Unfettered wind*

1.
We were the dusky maya.
Sometimes we flitted
among the enameled branches
of the hacendado's cage.
We mostly skipped and hopped
with pruned wings.

2.
Then we read:

"Upon freedom
from men administering men
Man will evolve to the next Unity
in the realm of Nature.

"We will be the eagle
over the bluffs
sailing the currents
of the east wind --
our nature unfettered. 

"Our mind and body
uncaged."

3.
Meanwhile
we are growing back
our heart
and our wings.




*Chapter 10, Fractured Memories

Haiku 082509

the sign says
no boat wakes please
a pair of loons

***************

Recently, we read the following:

Washington Post: "Cheney uncloaks his frustration with Bush" by Barton Gellman

“Former Vice President Dick Cheney believes his old boss, President George W. Bush, gradually turned away from his advice during their second term in the White House, showing a surprising independence as he started taking more flexible positions on a range of issues, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

"Cheney, often described as the most influential vice president in U.S. history, has been discussing his years in office in informal talks with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues, the Post said, as he works on a memoir due out in 2011 from Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions…

" ‘When the president made decisions that I didn't agree with, I still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him,’ Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. ‘Now we're talking about after we've left office. I have strong feelings about what happened... And I don't have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.’

"According to the author of the Post piece, Barton Gellman, who earlier wrote a book on Cheney called ‘Angler,’ the former vice president believes Bush made concessions to public sentiment, something Cheney views as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end, Gellman says…”


***************

And we thought:

…Is Cheney getting back at Bush due to the latter’s refusal to pardon Scooter Libby?

Or is Cheney subtly trying a bit of historical revisionism? Is he trying to portray himself as the de facto man of the house during the first part of the Bush-Cheney reign? Is he trying to exonerate Bush for the bumblings of their first term? Is he trying to portray Bush as being a better President during their second term, one who has become his own man?

But -- why is it that when Cheney says one thing, you actually believe the opposite? Makes you want to take an aspirin.

No doubt the real story will be told. Bush and Cheney will be judged soon enough. Facts are stubborn things and time has a way of surfacing them. The masses of the American people will know at some point for sure what happened during the eight years of the Bush-Cheney household. For now, the majority of the American people appear to just want Cheney to go away. Bush has already accepted his place in the current scheme of things...

What Ifs*

1.
We had read:

“Transcending one’s class is living
the dreams of the labouring class,
becoming the labouring class,
being the labouring class.”

2.
What if we did hew our disparate lives
with the steady hands
of the toiling classes,
and grasped history with a proletarian’s mind?

What if we did reckon our days,
like men and women for others --
for brothers and sisters exploited
and bridled?

What if we did become the spark
that lit the prairie fire --
ending man's exploitation
of man?

Musings of a petit-bourgeois...

3.
We muse instead, who took the path
less bloody.






*Chapter 4, Fractured Memories

Critical praxis*

1.
There’s the sun
between heaven and earth.

“Between freedom and the people
there’s the light of working class praxis.”

2.
Some presumed to define and refine
and shine the light.
Worse, some pretended – fervently.
They were not unlike the enemy
the candidates were warned about.

Some old candidates still have their eyes
on the end game aspired after.
They will sum up their lessons.
Their children or their children’s children
will distill their own sun in praxis --
elsewhen.

3.
Nature's law.

Meanwhile
the critical mass is still asleep.
It is still,
objectively, night.



*Chapter 3, Fractured Memories

Bit players*

1.
Like Sandburg’s fog
fractured conversations
would move in,
and on, in their minds:

“They shape our personal stories --
these hardy hands
in factories and fields…."

“They create wealth and histories
not yet their own…."

“Except in true red zones,
they remain nameless
invisible to bourgeois mores….”

2.
Back then, they thought -- and they struggled --
that their lives were petty and feckless
like the bit parts that bit actors profess
they only suffer for food on the table.

They imagined themselves progressives
taking on lead roles for love of the masses.
They referred day to day to little red books
presuming the act bestowed vanguard status.

3.
Down the long road, slowly stripped of dogma
layer by layer, they learned in practice --
there are really no bit roles, only bit players.
They serve the people -- even teachers in classes.

Perhaps the flaws they've unraveled
will better inform future journeys
of new travellers
now less naive.






*Chapter 2, Fractured Memories

spring wind
sparrows huddle above
waving banners

In sum*

1.
We had read, in sum:

"We are part of a whole--
the whole being Nature
the part being Man.
And we're Nature's putative avant-garde."

2.
Yet -- men have caused both
wealth and privation
freedom and repression
social order and anarchy.

Men have also caused
famine and plenty
dams and drought
both certitude and doubt.

War and peace.

3.
The most evolved part of Nature?

We needed to be reminded occasionally,
of the protracted process of change--
among men, as in Nature.

Meanwhile, we continue to wash our hands
with the blood of our brothers and sisters.






*Chapter 1, Fractured Memories