Saul Williams delivered "Bloodletting":
the greatest americans
have not been born yet
they are waiting patiently
for the past to die...
that dummy that sits
on your lap
is no longer
a worthy spectacle
his shrunken pale face
leaves little room for imagination
we have spotted your moving lips
and pinned the voice to its proper source
it is a source of madness
a source of hunger for power
a source of weakness
a source of evil
we have exited your coliseum
and are surrounding your box office
demanding our families back
our language back
our rituals back
our gods back...

Authentic Corporate Poetry

You worked endless hours,
And we treasure your devotion,
On behalf of Rydee Corporation,
Allow all of us to congratulate you on your promotion!

It isn't a surprise,
For your endeavors were so well meant,
That R&R Hammock Company
Takes pride in making you Vice President.
Congratulations!

Your ingenuity,
Has had club members in elation!
We honor you tonight,
For all that you've done for the Association!


MARCH OF DEATH
I was born with the voice of a riot, a storm
lightening the function, the form, far from the norm
I won't follow like cattle, I'm more like the catalyst
calm in the mix of battle
who let the cowboy o­n the saddle? He don't know a
missle from a gavel;
para terror troopin flippin loops of death upon innocent flesh
but I'm back in the cipher my foes and friends, witha verse and a pen
against a line I won't toe or defend, instead I curse at murderous men
in suits of professionals who act like animals
this man child, ruthless and wild
who gonna chain this beast back o­n the leash?
this Texas furor, for sure a, compassionless con who
serve a , lethal needle to the poor, the cure for crime is murder?
on the left, left, right, left
but it's just a march of death
I read the news today, oh boy, a snap shot of a midnight ploy
vexed and powerless, devoured my hours I'm motionless with no rest
'cause a scream now holds the sky, under another high-tech driveby
a lie is a lie this God is an eagle or a condor for war nothing more
Islam peace, Islam stare into my eye brother please off our knees
to beef now we feed their disease, interlocked our hands across seas
what is a flag but a shroud out loud, and outside my window is a faceless
crowd
'cause a cowering child just took her last breath, o­n snare in the march
of death
on the left, left, right, left
but it's just a march of death
here it comes the sound of terror from above
he flex his Texas twisted tongue
the poor lined up to kill in desert slums
for oil that burn beneath the desert sun
now we spit flame to flip this game
we are his targets taking aim
we're the targets taking aim
all his targets are taking aim
Download March of Death.mp3


serpentine

pavlov hits me with more bad news
every time i answer the phone
so i play and i sing and i just let it ring
all day when i'm at home
a defacto choice of macro
or microcosmic melancholy
but, baby, any way you slice it
i'm thinkin i could just as soon use
the time alone

yes, the goons have gone global
and the CEOs are shredding files
and the democrins and the republicrats
are flashing their toothy smiles
and uncle tom is posing for a photo op
with the oval office clan
and uncle sam is rigging cockfights
in the promised land
and that knife you stuck in my back is still there
it pinches a little when i sigh and moan
and these days i'm thinkin i could just as soon use
the time alone

cuz all the wrong people have the power
of suggestion
and the freedom of the press is meaningless
if nobody asks a question
i mean, causation by definition
is such a complex compilation of factors
that to even try to say why
is to oversimplifly
but that's a far cry, isn't it dear?
from acting like you're the only one there
unrepentantly self-centered and unfair
enter all suckers scrambling for the scoop
exit mr. eye contact
who took his flirt and flew the coop
but whatever
no matter
no fishin trips
no fishin
cuz mamma's officially out of commission
and did i mention
in there
somewhere
did i mention
somewhere
in there
that i traded babe ruth?
yes, i traded the only player that was bigger than the game
and i can't even tell you why
cuz you'd think i'm insane
and that's the truth

and the music industry mafia is pimping girl power
sniping off their sharpshooter singles from their styrofoam towers
and hip hop is tied up in the back room
with a logo stuffed in its mouth
cuz the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house
but then
i'm getting away from myself
as i get closer and closer to home
and these days i'm thinkin
i could just as soon use
the time alone

