They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

I don't embrace
you yet—I will, so tarry.
Bless us, extend our duration. Delay

another day
and let me bed upon—not
under—the grass and in sunlight's gold trace.

"in 1856 when, barely a year into his reign, Alexander II announced to an assembly of noblemen, “I’ve decided to do it, gentlemen. If we don’t give the peasants freedom from above, they will take it from below...” Northern leaders, on the other hand, pointed with shame to the fact that the world’s greatest democracy and its most infamous autocracy stood alone among major Western powers in retaining slavery."
—ADAM GOODHEART, The New York Times, March 2, 2011, 8:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-other-emancipation-proclamation/

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Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

I've depleted the winter and gathered its dew
On a pinhead—my pinhead—and watched as it danced
From the tips of my follicles, into my nose
Where it planted the needles, the pine, and the sap.
The survivors are green where it's gray and they burst
In my lungs, where it's damp and it's pointless to breathe.
At this rate, I'll be coughing up blood and I still
Do not think I will notice the seasons with care.
I was born in a village, but lived in the hive
Of our awe—yes, our gardens of dogshit and brick.
In my life it has taken me thirty five years
To have noticed that moths have a cycle, that rats
Are the floorboards—the blame for the venomous cure.
If this year has a meaning, its meaning is year—
It's not time, just a name for this passage of fools.

"Look at the calendar dummy."
—Khakjaan Wessington, December 31, 2010
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