Does the Confederacy Haunt Us?

 

Does the Confederacy Haunt Us?

 

Could the spirit of the Confederacy live on in this country, unacknowledged yet invidious, virulent and internecine?  The sense that we are about to tear ourselves apart in an orgy of violence is palpable.  To answer why, it is time to consider an hypothesis: the civil war has never left us; it only shifted from physical battle to psychological warfare.  Although it is not generally part of the national consciousness, a passive aggressive undercurrent, pushing to topple the United States, is on the verge of erupting in cataclysmic, pyrrhic success.

We today can realistically imagine the frustration and division in our antebellum nation, because there’s a lot of evidence we are on the verge of a great schism.  Complete disagreement stokes a rancorous tension between the two sides.  A faction of one of these sides stormed our Capitol on January 6, seeking to install a would-be king as our president, and hence destroy our centuries-old Republic.  Despite denials of Trumpites and of Trump himself, and especially their gaslit claims to be saving the country, the vector of the insurrectionist momentum is charismatic dictatorship under a golden T. 

In all but declared intent, an attempt is being made to destroy the United States of America.  In all ways but honesty, a large political force seeks that destruction.  This has happened before.  Are there historical connections?

There is a continuous thread of hatred and racism, going back to the abhorrent defense of White Supremacy in the 19th century.  The Civil War was fought to preserve slavery.  The song ‘The Good Old Rebel’, written by a former Confederate in the 1860’s, right after the war, proclaims, “I hates the Constitution and the great Republic, too.  I hates the Freedman’s Buro in uniforms of blue.” 

After it became impossible to openly keep slavery legal, the White patriarchy of the South focused on rights-denial for Blacks and violently retaking what was lost during Reconstruction.  The result was Jim Crow and outright terrorizing and massacre of Blacks.  True freedom wasn’t seriously on the table until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.  And yet, recent attempts to gut the Voting Right Act have largely succeeded.

The great curse of racism, arising from the Civil War, lives on.  So does its hate.  And it has become a spirit of contumacious and rebellious unwillingness to budge, not only on racism, but other rights issues.  In The Lie that Binds, Ilyse Hogue demonstrates how anti-abortionism replaced segregation as the spearhead of a highly organized evangelical effort to impose a White Christian nationalism.  Our nation is divided in war-ready rancor on issues like women’s rights, LGBTQ and gun control.

Frustration froths in the fault lines of our tense partisan politics.  Instead of working together to deal with school shootings, nothing gets done.  We can’t even begin to protect our children from shooters.  Could it be more frustrating?  A state with, say, five million citizens, rolls five million dice every day--to see if just one out of those millions, for whatever crazy or evil reason, decides that this is the day to join a growing trend and kill innocent people en masse.  How does this situation not foster a nation-destroying hate?

No one is consciously trying to destroy our country by inaction on mass shootings.  But it is telling that there is perhaps no better way to destroy a country.  Such basic failure, to even try something, on a situation so heart-wrenching, evil and dire, seems almost guaranteed to tear our nation apart. 

In 1996, faced with a mass shooting, Britain changed its gun laws, and the Brits have suffered few mass shooting since.  But we in the USA let mass shooting multiply and metastasize through the national fabric.  Why?

It stokes infuriation.  Gun deaths are ripping our country apart, but no one in power will admit it.  No one will act.  It seems an apt metaphor, at the very least, that the ghost of the Confederacy is laughing, finally on the verge of its victory over the Republic.

 

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Very rare for any newspaper to take my op-eds, so I put them here.

Poem: Fantoccini

 

Fantoccini

 

are they flesh

or a plastic mask of  guile?

does a mainspring spindle into a heartfelt blurb

that only appears to beat?

 

when you observe them

in the circus of fluorescence--

that moebius jingle cascade

disgorged by the blue cacophony of the screen--

 

it seems, maybe, the eyes bob a little too astray.

it seems, maybe, the schticks sink too low,

as if a fake raft had slipped off a prop bollard

to suffer devil fins.

 

it is later,

 

past the glamour of the cogs,

in the desert of the strobe,

wandering in a frantic hypnosis,

where can catch them in the lie.

 

it is later,

 

in the yawn of eye apertures,

behind caked facial features,

after ratings have absconded,

 when their own unanswered answers

confront the very same questions

that others once asked them

with scared, small mouths, seeking prophecy.

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Tired of all the mass shooting in this country and the lies of the Republican politicians, defending easy universal access to guns guns guns... 

Poem: Nightwall

 

Nightwall

 

bricks in a wall,

each a babbling mouth,

bite at fingers as i try to climb,

needy as i am

to see over the razorwire top;

 

but it is only another mouth,

composed of the other walls, bricks,

and trapped mouths.

 

quite incalculable:

 

lips within cubes within

walls within proclamations,

chewing and biting

and sucking and pretending.

 

each unthinking.  and yet so important

in the entire scheme

of the confusion, despair, denial and rage.

 

it could be

 

that if i pulled out a single brick,

the light of truth would break in,

making the entire multi-part monster crumble.

 

it could be.

 

and maybe it would,

no matter which brick i chose,

when or where or how.

 

every bit of machinery

vulnerable to an honest yank,

even as it gnashes into mortar

the sacrifice of slain dreams.

