Why is the body politic

Donald Levering wrote an interesting poem by the above title. The unique poem begins:

wearing the gloves of abductors,
doesn’t it love kisses on fingertips?
Why hooded from your lovely eyes?
Why digging secret graves in the woods
that scintillate with butterflies?

The poem ends with these lines:

The mothers continue
their silent procession.
The faces and names that they carry
refuse to be erased.

In politics and in human life, true meaning and essence lies sandwiched in-between the beginning and the end.

To read the entire poem by Donald Levering, go here.

Political Poetry

I want to make two observations:

1. People who enjoy reading poetry, writing poetry, or thinking about poetry should check out the on-line political poetry journal Pemmican. I just discovered it and obviously I’m impressed. Did I say if you are a writer you should take a look at Pemmican? Okay, good. Progressives, socialists, and other of a leftward bent may be at home at Pemmican, but I hope those of us who are swaying to the Right will too.

2. Lyle Daggett wrote an extended explanatory essay on political poetry. The essay is titled Political Poetry. Imagine that! It is informative and entertaining, but it also sings the praises of mostly lefties with big names as well as the unknowns (too me anyway).

His essay begins:

“Political” poetry. All human activity is political because it takes place in a context–the context of history. Sending someone a recipe for crab meat salad is one thing if you work food prep in a restaurant kitchen. It means something else if you’re Nancy Reagan.

Poets have been political, in some sense of the word, from the earliest beginnings to the present. Enheduanna, Sumerian poet, priestess of the moon goddess Inanna, the earliest poet whose name is known. The Chinese government compiled collections of popular folk songs–for example, the Shih Ching, the Book of Songs–as a way of learning something about what the people were thinking. (Did Nixon listen to Bob Dylan or Joan Baez or Pete Seeger? Does George Bush listen to Billy Bragg or Tracy Chapman or rap music?)

Later in his essay, he writes, “We’re talking about poetry that expresses or reflects–either explicitly or at least by suggestion–politics that are left-wing, working-class, populist, or of a similar character.

“How to combine politics with creative work remains an unsettled question on the political Left. This is not simply a question of Socialist or Communist Realism versus whatever else.”

Here is a famous sentence that he wrote: ” Journalism reports facts; poetry tells the truth.”

Last but not … well not the last thing he wrote … that I don’t whole-heartedly agree with is this:

Let us state here for the record that political correctness, understood properly, is a good thing.

The expression “politically correct” originally meant “politically (and/or ethically/morally) the right thing to do.” It became a little confusing, sometimes, to talk about what was “politically right” because it sounded a little bit like “the political right” (who are, of course, politically wrong). So people got into the habit of saying “politically correct” instead, which sounded a little pompous sometimes but tended to be less confusing.

To write poetry with political content that is left-wing, working- class, populist, or of a similar nature, is the right thing to do.

Whether his views are right because their left is questionable, but his essay is worthy of being read.

The Statesmen

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage—see them jump,
And come down hard!

“Walk up, walk up!” each cries aloud,
And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

“Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I—I alone can show that black
Is white as grass.”

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They’d make—I wish they’d go and make—
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothes, lodging would from me
Win wamr applause.

Lo, D lifts up his voice: “You see
The single tax on land would fall
On all alike.” More evenly
No tax at all.

“With paper money,” bellows E,
“We’ll all be rich as lords.” No doubt—
And richest of the lot will be
The chap without.

As many “cures” as addle-wits
Who know not what the ailment is!
Meanwhile the patient foams and spits
Like a gin fizz.

Alas, poor Body Politic,
Your fate is all too clearly read:
To be not altogether quick,
Nor very dead.

You take your exercise in squirms,
Your rest in fainting fits between.
‘Tis plain that your disorder’s worms—
Worms fat and lean.

Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell
Within your maw and muscle’s scope.
Their quarrels make your life a Hell,
Your death a hope.

God send you find not such an end
To ills however sharp and huge!
God send you convalesce! God send
You vermifuge.

By Ambrose Bierce

__________________________

Vermifuge is a drug or other substance that causes worms or other parasites to be expelled from the intestines.

What An Aborted Baby Knows

On Christmas eve there laid I awake
Waiting for sky and roof to quake
About events earth soon to shake.

A celestial son devolving like Darwin;
A baby evolving into rustic man then
News of his expected apocalyptic sin.

Empires rattle when temple veils tear
A repulsed foundation earth does swear
At holy blood it has drunk yet unaware.

The sky abhorred at the bloody sight,
Wind and fire shiver hysterical fright
Thundering protests against the plight.

A vulture roars like a lion pretends when
He thought his scheme had made him win;
His cohorts cheered his un-holiness’ grin.

Cheribum mourned before the mangled flesh,
Caught was the holy one in a diabolical mesh,
Venomous spider’s web not like after crèche.

Unimaginable to all was the event that next came;
Hell had a visitor whose terror filled the same,
All bowed low before his immanency in shame.

Weeping was heard in heaven, and earth and hell,
Waling and gnashing of teeth behind barred cell,
Not as expected was responses at the wounded El.

Before singing Noel mother earth with horror shook,
Victor refused her covering because of life’s crook,
Conquering death’s prince from whom keys he took.

