I wanted to comment on a savage and disturbing incident in California, where a homeless man was beaten to death by the police, who asphyxiated him, while attempting to detach themselves from their own violence by utilizing the language of 'procedure.' T
COPS
Being forced to eat
the chocolate covered moths of humiliation...
Here in the glacial valley,
supine like a cowed slave
beneath regel parapets
of shiny unforgiving stone(ice really)—
we murder here:
men, unshaven and prostrated,
dissembling in glowering mists of cold sweat;
oxen, still tethered to splintered wooden yolks;
a small child, a girl maybe, six or seven years old,
her hands shaking like a paper fan
across her face: We kill them all.
We turn them on their stomachs
and roll them
like balls of fresh mutton
across a sterile packing
of white snow—
except for animals,
who are skinned and
smoked, the flesh
hung to dry where
everyone can see.
This is called allegory.
Offend the gods;
insult the integrity
of the story told
through our eyes about
these ice-capped prairies,
with their sealed lids
like cooking pots filled
with fresh fish;
mock inchoate nostalgia
with unfettered innocence;
chip away at the hard-pack
beneath the hooves
of skittish herds
of caribou
until the mountains avalanche
and create a new word—
contingency;
We will kill you
for these favors
which you do for posterity—
an abstraction with no meaning.
The world is now,
and we are the law.
We are the chisel
and you
the wet stone.
You are
the meat
we digest
in our mouths...
JZRothstein 8/27/2013
(republished on 1/17/2014)
Poetry by Jeffrey Z Rothstein
Read 831 times
Written on 2014-01-17 at 20:12
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COPS
A description of uncontested powerCOPS
Being forced to eat
the chocolate covered moths of humiliation...
Here in the glacial valley,
supine like a cowed slave
beneath regel parapets
of shiny unforgiving stone(ice really)—
we murder here:
men, unshaven and prostrated,
dissembling in glowering mists of cold sweat;
oxen, still tethered to splintered wooden yolks;
a small child, a girl maybe, six or seven years old,
her hands shaking like a paper fan
across her face: We kill them all.
We turn them on their stomachs
and roll them
like balls of fresh mutton
across a sterile packing
of white snow—
except for animals,
who are skinned and
smoked, the flesh
hung to dry where
everyone can see.
This is called allegory.
Offend the gods;
insult the integrity
of the story told
through our eyes about
these ice-capped prairies,
with their sealed lids
like cooking pots filled
with fresh fish;
mock inchoate nostalgia
with unfettered innocence;
chip away at the hard-pack
beneath the hooves
of skittish herds
of caribou
until the mountains avalanche
and create a new word—
contingency;
We will kill you
for these favors
which you do for posterity—
an abstraction with no meaning.
The world is now,
and we are the law.
We are the chisel
and you
the wet stone.
You are
the meat
we digest
in our mouths...
JZRothstein 8/27/2013
(republished on 1/17/2014)
Poetry by Jeffrey Z Rothstein
Read 831 times
Written on 2014-01-17 at 20:12
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
