Betrayal first stabs out the eyes of Trust
and History. Then, slowly drips its acid
in the empty sockets to verify the wound.
The Acid of this Nation's Betrayers drips drop
by drop from media's mouth via airways which
once belonged to us; but were given away to
entertain us; while they busied themselves
writing plays entitled 'Our National Security.'
Though we who protest are vigilent, our own
Eyes are not safe. The Bill of Rights has been
infected with a virus concocted by Justice, not
blind with honor, but drugged by Domination.
The Betrayers of this Nation bear the
Banner of Liberation, believing they
parade it before our sightless eyes;
unaware that we see clearly the Robes
of Power we placed upon their shoulders
have been exchanged for the garments
of Fascism, force-feeding us the Pornography
of War disguised as National Nourishment.
Eliot's Phoenix
The Phoenix rising from Eliot's "Wasteland"
was composed of Light so brillliant, it
printed shadows on a wall in Hiroshima.
Scavenging in Giverney for the fragments
of the world he'd lost, Eliot labeled what
was left 'The Wasteland'; unaware it was
but compost for this Phoenix' new debut.
In the fragments Eliot found, this Phoenix
reassembled on a desert made of melted eyes
oozing onto riven faces, as it walked on miles
of corpses, carpeting camps where gates declared
to those arriving that 'Work would make them
free'; while smoke from human flesh coiled out
of chimneys venting ashes which fell on Nine
Hundred Days of Moscow graves.
The ashes of those ovens were salvaged in great
careful chronicles believing such a vista could
never come again. But, the Killing Fields of Viet Nam,
Cambodia and Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia are
Living Coals lining the Uterus where the fetus
of this Phoenix waits the signal for contractions
to begin. In Congo and Ramallah, on the streets
of New Orleans, from Baghdad to Los Angeles, in
Dublin and Tel Aviv, intolerance for differences
spews forth to form Committees who debate when
they should be pleading that this Phoenix be Stillborne;
for it can not be aborted.
Read at Poets Against the War Reading
at Laurel Grove Theater, LA, 05 March 03
Copyright Elaine Madsen