By: Bill The Butcher

Recently, while looking over my stored computer files, I came across some older writing. Among these was a poem I wrote way back in 2004, called The Alleys of Iraq. Inspired by a Vietnam War-era protest song, The Fields of Vietnam, it took not very much effort to write except for one particular stanza which I kept revising over and over, until it suddenly sprang to my mind, full-blown as it were, during my morning jog. (I’ll leave it to the reader to guess which stanza that was.) I’d posted it online but since my readership at the time could be counted in single digits, it sank pretty much without a trace.

Anyway, coming across that poem, I wanted to see how it had fared with the passage of the years, now that the imperialist aggression part of the Iraq war is pretty much over and the civil war has restarted. It does have more than a touch of naiveté – back then, I still believed that the victory of the Iraqi resistance against the occupation would mark a return to at least a stable and socialist Iraq, something I’m not dumb enough to believe of any nation now. Today, if you ask me, I’d say that once the Empire has “throw (n) a crappy little nation against the wall just to show everyone it means business” (the Ledeen Doctrine) nothing can ever put that nation together again as it was, no matter who wins. You can’t unbreak an egg. But I was younger back then, and more idealistic.

Still, I was completely correct in one thing. Back in 2004, the nascent Iraqi resistance was still finding its feet, but even then I had predicted that it would be these “insurgents” who would finally drive out the Empire. And – looking back from today’s viewpoint – can anyone who thinks of it seriously deny that it was the anonymous Iraqi resistance fighter (whether a Ba’athist “dead-ender”, Mahdi Army member, or one of the troops of the various different resistance outfits) who have stopped the Empire in its tracks? If it were not for the bloodletting it suffered in the towns and deserts of Iraq, wouldn’t the Empire long since have invaded Iran and Syria at the least, and more likely than not Pakistan as well? But for the Iraqi resistance, would one be hearing at least some calls for restraint instead of all-out cheerleading for war on Iran and Syria? Of course not.

The Iraqi resistance halted the march of Empire. The Afghan resistance will force its retreat and eventual collapse. Whatever their other sins, those things can’t be taken away from them, and the world owes them gratitude for that.

So, here’s my eight-year-old tribute to the Iraqi resistance, exactly as I wrote it then.

THE ALLEYS OF IRAQ

Oh brothers, though we’re strangers and your land and mine are far apart

And though the differences between us are numerous and stark

As the needle’s drawn towards the pole, I’m drawn both heart and soul

To write of your brave struggle in the streets and alleys of Iraq.

You paid dearly for the mistake your leader was drawn to make

When for eight long years you fought the armies of Iran

Those it helped now crush you down, their flag flutters over town

Desert and river, but not the hearts of the land of Iraq.

They pushed you their war to suffer and to fight

To die for their cause, for them to bleed and to burn

Brother against brother pitted they, and while the sun shone they made hay

Watered with the blood of the peoples of Iraq and Iran.

Scarce two years gone, came again the plague

Of war to ravage your great and ancient land

When peace came it didn’t last, this piece of your colonized past

Called Kuwait painted with blood the soil and water of Iraq.

They chain you now and talk of morality, freedom and of democracy

And claim the world is safer that they hold you down

But then they had said they didn’t care, Kuwait was none of their affair

Until their bombs rained on the houses and schools of Iraq.

For over a decade they starved you, bombed you and murdered you

In the name of weapons they said you had not disarmed.

When your children died for lack of food, they said ‘twas for their own good

That they wept and died, they said, these ‘liberators’ of Iraq.

Then came they once more, they said to ‘free’

With bombs, tanks and missiles, your people from Ba’athist harm

WMDs throughout the country, a terrorist under every tree

They claimed, and came to ravage the ancient land of Iraq.

A strange liberation these invaders brought, an odd democracy

Of death and fire and prison to the people they said they charmed

While the Zionist entity cheered, they shot and raped and spurned and speared

Old men, young women, and the children of Iraq.

“We’ll kill you if you raise your head,” these foreign ‘liberators’ said

“We’ll raise a firestorm if you dare strike a spark.

