Favorite Political Poetry

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Mel Brennan, Jan 29, 2003.

  1. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Toward evening, the natural light becomes
    intelligent and answers, without demur:
    "Be assured! You are not alone...."

    —From Descartes' Loneliness by Allen Grossman
     
  2. The Devil's Architect

    Feb 10, 2000
    The American Steppe
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Shit fire and save matches. A Mel Brennan sighting.
     
  3. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
  4. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Praise Song for the Day
    BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

    Each day we go about our business,
    walking past each other, catching each other’s
    eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

    All about us is noise. All about us is
    noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
    one of our ancestors on our tongues.

    Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
    a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
    repairing the things in need of repair.

    Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
    with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
    with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

    A woman and her son wait for the bus.
    A farmer considers the changing sky.
    A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

    We encounter each other in words, words
    spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
    words to consider, reconsider.

    We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
    the will of some one and then others, who said
    I need to see what’s on the other side.

    I know there’s something better down the road.
    We need to find a place where we are safe.
    We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

    Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
    Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
    who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

    picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
    brick by brick the glittering edifices
    they would then keep clean and work inside of.

    Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
    Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
    the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

    Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
    others by first do no harm or take no more
    than you need.
    What if the mightiest word is love?

    Love beyond marital, filial, national,
    love that casts a widening pool of light,
    love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

    In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
    any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
    On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

    praise song for walking forward in that light.
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  5. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    'To survive the neighborhood and shield my body, I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshakes. I memorized a list of prohibited books. I learned the smell and feel of fighting weather. And I learned that "Shorty, can I see your bike?" was never a sincere question, and "Yo, you was messing with my cousin" was neither an earnest accusation nor a misunderstanding of the facts. These were the summonses that you answered with your left foot forward, your right foot back, your hands guarding your face, one slightly lower than the other, cocked like a hammer. Or they were answered by breaking out, ducking through alleys, cutting through backyards, then bounding through the door past your kid brother into the bedroom, pulling the tool out of your lambskin or from under your mattress or out of your Adidas shoebox, then calling up your own cousins (who really aren't) and returning ot that same block, on that same day, and to that same crew, hollering out, "Yeah, ************, what's up now?"...'

    'I recall learning these laws clearer than I recall learning my colors and shapes, because these laws were essential to the security of my body..."

    Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between The World And Me
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  6. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    An ancient pond
    a frog jumps in
    the sound of water
    -Bashō
     
    roby and Q*bert Jones III repped this.
  7. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal

    Splish Splash
    -Bobby Darrin
     
    Cascarino's Pizzeria repped this.
  8. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    PASSED

    The Second Coming of the Lord our God took place

    at the base of Senlac Hill in the fright, the fear and the dark

    one thousand and 33 years after his Father He faced,

    said “It’s finished,” and Romans slashed His side for a lark



    The Third and the Fourth tries came in places far flung

    Bright skies and shores, Dar Es Salaam and Palau

    The Fifth and the Sixth times amidst fire, smoke and dung

    and the pole hangings of Romani in Dachau



    Each and every time He’s come to redeem us

    Commanding love with a message merciful, kind

    we’ve stabbed him in his neck, run him down with a bus

    or his birth we’ve Romantically declined





    He’s pondered and thought, all of Heav’n distraught, about a Thirty-fifth Coming to host Holy Mass

    but then He remembers, fanning sad spiritual embers, that our time has just simply…passed
     
  9. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    The Gift Outright
    BY ROBERT FROST
    The land was ours before we were the land’s.
    She was our land more than a hundred years
    Before we were her people. She was ours
    In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
    But we were England’s, still colonials,
    Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
    Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
    Something we were withholding made us weak
    Until we found out that it was ourselves
    We were withholding from our land of living,
    And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
    Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
    (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
    To the land vaguely realizing westward,
    But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
    Such as she was, such as she would become.
     
    Q*bert Jones III repped this.
  10. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan AN INTERVIDUAL

    Apr 8, 2002
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Of History and Hope

    By Miller Williams

    We have memorized America,
    how it was born and who we have been and where.
    In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
    telling the stories, singing the old songs.
    We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
    The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
    We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
    The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
    But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
    The disenfranchised dead want to know.
    We mean to be the people we meant to be,
    to keep on going where we meant to go.
    But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
    except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
    The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
    With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—
    and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
    Who were many people coming together
    cannot become one people falling apart.
    Who dreamed for every child an even chance
    cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
    Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
    cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
    Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
    cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
    We know what we have done and what we have said,
    and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
    believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
    just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
    All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
    on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—
    but looking through their eyes, we can see
    what our long gift to them may come to be.
    If we can truly remember, they will not forget.
     
    russ, rslfanboy and Mike03 repped this.
  11. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    We could all use more drive-by's from you. Thx.
     
    Mel Brennan and Mike03 repped this.
  12. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    I think that I shall never see
    A liar as big as fat Don-nie
     
  13. American Brummie

    Jun 19, 2009
    There Be Dragons Here
    Club:
    Birmingham City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    wtf is this thread doing back
     
    Cascarino's Pizzeria repped this.
  14. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Rose are red
    Violets are blue
    Trump is a fascist
    And the Left wants one too

    - Superdave
     
    chaski, Mike03 and Val1 repped this.
  15. Mike03

    Mike03 Member

    Jun 7, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    BS posters of SA origin nod ruefully
     
    Cascarino's Pizzeria repped this.
  16. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Not Germy...he embraces it!! :coffee:
     
  17. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Thread starter popped by on Friday.
     
    American Brummie repped this.
  18. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Nostradamus predicted this when no one could've predicted it
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  19. yossarian

    yossarian Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 16, 1999
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    No love for the concerned citizen of Nantucket?
     
  20. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Roby I'm lost I said though I knew he was sleeping
    I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
    Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
    We've all come to make fun of Germerica
    All come to make fun of Germerica
     
  21. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    I just saw this :D

    #132 Aug 14, 2020

    Mel Brennan said:
    An ancient pond
    a frog jumps in
    the sound of water
    -Bashō

    Roby

    Splish Splash
    -Bobby Darrin
     
    Mel Brennan and Auriaprottu repped this.
  22. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    I remember hearing that poem...

    "There once was a girl from Nantucket" :whistling:
     
  23. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    I thought she was from China and maybe had angina?
     

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