A Casein Palace, From the Milk of the Dead [Today's News Poem, June 7, 2010]

A Casein Palace, From the Milk of the Dead [Today's News Poem, June 7, 2010]

At home with the clatter of keyboards, in bunkers
Of pavement, they're bathed in the light of their solace.
Electrical windows, each framed with the fossils
From earlier eras, are flashing their insights.
A monitor-whisperer coaxes the image
From boxes that warehouse the secrets that aircraft:
Have captured from deserts—the graveyard of titans...
Have offered from turrets—the nails for a casket.
Alive with the milk of the dead, with a palace
Of casein, they press on their keypads: a séance
They practice with ritual uniforms, speaking
To spirits of gas, of the solids—of liquid.

“The Marines say the analysts, who are mostly in their early to mid-20s, paved the way for them to roll into Marja in southern Afghanistan earlier this year with minimal casualties. And as the analysts quickly pass on the latest data from drones and other spy planes, they are creating the fluid connections needed to hunt small groups of fighters and other fleeting targets, military officials say.”
– Christopher Drew, The New York Times, June 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/technology/08homefront.html?hp

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Take One For the Team [News Poem, April 24, 2010]

Take One For the Team [Yesterday's News Poem, April 24, 2010]

“I have never quite gotten the Pat Tillman story out of my system. Only now am I understanding why. It has been six years and two days since he died, his head blown off amid a pile of rocks on the side of a hill in Afghanistan, murdered by guys on his own team, other U.S. soldiers. After lying about it, the military eventually called it friendly fire and treated it as a mistake... I was looking for tears, when I should have been looking for facts. Dannie Tillman did what a nation full of high-paid, overblown journalists should have done. She went after the real story while the beautiful people on TV and the nerds with notepads broadcast and wrote morality plays.”
– Bill Dwyre, The Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0424-dwyre-20100424,0,1036733.column?track=rss

Who cares what Plato; Lao Tse said
When Rumsfeld's lies are cast in lead?
The Pentagon's a pentagram,
The Internet's the telegram—
The noble lie is just a lie.

A general must first be sly
To win his war with hearts and minds.
The bullet's just a contract signed
To seal the deal, to back the line;
To backdate steals, to strip the mine.

And if a lord becomes a pleb,
He'll tangle too in warfare webs
And feed the beast with fangs that gleam:
He signed his life for sake of team.

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Missile Man's Mini-Truth [Today's News Poem, Feb 26, 2010]

Missile Man's Mini-Truth [Today's News Poem, Feb 26, 2010]

“Obama, who established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform after the Congress failed to create a similar panel, nominated four new members after choosing Republican and Democratic chairmen earlier this month.
The president named Honeywell Chief Executive David Cote”
--Jeff Mason, Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:04pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61P3LS20100226?type=politicsNews

The last indignity for me I think was when
I grew enough to understand George Orwell's book—
You know of Nineteen Eighty Four I'm sure. Again,
The shock humiliated me: the masters took

His doublespeak and used it brazenly to lie
In slick and modern tones. I can't believe to top
It off, they've cheek to claim we beat Big Bro. They're sly.
They shoot us with their mini-truths: by press, by cop;

By missile-man—a spy I bet—who's there to split the take,
To tend to backroom deals for sake of fellow crooks and rakes.



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