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The Other

Your country was born in slavery and genocide.
Don’t fret, so was mine; they all were.
We’re like chimpanzees pissing on a tree
To claim our territory for the tribe;
Our ancestors ripped out the hearts
Of their enemies and threw them to the scum.

Stranger, of course you’re a racist-
Don’t bother denying, we all hide it!
Your parents were racists and those before them,
Saying it was the way of things to serve god,
And never trust those not of your blood and tongue,
A different species with their own demons.

You worship your survival above mine...
I don’t take offense, starvation makes us cannibals.
Just by chance some are born to beg
While others will live by possession alone
Burying their coins to hide them from the storm,
Only to drown in opioids and sadness.

Does part of you curse yourself in hatred
As I do every day, curse my own existence?
I’m just another animal, out of control,
Escaped from a zoo to a universe of asphalt.
My soul, too, begs for renaissance
To find the goodness that must exist in us.

I hate that my country is stained in blood and plunder.
I hate that I judge other races beneath my breath.
I hate that I pass by the hungry with pockets full.
I hate the contempt I have for our breeding herd
And that we are just the same, stranger,
Waiting for a transformation from beast to human.

Last few words: 
The poem has an epigraph by Wole Soyinka "There’s either one humanity, or there isn’t” from an interview in NY Review of Books
Editing stage: 

Comments

of the quote by Bill Clinton; "An alien invasion may be the only way to unite this ever increasingly divided world of ours." [Speaking of the movie "Independence Day"].
~ Geezer.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

although think the odds are as remote as Jehovah coming out of the clouds, shaven and dressed in an Armani suit, having dyed his hair grey for that sophisticated look, begging our forgiveness for all his fuck ups in the initial programming of our species.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

direct you to another of my poems, it's rather long, but I think your brand of humor, will get you through it quickly. It's called "Goddam" Your description of "Jehovah" coming out of the clouds dressed in an Armani suit reminded me of it. ~ Geezer.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

A good write Mark and true true true!
The brutal honesty of your poems exploration about our baseline existence and psyche is all to real
This is the conversation that saves us though
We can see the absence of alignment on every level
We are all even divided within our selves as in the base impulses vs the utopian ideals
This is essential to all Taoism Kabbalah and esoteric mysticism not to mention foundational psychology Even the self effulgent light in its very center is pitch black at least from my vantage point
The healing is to manage it; not to bind or let it bind us ie situational awareness and sensitivity too the feelings of others
Some say that they are not judgmental when it come to others but amazingly they are when it comes to every other aspect of their life like who they marry, where they live , what they eat, music, art, etc but suddenly when it comes to race its all gone in a puff of smoke Haahaahaa what a lie
Its important not be a hypocrite on top of being bigoted to... lol
In the kabbalah the creation is compared to shattered glass ie fractured. disjunctured form with endless light casting endless shadows Having said that we all survive better when we respect our differences and sometimes actually admire the differences between us and there is transcendence too or is that pie in the sky
The right is terrified of other and the left is terrified of themselves
Best Z

thanks for your most deeply felt response, and great insight. You have a nice way of connecting philosophies esoteric and worldly.
Yes until we recognize the primal in us we can't move forward, and surely we live like monkey tribes or lion prides, the same allegiance to the head of the pack...but we know what it is to "be human" , what makes us different from the "beast" ...maybe if we begin by hating some of our primal needs - those without compassion, those that serve only the tribe, it may begin, but first we have to recognize that we all instantly judge our fellow humans by their obvious difference to those in our immediate tribe (or country), and our basic self servicing. Until the very near past people were free to be racists, it was part of the local culture.Today, just like that, people pretend it went away, or they don't see race.

and wow, your last sentence is also just so spot on, really quite an observance.

"The right is terrified of other and the left is terrified of themselves"

I would love to try to use it in a epigraph of a poem, with your permission

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Thank you kindly Mark
yeah … This goes to the higher concern of developing consciousness part of which is to see our selves for what we are and then to integrate it
What this means to me is to acknowledge it; but further to explore it without wholly buying it as say the clan does ie as "Existential" truth; but as in hard wired survival for base line and primitive exitance Then one finds out all kinds of terrible things about ones self ...Haahaahaa ...as per Crowley's Beast 666 ie the Other side of the very same coin of God who he refers to as Great and Terrible God
This is the problem with religious platitudes they always only want to deal with one side of the equation Food is good, shit is bad think

The medium for this in my case has been writing about sex The message is always the same irrespective of the text or poem That sex and eroticism are distinct. Sex is what animals and dullards do
Eroticism is highly imaginative evoking the great and the terrible especially in the context of meta mental ie surrealism Here both men and women can soar into the realm of the transgressive, completely mad; ie primal in the ID free of constraints of super ego and ego Lust without boundaries but safely, imaginatively or real time and consensually This is a living metaphor for true freedom and our obsession of the reconciliation of opposites and the realization of the ithyphallic as sacred It is this context that we live and relive the obsessive opposition of the taboo ie the paradox of creation and destruction and reconcile the opposition which is in fact a spiritual act and endogenous to all of creation
This happens on every level from the highest to the lowest ie the holy act of mindful breathing which seeks the confluence of the in and out breath ie essential opposites that sustain

hurt me
she begged!

asking
with big kissing eyes

what
are
you
doing
tonight?
…..
The Paradox: Millions upon millions of women have brutal rape fantasies yet the want to be safe
In broad terms what most men and women haven't figured out is that fantasy and consensual rape even very rough is far different then the actual reality but fills the need to consume and be consumed
Some would call it love
Similarly I know many black women who are very masochistic sexually and loved to be denigrated racially during sex Thats not racism, its race play.
Its these distinctions that have not entered into the social discourse yet may have the compacity to relieve us at least in part of our existential and societal dread

In The Giving
eyes bright
legs open
grace in submission
grateful
an exquisite intrusion
ooow love hurts
blood gush
pain for pleasure's sake
a yielding exorcism
of shuddering curves
haunches poised
to welcome
that which is taken
in the giving

Best Z

I've read your poem at least three
times now and I like it more each
time. At first I wanted more information
about who the other subject was but
it really doesn't matter, none of us
choose our geography ...
it's like taking a picture and
peeling it back to expose the
multi layers.

thanks for sharing

and that you really took the time with the poem.

One way of putting it is a famous line from No Exit by Satre: "L'enfer c'est les autres"...(hell is other people). But we are all in this together, a species of consciousness and intelligence living like beasts controlled by their instincts.
All countries I can think of, on all continents, since the beginning of time, were formed in plunder, genocide and slavery. That's the same with the African kingdoms, Asia, South America, any country in Europe, the USA..And each territory with prejudice against the other. Most humans just concerned with their own survival...so primitive. When do we evolve already?

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

It's like fly paper! No matter how you touch or approach it, it sticks to you. Geezer.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

and glad it got you attention! It is very nice to get responses, I try not to post too often to keep the site fresh with poems, and appreciate as we all do when we get comments and know we are being read. Yours are very complimentary, with appreciation...

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

the patience for egotistical flubbery and just like to give opinions that matter. If my opinion matters, and it feels good, I'm glad. Thanks ~ Geezer.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

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