Lost In America   wanted to be in this country

   can’t pay the dues

   the ground fees are too much

   one neighbor’s a racist

   the other’s a sexist

   couple across the way

   are homophobes

   politicians are for sale

   doctors are entrepreneurs

   ministers spew hate and fear

   a used car salesmen told me a lie

   so did a president

   people talk at me

   want me to be

   just like them

   my heart is a cage

   blood rats

   spinning the wheels

   but I’m too tired

   to feel rage

   had enough
       – Ken Peters

Moongate

April 14, 2012

We can move the church
and native graves out there
but we can’t move the
Rebel statue from the square.

And I didn’t know
what to say,
the correctness of the thing,
the oneness, or the
randomness of the thing,
in the morning,
in the evening,
in
nothingness,
which is where we end up when
we try,
or when we don’t
try
without hope,
which is why God
put
us
here

or more trivial
and evil by the connection,
lockstep,
or
stupid expression of
athiesm, or
what, stupidity?
What did we expect,
that the hordes would not rise?
One wonders
either way,
like the 200 nukes in Pakistan and India

If you cover yourself with manure
then radiation cannot affect
you.
The NUKES are sAFE mAN
nO pROBLEM
everything’s fine,
and if you happen to be from another galaxy and
find this
amid the fossil remains,
well,
we blew ourselves up.

The news is good and bad,
sometimes hopeful
Sometimes sad
it is like history,
a perspective,
a standard truth that sometimes is true
the news of a war from a cardboard speaker
the news of the child, a new child
from an email, magnetic spots on the screen
so we wait for news,
hoping for the best,
but it is often from afar
and we’re driving in our car
or the phone rings
and when it rings,
the news is history

My reaction to the defacing of a Mosque in my town gets me into trouble. I’m usually in trouble but trouble can be magnified in the south. Fears can be too. The crime was presented as a “Hate Crime” to wash the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Guilty from our lips, so we can speak of “lone wolf” mystery people writing “F%$k Allah” on a wall. We can say how bad that is and feel good in our caring.
We didn’t do it.
If a Muslim had done the same crime, it would be a “Muslim Defaces God’s House”. Let’s face it. If a White Angle Saxon Protestant robs a bank, he’s a “bank robber”. If a Muslim robs the same bank, he’s a “Muslim Bank Robber”. The Christian doesn’t get his religion pasted on to his crime. It’s been sanitized. It’s a “hate crime” and we are all against that.
We didn’t do it.

The Muslim is forever having to say, “We have bad stuff in our book, but most of us don’t go by archaic laws”. We Christians never have to tell our children, “Don’t do that.” because we “didn’t do that.” Our answer is, “A lone wolf did that deed and our archaic laws could never be used to justify violence. We teach love. That other religion, they teach hate.”
Be careful if you bring up the Inquisition at this point, or the Salem Trials, or any event where we loving White Anglo Protestants folks could have ever done anything wrong. Please don’t point out that we waved the Book in the air to justify slavery too loudly if you live in the south.
When we put people in groups, we put ourselves in them too. Have I lost my flag? Some group claims it, patriotism, the word patriot, and God as theirs. When we put “The Muslims” into their box, we put “The Christians” into theirs.
I was raised a Christian, checked that box when drafted. Is that something that I can be voted out of, like “patriot”? Both of these religions have archaic laws. Both can generate hate.
We shouldn’t expect “Christian defaces Mosque”, but we should be able to translate “hate crime”.

U S History Oliver Stone
The following video reflects our time with the past. An honest interpretation of the history that created the situation we have today. The use of a what was really boiler explosion on the Maine, by reactionary press, to create a war in Cuba. The admission of the most decorated General that he served Standard oil and corporate interests in all conquests in the Philippines and China. The international racism of conquest in the Philippines that exhibited and help to create supremacy and the Jim Crow laws.
This makes of history, a broken record.
The revelation that wars are based totally on business interests is not new. That World War One was started with an excuse but was really about banking and railroads is illuminating. We know the war in Iraq was about oil. That railroad the Germans were building that concerned the English so much, went from Germany to, guess where, Iraq. WW1 and big oil!.
It all sounds too familiar this U S History by Oliver Stone.

The rose demands
the light on her neck reveals her skin
and the rose demands
Her hands are the gold
to hold her hands in your hands is wealth
but
the rose demands
Save me
save my people
from the tyrant
the rose commands
speak ye poets
let your voice be the wind
in a dark forest
be the single acorn
dropping to the ground
and growing there
until there is a new forest
your heart is not in your
left hand
not in your right
your heart is beside the lungs which
speak, scream, write
for peace
for sanity
for
love
Speak!