Thomas L. Holderfield

Thomas Holderfield — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:57:27 -0500

Roger Harkness

Roger Harkness — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:58:39 -0400

Served U.S. Navy 1977 to 1992

NUMBERS

thepoetryman — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:59:37 -0500

(Ben Heine - Cartoons)
Why stop at 935 when an election is just around the corner?fromOpen Letters to George W. Bush
from his ardent admirer, Belacqua Jones

Dear George,

Just as the sight of crocuses peaking through the soiled snows of March are harbingers of spring, so is the dealing of the Terror Card the harbinger of another election cycle. Once again, you are trotting out the strategy that has kept you in office for so long: If you scare the chickens enough, they will vote for the fox.

It is a thing of beauty. First you create imaginary shadows, and then in every imaginary shadow you hide an imaginary terrorist skulking down Main Street America, ready to blow up the local soda shoppe where America’s clean-cut teenagers hang out.

Your Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell says it so, so it must be so. And we must believe it is so, and our faith must be perfect, untainted by doubt, because if our faith is not perfect and it we allow the 935 lies that led up to your Iraq enterprise plant to a seed of doubt in our minds, we may wonder if the next utterance that comes out of your administration’s collective mouth might not be lie number 936.

National Security demands perfect faith. Just as the Rapture shall come; so are droves of terrorists rowing across the Atlantic in route to Main Street. (MORE...)

NUMBERS NEVER LIE

O, now your voice is that of truth?
What happened to yesterdays street lamp that the swimming fog
painted with terror,
and the plane upon the sky
with brown men wielding loss; what’s come of their design?
What of the bell ringing with freedoms magnificence
where freedom was and freedom’s no more?
Where do you think these numbers fit, brandishing such menace?

O where is the mighty hero, the soldier child, the marine
whose breath wafted over the border pleading to pass on,
wailing in grief the loss of life in the sand
as talons lash his ankle to the very ground he guards?

These numbers speak a blood-spattered speech
and call forth an acrid air that fills the lungs
with its seed and it hemorrhages and bleeds
over your torture bending our will!

Why must you again with your slump of thievery
trudge upon our malleable expectation?
Why have you entered such dismal days
as to end our breathing?

To the apathetic hordes hearing, sensing nothing,
to the naked and dead calling their voices down,
to the mystified living worshipping your words,
to the angry and vengeful whose lion is pacing,
to the bitter and downtrodden without a voice,
to the hopeful and wishful locked away praying,
your belief’s as empty as its messenger.
Your savior’s a swaggering sham,
nine hundred and thirty-five...
Like dread he comes again!
Numbers never lie.

Poetry

Thomas L. Holderfield

Roger Harkness

NUMBERS