia-- yeah, dig that "pretzel of tribulation" line. Got a few zingers in. Thanks.

I'm enjoying being back. I get to missing my studio eight friends...and I do mean friends.

even z French president is oh fume, what is z matter with z Boosh, so shallow, so superficial.

Are Americans the most stupid people on earth?
I mean we are the refuse of foreighn shores.
The wretched outcasts and nut jobs
I am not as patriotic as I used to be
I can't forget we elected him twice.

Sorry for the ramble
you know when the going gets tough
the tough read their bibles.

Lovely poem Nazz
thank you
for a dose of reality

Thanks Jack, and r.r., for the comeback.

There's a darkly comic angle to all of this. Like something you might have seen on SNL back in the Dana Carvey era. But to me, the implications here go a little deeper and are quite unnerving. Seems we have generations of religious fire-and-brimstoners coming up through our churches, mosques, and maybe even synagogues-- the End Timers. I was raised as one of them as a youngster, in one of the first suburban "megachurches." I remember my pastor talking about Gog, Magog, the Great Tribulation, and all kinds of harrowing, extreme stuff. It's easy to dismiss it all as harmless raving, but if our corporate/political leaders allow themselves to become saturated in that mania, what then? If the End Times are at hand, what incentive is there to make peace? To take care of the planet? To plan for the future in general? Freaks me out. Maybe it's just me.

Nazz wrote:

I was raised as one of them as a youngster, in one of the first suburban "megachurches." I remember my pastor talking about Gog, Magog, the Great Tribulation, and all kinds of harrowing, extreme stuff. It's easy to dismiss it all as harmless raving, but if our corporate/political leaders allow themselves...

I think about how the Junkers deluded themselves about being able to control *itler.

But there is a surreal kind of Vonnegut dark humor to it. Corporations are persons, they have the right to the pursuit of profits, shouldn't they also have the right to freedom of religion.

There is a case coming before the supreme court about whether a corporation has the right to free speach. That will get the ball rolling

please pardon the psychodelic ramble

sincerely
puckered up in texas

reminds of the old truckers expression I was so scared you could not have driven a ten penny nail up my rectum with a hammer.

I probably should delete that mindless ramble above but I wont

RE: the off topic remark about The Junkers, not the airplane but the Prussian Aristocracy

Bread and Democracy in Germany. by Alexander Gerschenkron

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (May, 1945), pp. 123-124
(review consists of 2 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2113199

I am not really puckered up, I guess I could be but I think is is best to stay cool on my stool. I don't loose any sleep over it. I guess I am too caught up in my own melodrama. Forty Seven killed in Iraq, today? or was it yesterday.

I guess it sounds nihilistic, when the Buddhists say everything is perfect.

All I know is that your poem was useful for me.

Helps me stay cool
don't do no good for me to keep a death grip on the wheel.

you mentioned going back forty years,
I read something about Bretton Woods yesterday

is that what you are referring to?

I think it goes back farther than that.
but you know that.

Well, it's all relative. The End Timers go back thousands of years to cherry pick their favorite prophets and build their ominous-sounding doctrines. In terms of large numbers of people actually becoming convinced in their minds that The End really is at hand, in a religious doctrine sort of way, the events of the last 60-80 years seem pivotal, even if they are part of a longer "chain reaction"-- some of the most "pivotal" events being Israel's re-emergence as a state (in the "Holy Land"), the nuke buildup, horrific world wars, the population and tech explosions, earthquakes, famine, among other phenomena. All of that stuff and more...

"The Last Sixty Years"

Sixty years ago Genesis inverted,
picked at the seams of creation.

I was referring to the poem within a poem

I hate to reply to your posts

I know I will wind up blathering

This one so eloquent

You have said everything I could say and more
and done it with a brilliant style

It has to be a "poetry emergency" thanks Zlatko
for me to reply
I am just shooting the breeze with you now
the poetry is there
above these rambles of mine
this is just chit chat

The End Timers, RE: Israel.
It takes an effort for me to rise above Christian Zionists and their fear mongoring.

I am trying to remember what I once knew about The Great Awakening, we have such bizzare history as a nation, our third great awakening does give me the millies.


Meanwhile we are all flowing towards Vela.
This whole got dam solar system, the galaxy,
drifting through space
just on our way
It could all end tomorrow for all I know.

I meant the fourth awakening I guess

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite ... kkey=29373

I tend to view that so-called “consciousness crush” I mentioned as a sort of major “awakening” in itself—just the sheer explosion of numbers in the last century in particular.

As for Fogel—not too familiar with his considerable work. He seems a fine scholar of economic theory, but those “Great Awakenings,” hmmm. Interesting. Especially the Fourth one. To be fair though, he wrote “The Fourth Great Awakening” before the nightmare of BU$HCO unfolded.

He summarized it as such:
“First Great Awakening”—1730- 90 was a “revival” period of “spiritual rebirth,” followed by the American Revolution and ethic of “equality of opportunity.” Except for the slaves, right? I know, I get it—the “founding fathers” put down some groundbreaking, noble-sounding principles on paper, at least-- which paved the way so to speak for the freedoms we do have. And yes, we still have freedoms in the US that many others don't; I'm not naive about that.

The “Second Great Awakening” (1800- 79) led to reform campaigns “intended to make America fit for the Second Coming of Christ,” corresponding with the rise of “millennialism.” Hmm... It also corresponded in time to the beginning of more significant Jewish migration to Palestine if I remember correctly, as well as the rise of “dispensationalist” and “premillennialist” doctrines extended from millennialism (more detailed emergence of “End Times” doctrines). Fogel claims a religious ethic of “benevolence” powered all of this. “Millennialism” and its “End Times” formulations seem the odd elements here that don’t quite fit.

The “Third Great Awakening” (1900- 70) has to do with “socialist” reform, attacks on big business corruption, civil rights, labor reforms, expansion of education, etc. etc.

The “Fourth Great Awakening” (1960- ?) is most enigmatic. Fogel cites its primary political effects as—“Attack on materialist corruption, rise of pro-life, pro-family, and media reform movements…” Hmmm. The last eight years of Corporocracy led by openly corrupt leaders (backed heavily by the "evangelicals" and spun by big time media) almost seem to debunk this grouping by themselves. Interesting to think about however.