Truth From the Street

THE SECOND SUCCUMBING

–Apologies to W.B. Yeats / The Second Coming


Turning and Spinning in the Widening Mire
The Congress cannot hear the Precedent;
Things fall apart; the Party cannot hold;
Sheer Conarchy is loosed upon Democracy,

The freedom-gouging tide is loosed, and everywhere
The Standing of America is downed;
The best convictions are too polite, while the worst
Are full of obtuse intensity;
Surely some Reason is at hand.

Yet there instead, the Patriot “Act”!
The “Patriot” Act!

Hardly are those words out
When an Orwelled image out of Posse Comitatus
Troubles my sight:

Somewhere in the martial curfews of this seminal Treachery
A shape with Oz-lion body and the head of a borne-again fool:
An ‘Aye’ blank and clueless as the GOP itself
Is moving its leaky Trojan Agenda, but who knew?
While overhearing guffaws & careless cheering
from the belly of the beast, that all about it now should
gather threats of patriotic fillibuster, lighting & passing torchfire.

…Wounded cowardice drops again; but indignant courage
finds unexpected stride, in the edifying irony
that a Sitting President was on his Game after all,
as if afloat, fishing! entirely untorn,
glued from National Nightmare to “My Pet Goat.”

And what Hellbent Vision Thing,
its Truthless Power come round at last,
$louches towards Liberty to be Borne?

--Artist General Michael Masley

Berkeley street musician Michael Masley has appointed himself "the Artist General." [http://ArtistGeneral.com] He is an accomplished player of the large hammered dulcimer and was grand marshal of the How Berkeley Can You Be Parade... "Patriots for a Fair Contract with America" [http://LieJinx.com] asks "Martial Planners"... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/03/MN19057.DTL