lost sketches

death was not so much final as it was finished

like a chalked profile slowly filled

with asphalt and aspirations

blackness as texture and tone

the mixture for pencils broken in desperation

upon the outlined emptiness

within the outstretched hands

(the grabbing and pulling back)…

we sometimes die like unfinished sketches.

I can see him sitting in the basement

in the darkness, for long periods of time

staring at the dusty, webbed, gray paper

(and the occasional unopenable window)

holding, caressing, the tinted skin

he had poured himself into

(brown like himself and just as fragile)

a prop for the art,

the partial depictions of the man

that he had run away from,

of the man he had become,

with each stroke that he didn’t make her

scream out his favorite portrait,

or simply appraise him as a man

within the walls of that gallery

(uneven alley of self-portraits bought and sold)

where each of their works were displayed

(it was her motions that often formed

the brush, if not her tongue)…

there is that portrait on the elder’s wall

confirming that he had compared sketches with the sun

and had exchanged notes with leaves that fell out of season

beauty both portrayed and betrayed, turned against,

within the walls of that gallery

(collections of reproduced conscience bought and sold)

where his profane works were the most celebrated…

we are sometimes forgotten like lost sketches.

Conservatives: Osama Bin Laden’s favorite Americans?

This video is from Thom Hartmann’s show that took place on January 6, 2010.

Thom makes the point that, with his nationally televised address to the nation on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter set America on a course towards ending its dependency on foreign oil. Thom adds that this country was just a year away from ending the importation of oil from the Persian Gulf.

What type of world would we be living in today if that effort had been successful? Unfortunately we will never know. And why is that? Because Ronald Reagan came into office the following year and the big money that came from oil compelled him to rollback Carter’s energy policy and send this country down a path that is costing human beings their lives and the American taxpayer massive amounts of money to this very day. 

As Hartmann succinctly points out, Reagan’s policy made this country more dependent on Mideast oil, dictating an American presence in the Middle East that led to the emergence of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda as social and political forces in the Middle East.

Notice that Thom’s guest- Dinesh D’Souza, former policy analyst for Ronald Reagan- tried to make the argument that America was only interested in establishing “stability” in the Middle East, which Hartmann easily shot down with some history points, particularly the U.S. government’s involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953. This took place not long after Iran’s Prime Minister (Mohammad Mosaddegh) decided to kick American oil companies out of the country and exclusively control and benefit from the resources of their own land. 

Bin Laden’s stated goal is to “bankrupt America,” which he is pretty much succeeding in doing in collaboration with conservative and corporate profit-driven forces in this country. If Bin Laden is astute enough to recognize how easily these forces can be manipulated to the detriment of American citizens, then it’s imperative that we become even more astute…