The smoke that’s carried on the breeze from the Tigris to the Euphrates

Will signal the final destruction of the cities of Iraq.”

They thought it would be easy, their flag would fly

Over the land and sea, the rivers and the sand

(They thought they had broken your back, stretched you out on the rack)

Over city and village, orchard and oilfield of Iraq.

They thought you would knuckle under, accept your fate and kowtow low

While your oil paid for your slavery, and their boots pressed you down

Oh what a shock they must have got, when you stood your ground and fought

And washed with their blood the streets and alleys of Iraq.

In Ramadi and Najaf, from Fallujah to Baghdad

From hiding they bomb you and shoot innocents down

But the more they torture and they kill, the sharper your avenging steel

That slashes and chops them in the alleys of Iraq.

Oh brothers though we’re strangers born and grown far apart

And though your name sits awkwardly and strange upon my tongue

Your war is ours too, this I must make clear to you

We’re with you in your battle in the streets and alleys of Iraq.

Brothers, where did you find the strength? I ask you this

Half in envy and half in tears at your sacrifice and resolve

Someday will end this violent night, victory will crown your glorious fight

And freedom’s flag fly proud over the streets and alleys of Iraq

“Today’s the Day”

Poetry by Renee Y. Brown

image provided by:http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1708

“Today”

(September 22, 2011)

by Renee Y. Brown

“The Gospel of Jon”
by Renee Y. Brown

“In Translation”

By Renee Y. Brown

Michael Artwork By:Mary Daniels

By: Renee Y. Brown

By: Maya

Hunger pangs strike the one in need,
A glance into the empty pantry is saddening,
Wonderment of how to’s are consistent,
Cringing thoughts of accumulated debt
Refusal to accept failing the family,
Or even losing the house.

Not just any home, a very special house,
A place to feed and shelter the family,
Whose idea of purchase made oblivious to debt,
Where job security kept payments consistent,
Nary a thought of a result so saddening,
To think of a time, there wasn’t a single need.

Others face obstacles far more saddening,
A lack of clean water, an urgent clinical need,
or even a roof over their head, let alone a house.
But, why brood over others? This victim is the family.
Where hearts thumped harmoniously, before the debt,
And the love was unquestionably consistent.

One cannot wrap broken wings around the family,
Whose feathers have fallen, like shingles from a house.
The sight of a hunched eagle; somber and saddening,

He has lost hope, a revitalization he’ll need,
Where sustenance shall be consistent,
A chance to overcome the trepidation of debt.

How can one manage to keep optimism consistent,
When at an inability to eliminate or alleviate debt?
Unfathomable blameworthiness anticipated from family,
As glares and scowls occur during discussions of house.
Once held in high esteem, now overlooked for need.
Pressured, incapable, incompetent, truly saddening.

Wary were he, cautious of credit card debt,
No finance fees; he was due date consistent.
Woe to the people who have the need,
To spend frivolously. It’s quite saddening,
when it becomes you, and your house.
Yet to imagine the worst, your own family.

One last can awaits the family; shelved in the house,
Its need to be opened and eaten is saddening,
Pointed finger consistent towards debt.

By: Amnesia Grok

I’m sitting here on a Saturday afternoon & I’m reading about the end.

As in THE END.

As in predictions of the final curtain, visions of destruction. Trumpets & seals & cups & oodles of 7’s. Th-th-the-that’s all f-f-folks!

The earth, it will end in fire & in water & it will end in asteroids & in Mexicans.

Generation after generation, all riled up about an end that never knocked. Layer upon layer of dusty eschatologies, disproven by default.

Paul was all riled up & his eyes were struck blind & his hair was on fire.

& he said if you weren’t already married then don’t even bother getting married now!

There’s no time!

Tell everyone before it’s too late!

There was a real sense of urgency about it.

How many bad dates have to come & go before there’s just a collective yawn?

What if things just go on & on & on &…

Way past the point where there is any point to be had?

& everything gets older & worse & the sky less blue & the grass isn’t hardly green at all no more? & the Lincoln Memorial cracks & the paint on the barn fades & no one bothers to write new songs or to clean the animals’ cages?