an i must admit
today my inner pessimist
seems to have got the best of me
we start out sugared up on kool-aid and manifest destiny
and we memorize all the president's names
like little trained monkeys
and then we're spit into the world
so many spinny-eyed t.v. junkies
incapable of unravelling the military industrial mystery
preemptively pacified with history book history
an i've been around the world now
and i can see this about america
the mind control is steep here, man
the myopia is deep here

and behold
those that try to expose the reality
who really try to realize democracy
are shot with rubber bullets and gassed off the streets
while the global power brokers are kept clean and discreet
behind a wall
behind a moat
and that is all
that's all she wrote

an my heart beats an sss o o o sss
cuz folks just couldn't care care care less less less
as long as every day is superbowl sunday
and larger than life women in lingerie
are pouting at us from every bus stop
shelovesme shelovesmenot shelovesme shelovesmenot...

and "big government should not stand between a man and his money"
cuz "what's good for business is good for the country"

our children still take that lie like communion
the same old line the confederacy used on the union

conjugate liberty
into libertarian
and medicate it
associate it
with deregulation
privatization
we won't even know we're slaves
on a corporate plantation
somebody say hallelujah!
somebody say damnation!
cuz the profit system follows the path of least resistance
and the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked
makes it serpentine
capitalism is the devil's wet dream
so just give me my judy garland drugs
and let me get back to work
cuz the empire state building
is the tallest building in new york
and i always got the feeling
you just liked to hear it fall

off your tongue

but i remember my name

in your mouth
and i don't think i was done
hearing it close to my ear
on a whisper's way to a moan
but pavlov hits me with more bad news every time i answer the phone
so i play and i sing and i just let it ring all day when i'm at home

a defacto choice of macro
or microcosmic melancholy
but baby, any way you slice it
i'm thinkin i could just as soon use
the time alone

words and music by ani difranco © 2003 righteous babe music / BMI
to listen to “serpentine,” go to http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/evolve/index.asp

State of the Union, 2003


I have not been to Jerusalem,
but Shirley talks about the bombs.
I have no god, but have seen the children praying
for it to stop. They pray to different gods.
The news is all old news again, repeated
like a bad habit, cheap tobacco, the social lie.
The children have seen so much death
that death means nothing to them now.
They wait in line for bread.
They wait in line for water.
Their eyes are black moons reflecting emptiness.
We've seen them a thousand times.
Soon, the President will speak.
He will have something to say about bombs
and freedom and our way of life.
I will turn the TV off. I always do.
Because I can't bear to look
at the monuments in his eyes.

SAM HAMILL



America
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again. 		Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta tions.

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Allen Ginsberg, Berkeley, January 17, 1956

Deer Dance

Circumventing circuses,
Lamenting in protest,
To visible police,
Presence sponsored fear,
Battalions of riot police,
With rubber bullet kisses,
Baton courtesy,
Service with a smile
Beyond the Staples Center you can see America,
With its tired, poor, avenging disgrace,
Peaceful, loving youth against the brutality,
Of plastic existence.
Pushing little children,
With their fully automatics,
They like to push the weak around,
Pushing little children,
With their fully automatics,
They like to push the weak around.
Round, Round,
A rush of words,
Pleading to disperse,
Upon your naked walls, alive,
A political call,
The fall guy accord,
We can't afford to be neutral on a moving train,
Beyond the Staples Center you can see America,
With its tired, poor, avenging disgrace,
Peaceful, loving youth against the brutality,
Of plastic existence.
A deer dance, invitation to peace,
War staring you in the face, dressed in black.
With a helmet, fierce,
Trained and appropriate for the malcontents,
For the disproportioned malcontents,
The little boy smiled, it'll all be well,
The little boy smiled it'll all be well,
Pushing little children,
With their fully automatics,
They like to push the weak around.

-- System of a Down