CONSCRIPTIONS

Induction ceremony found hidden amongst
opportunities for Selective Service personnel
replacing shadows terminally posted since 1973

Turn on the lights, boot camp the computers,
upload the lie detectors to capture defects on AWOL,
the doors of conscription have been left ajar

Women liberated from assuming the weaker sex
making cannon fodder instead of instant coffee,
teenage corpses losing their best shot at life

Selected for body bagged services
clearing away Baath brigands so Shi'ites
can decree veiled dreams of freedom

21,420 slots to be filled in vacant boards
sending young men and women off to war
about democracy from spin to shining spin

Red, white and blue lines painted on the floor,
piss in a bottle and give up your blood,
conscription is rearing its ugly dead.

IRREVERSING LOGIC

As the new Patriot Act advances to the front,
the Bureau "denies" their virtual surveillance
of law abiding anti-war protest movements

Right! [meaning: "Wrong!"]

I've read their files--thousands of them,
taking an illegal act as the predicate
for investigating everything - and everyone

Wrong! [meaning: "Right!"]

Cointelpro hides its face
under many masks -
some lies just never change

True! [meaning "False!"]

These lies will mutate and evolve
the expansions and retractions
that can easily become truths

No! [meaning: "Yes!]

Inalienable rights and forgone conclusions
are being recalled into an uncommon lore
as personal freedoms devolve into myth,

and the truth finally becomes the lie.

RIP Clark Kerr

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate
Free Speech, it wouldn't have
been the same without ya

You forced us to fight or flight,
freedom became something to seize
in another name for victory

Consequence, genesis, and dissent
gassed from under the club and the gun,
provoking the "raw materials" to revolt

Your machine was so odious at the time,
we angrily threw ourselves upon the gears
raising up raw matters thinking for themselves

We were fooled, swindled, and matriculated,
tear gassed, tested and re-arrested - and
higher education was never better for it

Learning what this Multiversity system
would never teach your children -
"That to rebel is just great"

But that was then - and this is now,
and again it begins at home and heart,
so whose free speech are you listening to?

© 2003 - Hammond Guthrie & Stew Albert

OP-oetic 3rd Page Arkive:

HUAC 58 YEARS LETTER