
“Confrontation” by Werner Drewes
(Regarding the Charlottesville protest violence)
which is the twitch
to trigger oblivion
knobs of maniacal
red yellow green
black and white
flashing lights
insane signals
to throw them all
throttle arms
balls-to-the-wall
all the bonfire words
of automatons
burnt to hot cinders
in mouths of
a motorized terror
extreme right and left
pistoned impulses
hard driven hatreds
smash out against
symbols repugnant
intolerance mutual
placards and flags
hoisted high
on hysteria
fascist machines
confront
fascist behaviors
alike yet opposed
in pitched battle
for putative
high ground
across the deep
social divide
mighty engines
excited with power
from factions whose
steampunk moralities
scream in the cogs
of an overhot animus
gears gnash and tear
in a terrible grinding of
clockwork catastrophe
violent implosions
send disarranged
metals and minds
cutting swaths
through the firmament
maiming the flesh
of philosophy
killing the discourse
annealed by opinion
a bloodletting
garish and crude
apparatus of intellect
shattered and scattered
among the mechanical
corpses who litter
an ungodly ground
and the rest of us
here in the smelted
political middle
deserving of wounds
count as casualties
absolutely
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appreciate the affirmation
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So powerful.
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many thanks
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You’re welcome.
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This is one of your best. I can see that a lot of thought and work went into it.
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I appreciate that very much
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Super poem and excellent choice for the image!
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much appreciated
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There are astute angry words in this piece that demands to be read, and read again. A great pity that the man at the top hasn’t taken a leaf out of your book.
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to twist an old idiom – some men can’t see the leaves for the forest
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Fantastic use of words and imagery but a bit of false equivalency?
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I don’t believe so, keith – but it is rather complicated
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Appropriately steel edged words. I feel the anger powering your eloquence. Thanks for voicing what I am feeling.
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it’s such a heartbreaking time
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Your language is always passionate–I could feel the heat in this. I watched a newscast about this event/incident, and just kept mumbling, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand”…what is the purpose for all this violence? Why is it necessary, to make individual points? And I keep thinking of Rodney King: “Can’t we all just get along?”
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not much to understand, I think, except that evil people must invariably follow their despicable nature
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Yes, sounds so simple–but yet I can’t grasp what it must be like to live so monstrously. I have my demons, but I would never unleash them on crowds of innocent people…
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Powerful social commentary for a nation that has never dealt with the realities of its past . .
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as a nation, I think we have dealt with the institutional racism – it’s the personal racism that continues to plague us – the first amendment is as troublesome as it is sacred – but regardless free speech, violence, enacted or fomented, MUST be aggressively prosecuted – and we don’t seem to be doing so, whether it stems from the hateful extremists on right or on left
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Excellent poetry, compassionate but wrongheaded – ‘fascist machines confront fascist behaviors’. Fascist machines confront egalitarian civilization. If it’s the 1930s, stop it being 1933 or it will soon be 1939.
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thanks kindly, but I would respectfully disagree
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God bless!
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