On & on, without even the vague hope of a fiery end or some new Hitler to capture our attention for a minute or two?

That guy out there howling in the street? You know, the one with the sandwich board that reads //The End is Near\\?

He could turn out to have been an optimist!

By: Laurie Corzett/libramoon

About the Author:  seeking outlet for those crazy thoughtstreams, is always moving into new (or resurrected) projects, including Emerging Visions visionary art ‘zine; an experimental metafiction, working title: Something Sacred; a (envisioned as) graphic novel , Acts of Desolation:  as well as her Utopian Flash Fiction Project — series of flash fiction pieces around a federation of diverse villages each working out their methods of community life — little dramatic impacts illustrating creative solutions to social problems.

Storm Front @2011 Karla Fetrow

Mothers’ Night

cascading shards
uneasy
echoes falling
“It’s our calling.”

Rape of Earth,
hot spurts of words
savage knives
Abiding Mothers,
sacred and mundane
twist into harridan
cold stars

wail, hurtling waves
Sad, old, crust of ages
sliced, screwed, carved up for profit
“It’s not the color of the skin,
the culture of the smile”

the scent of danger,
the inborn stranger –
all excuses for Us (superior)
and Them (inferior)
“They are not like we;
but lower curs.”
we may harm with unfettered glee

Cursed to be cut to our requirement.
Borders clear
“Here, fear fences in
our livelihood and wives.”
Leave THEM to putrid pits
cunning jabs,
our pleasure.

Thus, all treasure that might regale,
heal, reveal true worth,
of man and Earth
sold for pittance of potash
to dance a weary jig

May 10, 2010

By Darren Allen

http://www.gentleapocalypse.com/

There is a garden in which everything is provided. Reach out your bare warm arm and there is just the fig you need. Then turn, and roll, and bury your nose into the sweet scented earth, as you would into the neck of a lover, and breathe in vanishing intoxication. Every singular event – a ladybird’s shell flicking open as the air lazily lifts it from a leaf, a glance at the lattice of branches fingertipping each other above, a whiff of breeze that curls over the dancing wild-flowers – seems eternal. There is a constant feeling of alrightness, ease and existential trust. The next moment will not do you over. It is, to use an old Persian word for garden, paradise.

When the world was very young I lived in the garden and made paths through it on a whim. Wherever my attention wandered, a track would be made through the wilderness. At first I wandered freely, to the feint beck of the moment – like an animal, guided by the slightest twitch in sense and atmosphere, sometimes treading the same path twice, but mostly going forever nowhere; a place I felt most at home in. My path-instincts then were soft and supple, and although I had tendencies, the present moment was free in me to take any path it liked.

At first I used my feet and trod footpaths down, foot-width and foot-strong. Then I learnt to use horses, which made my routes
wider and flatter. Next came carriages, trains and finally cars, which needed the widest, hardest and smoothest roads. These roads were useful – they took me easily, quickly and, once established, I could get without thinking to where in the world I liked and wanted.

But the more I liked and wanted, the stronger I built my roads, and the smaller paths fell from use, became overgrown
and forgotten, and so did the places they took me to, until the world entire was one clean canalised motorway, and the cars that ran upon it had learnt to run themselves, on autopilot.

When the world had become road, all decisions about transport were made on auto-pilot. Instead of the man or his moment
deciding where to go, building an open network of manifold and flexible paths, the auto-pilot decided; and what the auto-pilot decided was, of course, to expand the road.

With cars in charge, the roadless land became a threat, to be boarded over and ignored. Feet became nothing but a means to reach a car and the purpose of roads became nothing more than to carry the car and protect it. The transport map, instead of being a natural tree of living exploring cobwebbing tendrils, able to pass through the wilderness in response to whim, became a grid, reinforced and reinforced, by millions of journeys.

Living on habitual auto-pilot made rerouting tendencies from established routes harder and harder and the pull towards the familiar stronger and stronger. This reduced the capacity to perceive new routes or to go off-road on whim. Uncertainty became unpleasant, and so the autopilot was trusted more and more until, eventually, the individual began to identify with it, champion it and defend it – reacting with panic when its programming was challenged or its routines changed; even minutely.

