March 20, 2008

• ElectricPoetry: Politics and Perfidy

  

  Let Freedom Ring
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  3/20/08 6:25 a.m. pdt

  
  Call me liberty, or call me death

  I have been breathing free air
  Under cover of oppression
  For millennia, marking my time.

  I wade along the shores
  Of stagnant repression
  Endlessly searching for chance

  The monarchs and dictators
  Who banned free election
  Made living without borders a crime

  No person can be comfortable
  Rising from recession
  When threatened by sword, gun, and lance

  Call me freedom, or kill me now

  I spread my influence wide
  Although trapped by a wall of fate
  Injecting hope to calm trembling fear

  I whisper into the ears of prophets and seers
  Never thinking for once that I’m too late
  Watching the hard fist of force’s final fall

  I speak through brave men and women
  Feebly grasping love through hate
  And fighting hard to hold back the tear

  But centuries pass with no heed taken
  No open arms to freedom at the gate
  And broken pomises go wating after all

  Call me human hope, or snuff my life

  From the scattered fields of Rome’s influence
  From the burnt landscape of Moorish dominance
  From the Americas’ burden under Britain
  From India, and Palestine,
  From Tibet, and Burma, and Iraq
  Ever escaping the beast
  Slouching toward Irrationality
  I have attempted a dialogue with sanity
  I have been crushed with inanity
  I will not give up
  As long as the breath of free air
  Is still evident in the fields of dreams.

   

  “Failing to Bridge the Gap”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  1971 (17 years old)

  
  They’re talking at me through the plastic barrier.
  They’re yelling at me through the plastic barrier.
  They’re screaming at me through the plastic barrier.
  But the sound appears muffled
  And their voices cannot reach my ears.

  They’re talking sensibly from the other side
  Of the plastic barrier.
  They’re yelling obscenities through the cloud
  Of the plastic barrier.
  They’re screaming with pain from the distance
  Of the plastic barrier.
  But they’re the only ones who know it,
  And their voices cannot reach my ears.

  They tire of their bombasts
  Through the plastic barrier.
  So they talk to each other on their side
  Of the plastic barrier.
  And the ideas they exchange come from their side
  Of the plastic barrier.
  And they walk away slowly
  Leaving me on this side alone.

   

  
  “The BlackandBrownandYellow Conspiracy”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  1971 (17 years old)

  
  Hey there nigger sitting on the lawn
  Go away, you’re dirtying the place.
  Hey, boy, nigger, get up, run away,
  Get the white smile off your face.
  You know your place.

  Hey mick, sheeny, spic flee the country now.
  Chink, hunk, wop now go along.
  Dirty greased Chicano, take yourself back home.
  Coming to our country was wall wrong.
  Don’t sing my song.

  This is the blackandbrownandyellow conspiracy.
  The prejudiced American tune.
  Love your neighbor as long as he is white,
  And if he’s not tell him to get out soon.

  Who they fooling, raise the flag
  It’s not his bag
  He wears a rag
  He hears them nag
  He’s blackandbrownandyellow
  And he lives like all the rest
  But he finds it hard to
  Build himself a nest.

  Come from Mexico City with
  A brown fist full of proud
  Come from Africa all black
  The same fist raised up high
  Come from anywhere at all
  Don’t know what to think
  When the whiteys intercept the call.

  Nigger run away they say
  They’re white of all religions
  All beliefs.

  They only know they crow
  Who cares for any other person’s
  Griefs.

  Hallelujah step up high
  Give your brother a hand
  Be he blackandbrownandyellow
  He’s a part of this land.

  Please don’t you sing the prejudiced American tune
  If you speak love to your friend
  For all the people say they love their brother
  And to all the other races hate is all they send.

   

  “Optimistic Pessimism”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  August 25, 1983 5:05 p.m.

  
  Waiting wistful long whiles for fulfillment
  Engineering calm dreams of desire
  Transcend moments of careless tired torment
  Throw tons of wet sand on the fire

  I gave my all
  A quiet pall
   adorns the presence
   Effervescence
   Seems to decay
  Blowing all the cardboard fools away

  I stand in the sand alone and at peace
  Engineering calm dreams of serenity
  Transcend tired moments with herculean ease
  A cornerstone breadth of mass sanity

  I gave up a long time ago
  Rusty waters through the wet sands flow
   But here I stand
   With outstretched hand
   Seems to decay
  Blowing all the cardboard fools away

  Echoes rally forth from timeless seas
  Engineering calm dreams with an urge
  Transcend timeless moments with exorbitant fees
  And write the words in the sand of a dirge

   

  “Evolution and History:
  Poem for the New Year 2003
  (The Outline for Existence)”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  January 19, 2003 10:17 am

  
  Energy
  Geology
  Life
  Evolution
  History

  These are the building blocks of existence
  As we know it
  As we understand it
  And as we are living it

  At first, all is universal
  As before,
  And for all time.

  Geology lasts for a long time
  And sets the stage for life
  Life began from energy
  And life evolves
  From one aspect of existence to the next.
  As life, and mankind in particular, lives,
  and dies,
  and propogates the race of man into times unknown
  and uncertain
  History is written
  For the good and for the shame of mankind.

  First building blocks of understanding

  Energy is vast and formless
  Precise and volatile
  Creator and destroyer
  Unharnessed
  Or perhaps just reinventing itself
  Energy crystallizes into spinning orbs of light heat and matter
  An infinite number of these orbs,

  These stars and planets,
  these building blocks of the tangible universe
  These orbs spin and cool and solidify,
  Our Earth cooled,
  And the long process of formation,
  For landscape and for mankind,
  Began with an ironclad dichotomy of purpose.

  Earth, Gaia, Mother Nature,
  and
  Man, Humankind, Intelligence, and Naivete

  Life as it evolved on Earth gives the human race the edge.
  An edge so sharp it can cut the very fabric of the planet on which the human race exists.
  And at the time I write, this cut is fairly deep, and the rift has began to change
  the planet.

  Evolving with the speed of ignorance, humankind
  Began to believe he was smarter than everyone else, including his neighbors,
  Who always disagreed.

  History proves one thing.
  There were a couple or more paths travelling through history which
  in retrospect shouldn’t have been taken by anybody,
  And these paths have driven the babbling incoherent explanations of the
  Reasons behind why the masses travelled upon their disastrous ways
  Into an unbearably doomed vision of a divided future,
  Where nobody ever agrees.
  In fact, the powerful have always been able to decimate the unbelievers.
  History proves this.
  Yet it’s always repeating itself.

  A cosmic lesson which never gets learned.
  It’s about time the teacher comes back into the classroom.

  ---

  BEHIND THE POETRY: “Let Freedom Ring” was written about an hour ago. It is a personification of the idea of liberty. The first line of the poem is a bastardization of American patriot Patrick Henry’s famous quote. I’ve also cribbed part of a famous line by William Butler Yeats further into the poem. This poem rhymes, but it’s pretty subtle. The second and third pieces were written in high school. I don’t think I’ve ever posted “The BlackandBrownandYellow Conspiracy” before. “Optimistic Pessimism”, from 1983, is not overtly political, but describes my feelings of uselessness in the face of seeming oppressive forces. The last poem, besides the first, is more current, written at the beginning of the century. It is the prologue to the ambitious “Outline for Existence” series, which has not yet been finished. MFN/ppf

  • 10:25 am
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