Thinking of GOP Candidates — Auguries of Disingenuousness
Auguries of Disingenuousness
(US GOP Presidential Candidates as of December 2015)
To see a world in a grain of sand,
don’t make it glow with carpet-bombs.
To flower heaven in your hand,
don’t turn strewn rocks into lined tombstones.
Eternity’s cut by every hour
that we barter off the soul–
the harlot’s cry quite overpowered
by those who’d hawk our all.
Burnishing our fears with bling,
combing bald hates with shine,
they boast they’ll get us everything,
snaking oil o’er twists of spine.
But the grains that hold the world they see
are measurements of ammo–
Oh good lord, please save me
from their deserts of glow-woe,
from their plasticked deserts of woe.
(Optional refrain: oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh-woh/oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh=woh–)
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Not sure about the rhythms at the end of this one, but here’s a poem originally inspired by Kerry O’Connor’s Real Toads prompt and based very very very loosely on William Blake’s poem, the Auguries of Innocence (that begins with “to see the world in a grain of sand”–and finding heaven in a wildflower and moves on to the winding sheet woven by the harlot’s cry.) My offering for Real Toads Open Link Platform.
The pic is mine; not sand, but detailed (ha.)
Process notes–a grain is a weight used for measurement of propellant in bullets and other projectile weaponry; plastic refers to all kinds of things of course, but also certain explosives.
Explore posts in the same categories: news, poetry, UncategorizedTags: Auguries of Disingenuousness, combed over hate, GOP field 2015 a desert, manicddaily, Not Blake, save us from the glowing deserts
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ManicDDaily 
December 15, 2015 at 8:07 am
Alas.. we seem to have chosen to many diverging roads.. and most of us stretched thing trying to stay put from that pull of fabricated hate… I wonder if it will end before we can find something new…
December 15, 2015 at 8:40 am
the harlot’s cry quite overpowered
by those who’d hawk our all…. Great lines there.
December 15, 2015 at 8:52 am
Perfect political twist on Blake, especially the opening–also like ‘bald hate’ which suggests pate but is also so true, and several other adroit little bits of word play. i very much fear we are living out the old Chinese curse of ‘living in interesting times.’ Historians of the future may well mark this year as the turning point for America’s democratic experiment.
December 15, 2015 at 11:52 am
Wow! This is so cleverly done, Karin. The allusions to Blake, give it a classical flair but the references to present day politics raises the whole to the best kind of satire.
I laughed out loud at: Burnishing our fears with bling,
combing bald hates with shine…. Not hard to figure out which politician you are referencing.
December 15, 2015 at 12:09 pm
Thank you, Kerry–yes, I was thinking of him with the comb over, but they are honestly all very belligerant. It was Ted Cruz who spoke about carpet-bombing till he could find out if sand would glow. Why in the world would one boast about wanting to actually destroy any piece of the planet? k.
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 11:52 AM, ManicDDaily wrote:
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December 16, 2015 at 6:02 am
They would hawk our all, they would. Love this, Karin. Watch out for that tyger, argh! But you know, the most extreme make the rest seem moderate, if you’re not paying attention, which most people certainly aren’t. The problem there is not just with one candidate (not that you are saying this here). Gah, what have we done?
December 16, 2015 at 6:59 pm
Very clever, K!
December 17, 2015 at 4:22 am
Very ballistically put and meaningless to that krewe of war crows. They want a coward’s war — B52s a safe mile in the sky dropping carpet bombs on a humanity, rendering bone back to sand. And all they are puppet the insecurity and fear of a huge number of Americans that their party ended a long time ago … Anyway, the auguries of experience are on porches and VFA halls with limbs missing and minds half blown away from the IEDs that croon the overwhelming might of the west to the ground. Fine response to Marian’s prompt.