With autopilot in charge, I bump into things, lose things, drop things, repeat myself, drive to work without being able to recall a single event en-route and find myself making the same mistakes, over and over again, without understanding why. mechanically pursue sex, security, power, prestige and other genetic goals, getting stuck in ruts from months to lifetimes long. I fear, hate, ridicule or ignore the unknown, off-road and off-map, anything never done before or requiring lawless unplanned spontaneity. I live my life in a minuscule stream of concentrated attention, excluded from the vastness of the present moment, the space and light of it, the rich particular character of it. And yet, with autopilot in charge I have no way of knowing or seeing anything else. Reality itself becomes autopilot; blind, pre-preogrammed and self-serving. And the garden becomes a myth.

The myth of the garden paradise is common to all the world’s religions; but the oldest and truest of those stories – much older than the female-hating Hebrew Eden – do not depict the garden in time or space. It is ever present. It is here, in the
centre of the city; a secret garden paradise.

You’re in it even now. It just seems like the same old world because of the momentum of the autopilot, thinking and wanting and forever leaving.

Nothing wrong with thinking yourself away a little of course; because just on the edge of the garden there is a wall, and you can take the beautiful bricks, endlessly, and bring them back to build wells and paths and cathedrals. That’s a good idea.

Keep thinking though, keep wanting, and you’ll keep leaving, and if you are in the habit of thinking and thinking, and wanting and wanting, you’ll leave and keep leaving, and you won’t be in the garden anymore.

The roads away from paradise are many, but, like television channels, they are all the same. The people who live on those roads, who have forgotten the garden, cover them with many spectacular adverts (for the garden!). These strive to be novel and new…
but it doesn’t stop all the roads all forever being the same old world.

But sometimes, and sometimes once in a lifetime, thinking stops. A moment of beauty, or a moment of shock, and there, in the macadamised cracks, is a glimpse of the garden. Some people think it is a dream, or a story, and quickly forget. Some people try to get back, by thinking or wanting – and get further away. But some people, very few, linger. “Yes, this is how it is,” they
say, “…how lovely.”

But; I may be done with the past, the past is not done with me. I have given my habits attentive life and they move around
restlessly inside me. They cannot be killed with a mere decision. Stop wanting and worrying, in fact, and it is not paradise you can feel, but the unease, boredom and discomfort of trapped habit. You find you “don’t like” turning around, or, despite fine intentions, you find yourself shooting back out again regardless, lost again on the motorway, locked again in your hurtling metal box, hammering again on your horn and stressed again in the deathless traffic jam; because you’re not getting nowhere fast enough.

How then to stay? How to get off the road when momentum once more has me lost upon it?

Others have gone before. They left the garden too, once, and they too had to learn to return. When you find yourselves back home, these friends are there, and when you are back out on the motorway you recognise the secret signs they left
between the chaos of facts and adverts, strange reminders to turn back before you get too far out.

You recognise their messages because they all mean the same three things.

One. Who am I? Who is driving down this highway? Who is afraid of breaking down? Who is thinking of where he wants to be? Who is worried? Who believes? Who reads? The direct experience of the answer, the weird silent whiff of the ‘me’ I have always been behind my life, is nothing in particular, and the end of thought.

Two. Gratitude. Take anything or anyone in life, and feel gratitude for it being there, for your legs, for your sister, for your food, for the light on your working fingers; for any moment of your stupid little life. This feeling is good; but it is nothing in particular, and the end of want.

Three. Death. Everything you want, everyone you know, everything you have, and this moment its very self, is passing away into
that which sweetly and sadly lets it go. Stop trying to hold onto it. The letting go is nothing in particular, and the end.

The garden is everywhere, even in this city. Follow the adverts for nothing and the signs that lead you nowhere and the habit of leaving slowly leaves.

And you and I will dine together in the garden.

On figs.