 

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6/27/22  "crumble" replaces "stumble"

Regarding the Poems

 

The poems vary widely in quality.  Most of them get edited quite a bit after they go up.  I’ve started to put notes below some of them, to track their journey toward entelechy.  When first presented, many of the drafts have been complete embarrassments.  Perseverance is often my only recourse.  Even then, ‘greatness’ is elusive, if not ineffable.

 

OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

(can't reply to anonymous emails, sorry)

Poem: Phalloides

 

Phalloides

 

death angels in pale cowls

preside over a feast

of crumble and decay,

 

and i wonder

on these fleshy bald thugs,

cudgel-like as condyles,

 

how they lord so young and brash,

basking in wind,

 

as autumn buries

the greying carrion of summer,

aimless as a cold gravedigger.

 

the only excuse the death angels need

to batten on the fallen

and prophesy snow.

===================================

 

6/30/24

Poem: Rough Crossing

Rough Crossing

 

all at once, there was nothing except the now.  

stolen memories 

embroiling an oscilloscope.

off somewhere distant, 

voices fake as commercials,

offered tears and sighs,

 

and yet still

 

nothing that had been was real,

all of it gewgaws in glossy packages,

unable to anchor faith or tether reward.

 

there would be no more pain.

not the bleeding spells of beaten dreams.

not even loneliness.

or hunger.  

not even death itself

would survive.

 

 

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I'm having trouble getting into the blog for some reason.  If I suddenly disappear ... it's some technical thing.

 

 5/15 "embroiling an .." replaces "embroiled the ..."

5/15 "memory" replaces "memories"

Poem: Matrixification

 

Matrixification

 

prayer wont salvage

what twittered till it bled.

idols lie nude

under the voyeur-yawn

of the immaterial webby spotlight.

 

vanity not virtue.

turpitude not rectitude.

it’s about salacious sin and carnal plunge.

manic feast and dissipation.

 electric Christ languishes

near virtual Vishnu and streaming Buddha.

 

who can keep barcodes 

out of jungles and rainforests,

while cartoons animals slink cutesy and viral

in conga lines of musicals

across pulsating tubes?

 

how deeply can faceless sex 

spred the brain wide to earn upgraded moans?

how seductively can circuits undress avatar flesh, screw buds into ears,

and swallow screenshots into cellphones?

will cashless crypto$ aspire,

while megafantastical gameworld multiverses

magnify the already-ramified Matrixification?

 

can love 

escape the prison bars in the source code?

can it dodge gamer guns 

and evade apps, clicks, taps and deletes

to survive?

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6/30/24

references to Twitter (now X) and YouTube ("tubes")

Dream Last Night

 

I had a dream where many people lived together in a big house, but things were falling apart.  A cult group had formed, with its own weird rules and codes.  It was all White people, and they were trashing things, destroying the house, with no clear purpose.  Much of the interior had water damage, with ceiling sprinklers going off.  Then one of the cultists set off a rapidly expanding fire.  Instead of getting out, the cultists stayed inside and attempted to block all the exits.  As the flames approached, they sat around righteously and burned to death.  At the end, a Black person of indeterminate gender, with broad wings, soared out of the fire.  From somewhere, a serene yet strong voice proclaimed, “Innocent!”

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Poem: Decide

 

Decide

 

to trudge in a sweaty flesh of moisture

while waterless specks yield in profusion,

 

and the dunes tug on your shoes,

begging you to pen a sentence

they have tried forever to compose.

 

you become the desert’s ghostwriter,

coerced on topics such as gone mountains

and oceans stolen away drop by drop.

 

it is you, now, who must eulogize 

all the disintegrated glories under your feet.

 

you who must mollify

the hungers that lap at your ankles,

beseeching in heat waves.

 

it is you, a mere passing puff of sentience,

who must decide.

==================================

6/30/24

Poem: Fermi Paradox

 

Paradox

 

the moon, a half-gone omen,

bitter in the pre-dawn dark. a ghost 

above the city's latticed ventricles,

ganglions of rush hour

and urban industrial muscles,

its artificial, bright multitudinous unhappy face.

 

and the people, the ants, rush galvanic

chasing after genies to establish a venture of hives,

yoked by the wings of their great savior Eagle,

feathers glistering with stolen silver and land.

 

so bright!

surely it will never be dark again.

and yet, once more, the night turns young

to testify in smog and the ruck of dust.

and the moon, up there somewhere,

swings with the peace of a sickled guillotine,

reaping the prayerful lament of tears. 

===================

9/3/24 eds

6/30/24

May 5 [changed poem to present tense from past tense.  "chase" replaces "chased," "arrives" replaces "arrived" ..etc.]

May 5 "glistering" replaces "glistening"

May 6:  "bitter in the pre-dawn dark" replaces "hangs bitter ... "

Poem: LA Highway

 

LA Highway

 

corpuscles in cubes

with i-don’t-care chins,

and an AC-sterile absence of sweat,

 

these herd-beasts in lockstep

alien to the bison and the passenger pigeon

and the slain roam of the wolf.

 

the black rubber circles

under the metal boxes don’t care,

don’t have legs--

as if to say, 

a stray dog without a collar,

the last vestige of the long-gone wolves,

can’t outrace a carburetor,

 

a carburetor with more stamina than a falcon,

though its hover gives no pleasure

in its bottom-feeder, oil-pan glide.

these commuters,

 

do they dream of throttles,

while they sit there, 

accusing their own boredom,

staring at a lane of red rectangles 

blotting out the stars?

 

 

 

=========================

6/30/24

red rectangles = brake lights

12/11/23  lots of mods