Devolved Phoenix [Today's News Poem, February 11, 2011]

Devolved Phoenix [Today's News Poem, February 11, 2011]

By match or lighter, someone burned alive
To death in a street: one of the many lives
Squirming for rescue, for the end of nerves.

The ears that lean upon the walls have heard,
They've typed up a eulogy, phoneward bound:
Littlest birds that have delivered sound.

Baskets are flowing and the honey blooms
From jar to the tummy. The birdie croons
And twitters nightly, under office moon.

Rumor transforms what was once flame to spark,
And spark to an image; the whispered dark
Above the keyboard, screenshot bird: a lark.

Bird of pain, bird, my brain,
Phoenix lord—Lord, I'm bored—
Embers flick, trick and fade;
Monitors: glitter blades.

"President Hosni Mubarak told the Egyptian people on Thursday that he would delegate authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman but that he would not resign, enraging hundreds of thousands gathered to hail his departure and setting in motion a volatile new stage in the three-week uprising. "
—ANTHONY SHADID and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, The New York Times, Published: February 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/middleeast/12egypt.html

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Riot Lord [Today's News Poem, February 1, 2011]

Riot Lord [Today's News Poem, February 1, 2011]

God is your keyboard; it answers commands.
God is your monitor, casting Its image.
God is electron—a cellular phone.
God is a wavelength and particle bearing.
God is horizon, regression—a mote.
Morale is the faith in the actions of others.
Morale is the person and grouping at once.
Morale is your voice, so you call to the riot.
Morale is the face you impose on the crowd.
Morale is your God—it obeys your commandments.

"King Abdullah of Jordan Tuesday replaced his prime minister after protests over food prices and poor living conditions, naming a former premier with a military background, Marouf Bakhit, to head the government."
—Reuters, Feb 1, 2011 9:37am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-jordan-government-idUSTRE7104G620110201

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Calendar Conspiracy [Today's News Poem, January 31, 2011]

Calendar Conspiracy [Today's News Poem, January 31, 2011]

Scar of a pyramid, open your eyelid.
Silt in the river of calendar rhythm;
Tell us the date, flood all our riverbanks.
Lord of the hives, bite with your mandibles—
Rip a new season and stretch out our wounds.
Sand for a path, or a dune in the wastes;
Dune for a joke, monument, prophecy—
Dates by the flood-banks of desolation.

"As tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central Liberation Square to shout for his ouster, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt reshuffled his government on Monday, a gesture that the opposition has already dismissed as inadequate. "
—ANTHONY SHADID, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK AND KAREEM FAHIM, The New York Times, Published: January 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/middleeast/01egypt.html

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The Riddle of Hunger [Today's News Poem, August 5, 2010]

The Riddle of Hunger [Today's News Poem, August 5, 2010]
For L.S.

You landed on tarmac to follow the traces
Migration has stacked into boxes; abandoned
To history. Peering from awnings, near clotheslines
It watches you leave your hotel in the morning
To feed your devotion to gods of the pantry.
The concierge calls them a pest—he's requesting
You stop and consider the hunger of people
Who work here and live off the scraps that you're feeding
To cats. And the teevee is showing a Honda
For sale. And the Arabic letters are sprinting
To something—a price-tag of gibberish maybe—
To perfume and monitors; travel and trinkets.
The Pyramids stay in the desert while locals
Observe as you fill up the bellies of ferals.
And litter is everywhere. Riding the breezes
Are blizzards of plastic that cover the concrete—
So much like that pavement of home in the city
With gold in its gates and its offices roiling
With myths of creation of wealth—with the zeroes
Ascending to noumenal planes of existence.
And batting the numbers is Bast on her cushion
Of clouds, she rejects what they send her. She curses
Them slowly: their larders will empty, the vermin
Will triumph—and only for you will she spare what
Remains of a people who serviced her felines
In sands of antiquity; people who added
Their head to the predator, hoping to answer
The riddle of ages with stone in a valley.

“The ban is "a big deal" because the former Soviet Union has emerged as a major exporter on the world market, said Jerry Gidel, analyst at North America Risk Management Services, a brokerage in Chicago. Russia was the major supplier to Egypt, the world's largest importer, in the crop year that ended in May.”
– Tom Polan, The Wall Street Journal, AUGUST 5, 2010, 2:16 P.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100805-717766.html

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