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Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Commanded To Surrender [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2011]

Commanded To Surrender [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2011]

Law is stone and God is brazier:
Bronze, unyielding, burning razor.
Time is bone, a crystal rock:
Fossil lost to gemstone features.

Love our eyes for eyes, and seek
Blind surrender, yield as weak.
Gradations have vanished in binaries:
Perfect, defective, and perfect
Again.

Surrender, surrender; it's envy, surrender—
God is the captain of every surrender.

"Sirhan made his first appearance before a California parole board since 2000, supported by two psychologists' reports saying he no longer poses a threat to society, his attorney said... On occasion, Sirhan flashed a gap-toothed smile, but as Prizmich announced the parole denial, Sirhan bit his tongue.
Prizmich said that Sirhan's assassination of Kennedy marked a national loss, prompting Sirhan to make a startling assertion.
"That was not my responsibility," Sirhan blurted out.
Sirhan's attorney, William Pepper, expressed "disappointment" over the parole board's decision and said Sirhan will appeal the matter to the courts. The parole board "ignored every thing we had to say, and they went on the emotional kick of a loss of a presidential candidate," Pepper said. "The magnitude of the crime has nothing to do with his suitability of being released from prison after 43 years.""
—Michael Martinez, CNN, March 3, 2011 12:01 a.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/03/california.sirhan.parole.hearing/

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Tuesday, March 01, 2011

False Etymology of Western Modernity [Today's News Poem, March 1, 2011]

False Etymology of Western Modernity [Today's News Poem, March 1, 2011]

Pass through the root of a word:
It resembles enchanters of blaze,
Medicine wands made of paw
And the pelt of a Nemean Lion.

Passion: an animal zeal.
The religion of sunrise and rays
Sniffs for and snuffs out the source
In the soil, in the catgrass—the cornstalks.

Compassion: the dream of a mouse
Covered in paws; and compassion—the taste
Of blood is the flavor of rain,
Pity and love: the communion of famished.

Romance: desire is a sword
Or wound, or the wounded—the wounding
Passing unbreakable flesh
To memories, hopes, expectations.

Roman: the letters and laws.
Imperial characters slaying
Wilderness, making the peace
With weaponry, ownership, commerce.

Roma: a cairn made of bones
For saints and salvation. Religion
Vanquishes beast and its praise,
Compassion and conscience—the wilderness.

"They are not God, yet they act as though they have all power and authority to determine the day and hour of a baby's death and also the manner in which he dies."
—Jennifer Hartline, Catholic Online, 3/1/2011
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=40526

"Animal control officials are concerned that they have had to put down too many dogs and have developed a plan to curb the euthanasia rate."
—Kevin Valine, The Modesto Bee, Feb. 28, 2011
http://www.modbee.com/2011/02/27/1576232/oakdale-tryingto-reduce-rate-of.html




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