By: Amnesia Grok

The ladies are sitting next to the pool. They wear housedresses & sit upon cheap lawn chairs. They are not old ladies – not yet – but they’re old enough to be sitting next to the pool in housedresses instead of swim suits.

So they’re getting there.

& Helen uses her pinky finger to move the tiny umbrella in her glass so she can drink, & she slurs on about her Junior, who has moved back into her mobile home. AGAIN.

//Ha!\\ bursts Margaret. //That’s nothing!\\

All eyes on Margaret.

//My Trey is 32, & he’s moved back in the house w/ Henry & me & brought his girlfriend this time, too!\\

There is all-around agreement that this is worse than Helen’s pickle. Agreement that poor Margaret has it bad indeed

.

There is silence as they think about Margaret & Henry’s predicament.

Finally, my Aunt Maxine clears her throat. Swallows another Nembutal. Picks at a particularly scary mole on her arm.

//3 weeks ago Thursday\\ Maxine begins, //Jason comes over w/ his wife, Ann, their 3 little kids, their Rottweiler, boxer, & their parrot, Captain Beakers.\\

//He tells me they’ve talked it over & they have decided they’re moving into my uterus, because it’s warm & it’s comfortable in there & from what he remembers, there’s a lot of easy floating around doing nothing all day involved.\\

//& while I’m stuttering, trying to find words to say, it’s FOOMP! & up into my uterus they go.\\

Maxine looks around. //It’s a momma’s worst nightmare.\\

Everyone by the pool agrees that Maxine’s story just about takes the cake.

But Maxine says, //But that’s not all!\\

//Because after that, I get nervous about my OTHER kids, so I decide to stop the vicious cycle. I swallow my youngest right down. Eat him up. Well, HE takes up residence in my stomach & demands cable TV, complete with premium channels!\\

//Jason & my youngest talk through my meaty walls to each other, & they’re complaining about me, mostly.\\

//That night, I dream of the perfect son, & I dream of what he’d be like. Come next morning, I find that Dream Child still in my head, & he’s taking online classes & demanding piano lessons!\\

& all the ladies just sit there in their house dresses, sipping their drinks, staring @ the sun reflected on the water, while their husbands stay out too late boning overpaid nubile secretaries.

& all the housedress ladies sit there, growing old & dreaming of death.

By: Amnesia Grok

& few people realize how the Moon is made of pure dry ice. & those in the know by & large choose not to talk about it, for all the obvious occultic reasons, I suppose. But you, you’re one of my friends & I know you are not the sort to just… run out willy nilly & do something stupid w/ your inside information, like… You wouldn’t, say, post it up on a roadside billboard for all to see, or announce it in the new Christina Aguilera pop video clip you’re directing… You wouldn’t go mine the Moon to fill 4th of July beer cooler orders for a quick buck…

I trust you, you see, & I want those I trust always to be in the know.

So… the Moon is made of pure dry ice & few people realize that, you dig? Except now we’ve come ‘round to the May portion of our program & the Sun is winning & it punishes the Moon for January. & it punishes all those of us who worshiped the Moon back then when it was running the show & all those of us who made blood sacrifices to what we now know is an enormous chunk of ice careening @ potentially catastrophic speeds across the surface of this flat & hollow earth we cling to, you & I.

& the Sun, it beats the shit out of us in a sort of divine solar retribution, lashes us until we’re all just simmering in our own excretions. & then Aunt Maxine goes out to move the garden hose & starts melting @ her edges.

Only the garden hose is melting too, so the edges of what is Aunt Maxine & the edges of the aforementioned & now legendary garden hose get kind of blended together like a stir fry where even the noodles wind up tasting like onions so it’s no use whatever to pick the damn things out before eating. It’s just too late.

Aunt Maxine returns inside the house as an Aunt Maxine/garden hose hybrid & her feet look like the doormat so we can almost make out //God Bless This Mess\\ across the tops of her toes. & her hands look like the electric bill she was attempting to retrieve from the mail box when the Sun got her, so we’re going to have to pull off her perforated ring finger to send in with the check so the power doesn’t get cut.

