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CounterPunch
November
23, 2002
Abraham & Franz: a sestina
by ADAM ENGEL
How long since Kafka served Lincoln
In the New World, at Civil War, when Kafka
Lead murderous troops from Georgia to Paris?
Stonewall Jackson died and Lee released the dove.
Abe and Franz shared a succulent blood orange
Of victory while Grant swayed drunkenly at "attention."
Though many historians pay hard
attention
To the manic, melancholy life of Lincoln
They neglect to mention his blazing orange
bowtie and his boon companion, Kafka.
Nor have any written of Abe's love for Dove
Ice-cream bars consumed outdoors in Paris.
Kafka's dream was to win in love,
like Paris,
Whom he much preferred to Meneleus. "Attention:
Better to woo Beauty, soaring graceful like a dove,
Than win her through grim slaughter, eh, Lincoln?"
Said the hopelessly romantic General Kafka.
Lincoln, depressed, beat Custer with an orange.
When a special White House screening
of A Clockwork Orange
failed to break Abe's mood, they tried Last Tango in Paris.
Abe remained sullen, and all eyes turned to Kafka
Who chose a pen and paper as his locus of attention.
Finally a smile stretched the brilliant, goofy face of Lincoln
When razor-toothed Ozzy bit deep into a dove,
And scrubbed the black blood
away with moisturizing Dove.
"I'd like to show that fellow my heavy metal orange
T-shirt, but he's a big celebrity and I'm just Lincoln,"
Said Abe. "One day we'll share café-au-lait in Paris.
But so many loose ends, like Civil War, merit my attention.
If only I could delegate the heavy stuff to Kafka.
That idea for a Penal Colony
for recidivist Rebels was pure Kafka."
Yet Kafka was too busy reading Pynchon, Kleist, Wings of the
Dove,
And orchestrating trials and executions at the Castle, to pay
attention
To weary Lincoln's yearning for simplicity and Duck L'Orange.
But finally Franz assented to an all-expense paid trip to Paris
and the two packed beer and snacks into Honest Abe's used Lincoln.
The trip was dreary for Kafka.
He threw Cheez Doodles at Lincoln,
who lost his attention at the wheel and crashed into an orange
crate, liberating a dove, which morphed into a Beetle over Paris.
Adam Engel can be reached at: asengel@attglobal.net
Memorialize This!
by IAN HARVEY
(Read at the gates of MacDill
AFB, home of the Central Command, Tampa, Florida, in Memorial
Day protest)
It isn't Dubya's endless war
A single dead civilian more
Than it was Bubba's, Tricky Dicky's,
George the Father's, or the Gipper's,
LBJ's or JFK's-
Those great and murky bygone days
Of FDR's and Wilson's glories,
Save the jingoistic stories,
Never were the GOP's
Or the others' with weak knees.
No U$ government alone
Can claim such murderous rape its own-
Enslavement, torture, exploitation,
All imperialist abomination
Launched from capitals by the few
With all the capital-the crew
At IBM, GE, World Bank,
Monsanto, Dole, their crimes are rank--
The IMF is never sated
With the land it's devastated--
Every piece they have an eye
on
Is the white man's burden, Zion--
Bantustan and barrio
Are tiny costs for so much flow
From sacred ground that's now a rez
To every bank, to every prez
Who holds it in the lost-and-found
For his handlers to whom he's bound
By greed and racist cruelty
Of settler states, but they will see
Their propaganda's going to fail
And human beings will prevail--
Workers won't behave like slaves
And kill each other for these knaves,
Who train us well to kill and plunder
For democracy, a wonder-
Youth won't blow themselves to
shreds
While their mullahs stay in bed,
"No casualty" will be a fact
As human beings make a pact
No matter what the bosses name
Their shit, our endless fight's the same
As it has always been, to keep
The planet from a poisoned sleep--
Ready when the bastards stumble,
Our solidarity won't crumble.
Truth they gag with brutal force
But we will set it free, of course--
And none of them can ever sever
Our hope and love that live forever.
Ian Harvey can be reached at: mmediamaniac@yahoo.com
Yesterday's
Features
Jason Leopold
Secrets
and Lies:
Bush, Cheney and the Great Rip-Off of California Ratepayers
Ali Moayedian
Letter
from Ayatollah Ashcroft to His CounterPart Ayatollah Shahroudi
of Iran
William MacDougal
Heroes and Villains:
The Sun, Saddam and the Fire Strike
Carol Norris
Secret
Burial for the Bill of Rights
4th Amendment R.I.P
Mark Hand
From Wal-Mart to Proudhon
Michael Neumann
Reflections
on Kant and Moral Equivalence
Philip Farruggio
The Dagger of Futility
Michael Rossman
The Betrayal
of Lenny Glaser
Michael Rossman
The Free Speech Movement & the Rossman Report:
A Memoir of Making History
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
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November 14,
2002
Edward Said
Europe vs.
America
Todd May
The Ironies of History
Paul de Rooij
US Aid to Israel
Feeding the Cuckoo
Ben Sonnenberg
Vertov's
Man With a Movie Camera
Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir
Transfer's Real Nightmare
Martin van
Creveld
Sharon's Last Option
Walter Brasch
Scoring the US/Iraq War
Michael S.
Ladah
The Burning Sails of Baghdad
Don Moniak
An Open Letter on the Augusta Golf
Course Campaign
George Fletcher
Is the UN Security Council Vote on Iraq Illegal?
Ralph Nader
A Tribute to Wellstone
Adam Engel
Mannahatta!
(A Tale of Two Cities)
Bernard, Engel, Dailey, St.
Clair
Poets' Basement
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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