Tuesday, April 19, 2016











On
ce for a Thousand Years
(Butcher Bloc Bingo)
 


Once a long time ago things got so very slow
Went down to Guantanamo and built me an Alamo
Built me an Alamo down in Guantanamo
To stand for the status quo to Tierra del Fuego

Saw a land called Chile, a man named Pinochet
Who behaved that way thanks to our CIA
Saw a ghost named Allende behaving so friendly
He was killing me gently ever so absently

Took one look at Brazil, the USA off the pill
Indians still to kill, still adding the bill
Saw Rio de Janeiro from the ground in a turbo
All the tinshack condos on Free Enterprise Row

Sailed to old Venezuela on the back of a white whale
Left a petroleum trail delivering the U.S. mail
Then dancing a cumbia went to Colombia
Quoting Rumi and creating Vietnamia

Cruised into Guyana on the back of a piranha
An unshaven bwana to gather the manna
Saw the old Amazon fight the personal liaison
From the side with the jam on for the battle with Mammon

Went to El Salvador found out what’s the dollar for
Fill the rich and kill the poor in a monopoly capitalist holy war
Inside our Honduras where our best people assure us
It’s safe for the tourists they'll scarcely endure us

Just got back from new Grenada acted like the Marquis de Sade
Used island for cannon fodder, killed a bunch of sons and daughters
Ran into St. Stanislaus on his way back from Panama
Reading George Bernard Shaw on his way to the Mardi Gras

Learned all about Cuba while watching the tube
A brainwashed boob sitting there in my cube
Tried to starve them out and poison their trout
That’s what we’re about while we shoot off our mouth

Given a stick or a carrot and forced then to bear it
Which one has more merit and which one would just tear it
Then consider it's your mother with no choice and no druther
And the same for your brother would you choose the other

Out in the side yard strolled the National Guard
Where the scenery is marred because justice is barred
Out in the side yard do not let down your guard
Some Alabama wild card bayonet you real hard

Back in the front yard all the media bards
Show you all the marked cards fill your head up with lard
Back in the front yard there are feathers and tar
Put your bod behind bar put your mind in a jar

Saw the gringos with guns fill up Greyhounds with nuns
Leave the land of the huns to sell hamburger buns
Met a man named Sam lost a gonad in Nam
Lost his nerve in Iran has a head like a frying pan

Met a great nation of sheep still fast asleep
Listening to some new creep up on top of the heap
Met a man named boy thought he was Tolstoy
Often mad and annoyed with some other paranoid

Met a history of lies of indivisible size
With footnotes and asides in whispers and cries
Met a humankind nearly out of its mind
Hitting you from behind taking what it can find

Met some fading dreams in some mixed-up schemes
still trying to scream while stopping midstream
Met a sad pacifist and a happy fascist
Who together found bliss reading Reader’s Digest

Overheard an old gringo who’d been living as a dingo
Reinvent a war game and call it Butcher Bloc Bingo
Gringo gringo gringo all in the name of jingo
You butcher people anywhere you can learn the lingo
Uncle Sam is damned so damned for its Butcher Bloc Bingo

B is for the Butchery.
I is for the Ingles.
N is for the Nihilism.
G is for the Gold.
O is for the Oil we suck from Venezuela, Ecuador & Mexico

Butcher Bloc Bingo
Soon you see where the recruits go
Where they will get shot and get jungle rot
Where freedom is not there’s cheap coke and great pot
And United Fruit’s corporate criminal roots
And mucho toot for the generals' mucho loot
It’s colonial booty our imperial duty
It’s ready fire aim in a genocidal shame
It’s a freeze frame of guilt and righteous blame
With massacres with specific names
El Mozote and others of infamous fame
It’s still cavalry versus Indians
And Calvary for peasants and nuns
A gift from the glorious pale nation
In its latest manifest dustbin mutation
It’s no wonder the peasants run
Here come the haughty free press puns
Bananas and nuns cocoa and the runs
There must be some other way to have fun
Than Butcher Bloc Bingo

Why the guaranteed calamity
And planned chaotic infamy
With zealous Christian infantry
So jealous of infinity
All counting each extremity
And with a banjo on each knee
To string along the not-so-free
Plain acting like a Yanqui

Yanqui, Yanqui, Yanqui
More stubborn than a donkey
You get the drools such able fools
And continue till you are the ghouls
Strangling your own freedom rules
And tearing down with all your tools
Gone to lengths that are so honky
Why are you like this Yanqui
Too fond of hanky panky?
Which are you Drac or Frankie
Have you lost the art or lost your heart
You’re leaving out the peaceful part
Why are you like this Yanqui
Are you asking for a spanky
What makes you so blamed cranky

A
fterword

And not to shout but to leave no doubt
Our path to war's now a Southern States route
If you want to know what our wars are about
Just hear the fears from a good ol' boy's mouth
It's 'the enemy this' and the hatreds they tout
If they don't get wars soon just watch them all pout
peacetime for them is a long hard drought

And they're not alone just pick up the phone
Dial a number at random turn over that stone
Most people believe what they most want to hear
Especially the things that they most want to fear
They'll listen all day to a rational voice
And that night make an irrational choice

Still the new Confederated Heathen South
and its allied midwestern and western louts
have begun their own vengeful March to the Sea
having never learned how to really be free
and never confessed the grim reality
that they are still wrong and without empathy.


Larry Piltz
Summer of 1984
Austin, Texas

Thursday, April 7, 2016




April 7, 2016 Indian Cove

Lots of little lime green caterpillars these days
inching their way up nearly invisible threads
twisting themselves back and forth higher and higher
climbing the equivalent of hundreds of stories.

Two swimming duck parents
lead five or six unfledged ducklings
to a small newly forming marsh island
teaching sheltering each day.

Sun is about to drop behind
the tall bluff across the cove.
The cove the heart and center
of mostly unseen life.

Duck family now moves along the opposite bank
then dashes exposed to the far side of the cove
ducklings in tow then darting here and there
all heading up the creek for dusk and seclusion.

Fish jump at water striders skipping along.
A few bats and small swept-winged birds
swoop after tiny flying specks of consciousness.
Merrily merrily merrily it's almost night's turn to dream.

Ah the first bullfrog herald
four or five warm-up tuning croaks
gets the jump on the competition
as sun becomes a backlit glow.

A slight chill breeze arrives exactly now
catching songbird attention and initiating conversations
among the canopy and from tree to tree
the conversants sometimes gliding to share a branch.

Kingfisher is first heard then seen
standing on the very tip of a thin bare branch
stretching outward low above the twilight cove
listening for commonality and direction

She pauses before launching laterally
and muscularly into the accepting air
on her acrobatic staccato twittering way
to her next standing appointment.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016



What We See of War Is Its Shadow's Reflection

The living cannot see war.
Only the dead can see war.

The living see only the reflection of war's shadow
even among the mayhem of ruined bodies, lives and countries,
seeing only intimations of war and feeling only an estimation of regret.

Only the dead see and feel war firsthand
and die with envy of those who have not yet..
The same can be said of life.


Larry Piltz
Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
September 9, 2011

                                                                   Mother and daughter