& now we have to remind her not to sit on the chaise lounge because she’s watering the entire living room w/ these 12 rotating streams of water that the neighbor kids are screeching & leaping through with glee in their brightly colored bathing suits.

& Uncle Irwin, he’s fed up w/ the shenanigans so he’s loading his shot gun & he’ll take pot shots @ the arrogant & unrepentant Helios up in his tower, because we’re not going to be able to wait it out ‘til October to venture outside for more whiskey & tampons.

Ah… nothing more than May in Texas. Again.

By Bill the Butcher

THE OTHER

Who am I?
I am the Other, the other brother
The brother you would rather forget

I am the shadow shivering
Under the bridge
When winter comes;

The child selling cheap pens
In traffic jams.

I am the one you make fun of
For eating with my hands
For not speaking with your accents

I am the Other.

I am the one who does your slave work
I am the one who cleans up after your party
I am the one who pays with my blood
For your Eternal Frontiers.

Laugh at me, snub me
For I am not like you.
But some day I shall rise,
I, the Other.

And
I am, I will be
The stuff of your
Nightmares.

Fear me.

**************************

A BILLION OBESE PEOPLE WALK THE EARTH

A billion obese people walk the earth
Eating more than their health can sustain
Eating more than the world can sustain
Feeding on the blood of the world.

Meanwhile, stones fly in the shadow
Of the Pyramids. Ancient, and built of
Ancient stones
Hauled up by scrawny slaves
From the great Mother Nile.

What would they say today
These nameless faceless unknown slaves
Who being nameless and faceless yet
Built monuments for the ages?
What would freedom mean to them?

Is freedom but a word?

Would the food the billion obese consume
Mean more to those slaves

Than the blood and courage
Of the men and women standing up to guns and tanks?

Empires rose and fell in the shadow of the Pyramids
Empires meant to last till the end of Time.

Ozymandias, Rameses, Caesar, Napoleon
Have come and gone. But the Pyramids, built by slaves,
Endure.

Today’s Empire, halfway round the world
Will fall, and the blood and courage
Of the people of Egypt shows the way.

But if you could turn time back

Back to beginnings, and ask one of those naked slaves
What he’d rather have,
Freedom or food to fill his stomach
What would he have chosen?

To a slave, what is freedom?
Is it just a word?

The billion obese weigh down the earth with their
Obscene weight.

The Pyramids
Endure.

************************************

OPERATION GREEN HUNT

This is not your land

The sacred hill where the gods of air and water live

The flight of the bird on the wing,

Shimmer of the sun on the water

They do not belong to you.

They never did.

Your machines of steel and anger

Would rip the heart out of the earth,

Rip the old gods from their hills and forests.

Your greed fuels your machines

Your uniformed minions, with guns in their hands

Your uniformed minions who after all are only men

As we are men, and women

Earth’s Children, we.

Your greed would make an end to everything we have

Everything we live for

But this is not your land

And we will not pay the price for your greed

And we will not go away.

No.

We will not go easily, no, we will not go easily.

We will not go easily, into the dreadful night.

This is not your land, no this is not your land

Our ancestors have lived here

The old gods have lived here

Since before the days when the hills were young.

Yet you want what is not yours

You try to take what is not yours

And death is all you offer us

And death is something we understand.

No, we will not go easily

Though you do what you will

Offer us your platitudes, feed us with

Words.

Your words

Your words are like your promises

Empty.

Empty like the eyes of the skull on the dry rock

Empty as the scars on the earth

Empty like the bellies of our children

When your machines have moved on.

But when we pick up the gun

The gun is not empty.

Our forests, our villages

Our land, our gods

Our world, not empty.

Call us what you will

Red terrorist, Maoist, Anti-national

Call us what you will, but

Our world is not empty.

We will pay with our blood

Yes we will pay with our blood

We will water the land with our blood

And it will be our land.

Our words, our promises

Are not empty.

Note: Operation Green Hunt is the Indian Government’s war against its own rural poor living in the forest areas of the nation, in order to take their lands and hand it over to mining companies in the guise of “fighting Maoism”.