Blacksburgh, Virginia…
April 16, 2007
Cool, sunny morning and excited delirium
on campus.
The garden spoke red roses, columbines,
bleeding hearts, Virginia Creeper.
Black tag, black bag, no wasteland but a
cruel April in a Black town.
Break. Spring flesh, break muscle break
blood break bone break…
Angry ghoul emerges near mist pockets
above ley-line vortex of repressed rage
and psychotropic haze—
a mirage on the acreage of libido
buildings with limbic food
on foundations of books, bricks,
tuition, wood,
landscaped in young bodies,
spattered in terror blood, and window
leaps
like a morning of chaos in Manhattan.
Once the locked door to the dim world of
Thanatos has opened,
Only sunlight and vengeance can close
it.
Thirty-second time the illuminated
thresher
walked damnation’s barren plain
and he was the thirty-third Master.
What caliber of man was he who silenced
the songbirds and called the crows?
What Caliban dared destroy the island
instead of learning the Wizard’s way?
Project, graduation. Projectile
gradient.
Empty fraternity, doleful sorority.
Explosive pessimism, metal mechanism,
and mind control by media;
a birthday celebration for Spring,
but Winter retains his funeral shroud.
It’s 33 degrees in the caskets.
Thirty-three degrees on Spring Break
and Summer vacation for Eternity.
Winter takes Virgins in a Black town
and human blood fed to witness buildings
Where gardens of damaged people grow in
memory’s shadows.
-Robert Milby
May 2, 2007
Camp Casey:
Ode To Cindy Sheehan
In Europe, during the age of monarchies,
peasants camped in huts and squatter
hovels outside castles, and monasteries.
Mothers had no voice when sons were
shipped home dead from the Crusades, if
they were not fed to sovereign sands, or
sharks, or condemned with the undead, to
a forgotten abyss.
In America, during the age of monarchy,
a mother is camped outside Castle
Crawford.
She and the King have August off.
The king is off and rides expensive high
horses—in his odious Stetson crown, and
image pickup, drives property lines of
Castle Crawford, espousing the madness
of his estate.
The mother is off for the rest of her
life, since her son’s death in 2004.
A Monarch lies to his suggested
subjects.
The mother from California, mourns her
son and her nation, critically wounded
by courtiers to the crude King.
Veterans of the jungle crusade in
Southeast Asia,
gathered with the mother to subvert the
crude King’s prepared and stammered
lies.
The King’s black caravan, sped past
protestors in a screen of Texas dust as
the bold mother from California asked
her question; sung her insurrection to a
robber baron’s skull and bones.
She dared! Dared as many of her fellow
taxpayers across the country, remained
entranced by an administration’s
justification for war.
Justification for destruction.
Occupation by imperial soldiers, as
Jerusalem was by foreign
fighters—searching for a grail.
Her son’s death was…noble.
Roadside bombs, bunker busters,
block-by-block, house-by-house
firefights leaving tattered bodies of
mothers and children are…
Noble.
Her son’s life was…expendable.
The King and Queen’s princesses are
noble.
In the mists of drunken frat parties,
debutante balls, ivy league
affiliations,
The king’s daughters have not signed up
for the honor of depleted uranium,
Abu Graib or a massacre in Fallujah.
Prayer vigils held throughout the
kingdom, by candlelight, may not redress
grievances, or influence oil
shareholders and defense contractors,
yet
Cindy Sheehan was at first a single
candle, who did not need to curse the
darkness, but defy it!
-Robert Milby
August 19, 2005
Filling Station
Every gas pump, every grade, in every
state of the union, screams—
Each time the nozzle’s latch is opened
and the fury of the dead;
the Middle East’s meat grinder pours
into every solipsistic SUV,
each sedan, truck, bus, and hybrid.
Voices of American soldiers cry from the
hose and pump—
Pre-set, cash or credit,
But Iraqi and Afghan civilians cry the
louder,
Curse the patron; moan in forlorn
lamentation,
blotted out by running engines and
service centre radio poisons.
Voices in a gas can, voices in a riding
mower,
Shrieking diesel cargo trucks—selling
death on interstates
And country roads.
Every town, village and city—
freshly haunted in the American empire.
If few adults hear them, elderly shadows
do.
It is always children who do not
understand the political death
Trap, nor witness carnage on the home
front, yet they hear voices
Feel the terror in dreams; in sleep,
visionaries until the system
Fits them with workhorse blinders, dulls
their brains and bruises
Their hearts to the suffering innocents
of the invaded countries they are
trained not to
Find on maps, whose plunder fuels the
machine of future battalions—
Homegrown and processed at the pleasure
of the crude kings.
In every state of the union there are
filling stations.
Everywhere, there are stations, filling
with ghosts.
-Robert Milby
December 16, 2007
Brief Bio:
Robert Milby, of Florida, NY has
been reading his poetry
throughout the Hudson Valley, NY
and beyond, since March, 1995.
He is the author of 4 poetry
chapbooks. He has been published
in Home Planet News, Riverine,
Hunger Magazine, Will Work
for Peace, Hart, Fertile Ground,
Chronogram, The Hudson Valley
Literary Magazine, and has poems
appearing in the forthcoming
anthology: Voices From
Here(Paulinskill Poetry
Project). Currently, he
hosts poetry series at Joey’s
Café in Washingtonville, NY,
Mudd Puddle Café in New Paltz,
NY, Muddycup Coffeehouse,
Beacon, NY, Florida Public
Library in Florida, NY, and
Noble Coffee Roasters in
Campbell Hall, NY. He was the
invited poet at SUNY Oneonta, in
March 2003. Robert is a listed
poet with Poets and Writers,
Inc. His spoken word cd is
entitled: Revenant Echo(Sonotrope
Recordings, 2004)
His first book of poetry,
Ophelia's Offspring was
published in June, 2007 by
Foothills Publishing, Kanona,
NY. He writes for The
Delaware and Hudson Canvas.
He is a freelance thinker.
www.robertmilby.com |
