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Eve Gets Angry with God after Reading
Her High School Science Book
On
the fifth day
after
the Big Bang,
God
brought forth
beasts
of the Earth,
including
dinosaurs
all
shapes and sizes.
On
day six, God created
Adam
& Eve, blessing
them:
"be fruitful
and
multiply."
Next
day, God smiled
at
his intelligent design
and
rested.
Adam
& Eve
learned
quickly
to
run for their lives,
trying
weary best
to
avoid pterodactyl's
swooping
claws,
Tyrannosaurus
Rex's
heart-pounding
footsteps
&
meat-shredding
molars,
the long sharp
tusk
of Triceratops.
Eve
was the one
who
expressed
their
anger: "Why
the
Hell couldn't he
give
Evolution
a
few million more years
to
kill off the dinosaurs
before
making us?
With Eyes on the Kitchen Table
On
my kitchen table, there is a photo of a prisoner
wearing
a hood & electrical wires, forced to stand
on
a box with arms outstretched.
Who
would order the sort of torture
that
human-sculpts a prisoner into a Christ-like figure?
Aren't
the contradictions too obvious even
for
"military intelligence"? And who would quietly
take
the photo, etching this moment for eternity?
These
last few weeks, I've been talking
to
the guy in the picture. I asked him what his
name
was, whether he has a family, is he able
to
return, does he have permanent physical
scars,
were there slits in that hood enabling
him
to see his torture, did he think the hood
was
meant to look like a Klan hood, was
the
Christ pose supposed to insult his religion?
I
asked whether and how often they sent electro
shocks
through those wires and were wires
really
hooked to genitals as rumored, had they beaten
him
before and after this pose? After a week
of
my questions I began to feel terrible for adding
more
queries he was in no position to volunteer
to
answer. Shifting gears, I started alternating
between
apologies on behalf of America's
true
majority, then changing my mind & assuring
him
most Americans would never condone
such
unconscionable action, that we were separate
from
our current administration & were really not
responsible,
though I would not be able to offer many
certainties
until the November results were in. Unsure
in
the end whether a personal apology was warranted
or
would be seen helpful, I promised the guy I would
speak
up, that one day in America
the buck would stop
with
each of us, not excluding our elected leaders––
but
not even a vow of activism could elicit even a hint
of
absolution from the guy in the photo. It was
the
kind of visual testimony that creates a bubble shame
out
of thin air, which spreads across all known
physical,
psychological, and multimedia boundaries.
And
then there were other photos, naked pyramids
of
chained humiliation, men with fist-sized chunks
of
thigh-flesh ripped off bones by military dogs, bluing
corpses
packed in army shower ice, smiling torturers
framing
mad power's most wretched wounds, videos
of
U.S.
soldier rapes thus far only privately screened
in
congressional curtained rooms. Pull those drapes away
so
we can look into the victims' eyes and experiment
with
magic word combinations from now until that day.
Inauguration Day 2005
I'm not sure why I went to DC and wandered the bloody
streets in torn socks except
I felt the need to test myself and see if I could avoid
the stray nails, wearing my anti-Bush
buttons and letting loose a few chants from deepest vocal
chords to help a few tens of
thousands nudge the new century's trials along their
awkwardly chosen path.
What would one extra body mean amidst a dense crowd of
war protest signs juxtaposed
surreally against men in bowler hats & hundreds
of women in furs? But, having been to
the 2001 protests after this president stole his way
into the White House, I wasn't going
to miss the fun this year,
wasn't going to miss the sidewalk cracks let loose their
most heat-filled eco-poisoned winter
steam, I thought we owed it to the world and to our own
reputations and safety to see how
many hours we could survive the frigid cold with just
a short-sleeve shirt and two dozen
snipers atop every office building aiming their postmodern
firing squad.
It was perfect context for Bush's speech on freedom:
"We are going to spread liberty
and depleted uranium all across the planet
these next four years. For the sake of
patriotism and your own children's survival,
please avert your eyes from the filled
corridors of Basra's cancer specialty hospital."
The signs in D.C. were a hodgepodge of pretty valid complaints:
"Starve the War / Feed
the Poor," "Bush Kills," "The President
is a Liar," "Save social Security, Dump Bush,"
"In Nuremburg, they put war criminals on trial,
here they are putting one back into the
oval office," "not my president" if only....
About 15 people staged a die-in at 16th & H, a few
covering themselves with the United
for Peace and Justice banner "We the People Say No to the
Bush Agenda," as police cars
approached and parked watching them for an hour or two, while
many a passerby tried
ignoring or inventing new insults,
a high school class walked by in yellow uniform rows
of two with teacher and several
assistants barking orders "keep moving!", "don't
look!" A guy in grey
suit asks his
friend "what are they doing?" "Lying down."
"Good, run them over!" "We are going to
spread liberty and depleted uranium these next four years."
On 14th Street
between F & Pennsylvania, the cops form a triangle like the
start of a
billiard game then charge young protesters with batons up, then
retreat and let the energetic
pack back into the street. It smells a bit like teargas may have
been used here, and a guy
with long hair & white Jesus robes walks thru wearing a sign:
"Not my chosen one." A woman with grey hair
stands alone next to Department of Veteran
Affairs holding sign "Bring Them Home." One woman mid-twenties
short hair & tatoo
carries a "No mandate" poster. I wonder whether it would
be possible to develop a positive
platform based on the signs being carried here?
What's going to happen these next 4 years? Where goes
the environment? How would we
prevent global warming given that Batman's arch nemesis Mr. Freeze
has been given the
Industrial Regulation Keys? For how long will the New Deal social
security checks continue
to arrive?
When will the "Salvador-option" death squads
written about in Newsweek and in
Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article begin to appear on Baghdad
or DC streets? Soon,
we are going to have freedom and depleted uranium knocking door
to door across
the planet's most crowded cities, is this what Jefferson envisioned?
On train back home to NYC I hear we're going to get a
big snowstorm in next few days.
All the planet has heard today's weather report. Two-thirds of
the listeners feel sure the
weather anchor has lost his mind, the other third believe he is
relaying blizzard reports
directly from god. The passengers on my train car are holding
our collective breaths.
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