Existing death’s doors he released imprisoned hope.
Up joyous highway trailed heaven bound holy host,
Repelling every snake hindering their evolving trope.

A child leads to music and mass goodness creator saw.
Doves dance on harmonies and hearts filled with awe.
God well pleased with his children playing loves’ law.

Earth still trembles when Bethlehem babe calls
To embryo’d mates facing Herod’s new mauls,
While heaven dates time when imperial fate falls.

By Daniel Downs
December 25, 2006

Truth Is One

In long devotion to forms that cheat
Thou hast suffered the days of thy life to fleet:
But outward forms are still passing away,
Changing their fashion from day to day.
Tread not ever on the stones that are rough to thy feet;
Nor shift from branch to another they seat.
Seek high o’er the sphere of the world thy rest;
In the world of reality make thee a nest.
If Truth be thine object, form-worshippers shun;
For form is manifold, Truth is one.
In number trouble and error lie,
To Unity then for sure refuge fly.
If the might of the foeman oppress thee sore,
Fly to the fortress and fear no more.

by Jami

Background:
The full name of this Persian poet Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami. He was born in 1414 and died in 1492. If memory serves correctly, 1492 was the year Columbus discover America. According to Wikipedia, he was of one the last of the great classical Sufi poets. He was born and grew up in what is now Afghanistan. He studied mathematics, Arabic literature, natural sciences, and Islamic philosophy at several Islamic universities. He wrote eighty-seven books and letters ranging ranging from poetry to prose and from mundane subjects to religion and history. When the poet made the haj to Mecca in 1472 he was very well known. Lavish offers were made to him from the courts of the Ottoman and Timurid rulers, but, against the pattern of the times, Jami preferred his own quiet search for truth to honors and luxury under foreign rulers. (See Poetry Portal for more.) Truth Is One was published in his book The Element Book of Mystical Verse.

Personal Observation:
Like founding of the American nation-state, truth is the foundation of all things. Its source originates in God and nature. Without truth, trust fades into oblivion, friendships and families die, and nations are equally destroyed. Without truth evil ascends and reigns and life burns up in hopelessness. Safeguards must be maintained if Truth will reign. The love of truth is the most important. American Independence was a war for the right to live historically realized truth. First and tenth amendments were created to safeguard those truths. To many political issue like abortion, Church-State separation, gay rights, and the like reveals Truth no longer resigns. Truth is the most important element in achieving genuine peace and happiness.

Ode to America’s Boy Martyr

In Chicago a monument must be built
To honor America’s courageous martyr,
A black young boy who faithfully refused
To sin against his parent’s moral instruction.

His honor must resound across modern society
That justifies vice and violence and putridity
Because slum lords in marbled halls legislate
a profitable drug industry pushing perfidity.

The magnanimous boy who refused to believe
The promises of riches and fame proclaimed
Among the sea of slum apartments in Chicago
By society’s impoverished young men hopeless.

America’s boy icon of faith, decency, and morality
Made his forefathers proud while enduring adversity
Holding firm to the American way they once taught
Even as they died to defend it and he lived it to die.

The punishment for his sin of faith and loyalty
Was executed by the secular view of depraved
Tyrants following their leaders in high places—
Guilty of plunging him down to a concrete
grave.

Daniel Downs
January 22, 2008

 

Background and Meaning

This poem is about a young black boy who lived with his single mother in a notorious slum apartment complex in Chicago, a place where police try to avoid. Every kind of social evil is the norm to those who live there and especially drug dealing. The boy refused to take or sell drugs for old boys who also lived in the apartments. They threatened his life if he continued to refuse to deal their drugs. One day they picked him up and dangled him out of an upper story window. Fear did change his mind about what he knew was wrong. Because of his loyalty to the good, the boys killed him letting him fall to his death. The young black boy died a martyr worthy of being remembered for his courage and honor. He, not greedy and power-mongering politicians, won the war on drugs.

Many children had died similar deaths before him and have died after him. Many have died partly because they lived in the moral cesspools called urban slums. While our world leading government brokers profitable weapons deals called aid, society rots away. Billions of dollars are doled out to other nations and for many programs, but not to actually end poverty and moral decadence—because secularist wage war for the right for decadent behavior and corporation wage war for welfare poverty to keep undesirables out of their way.

America needs millions more people like the boy martyr to stand firm against the immorality, dependency, and violence perpetuated by government sanctioned secularism and greed.

On The Occasion of the First Official Recognition of MLK’s Birthday

The former director of the CIA
stands solemnly over the grave
of the man assassinated by the FBI
less than two decades ago.

TV projects the dead man’s image
accompanied by ads for the UAW
not to mention
plugs for Coca Cola.

Diana, Stevie, Lionel and Liz
appear in sequins and feathers.
Each proclaims with a tear or a grin,
“I am part of the dream.”

(The growing hordes of homeless and hungry
must be part of someone else’s nightmare.)

In Atlanta near the church
where four young girls were killed
where crackers unleashed dogs,
a statue is erected.

State recognition didn’t come easy
but was wrenched from America
by more demonstrations.
No mention of these on national TV:

Today is a day for celebration.

by Marcy Sheiner
1985

Originally posted on Marcy’s blog Dirty Laundry. To find out what this poem means to Marcy (and us all),
go to Official Recognition of MLK’s Birthday.