A Tiger In The Woods

If a Tiger lays down in the Woods,

Does it make a sound?

No morality clause needed,

Being human means we’re bound

To sully-up perfection, Shank

And Slice, mea culpa afterward,  

For Life ain’t always

Clean and Nice. 
 

Tiger wielded his Driver

From course to course,

Hitting mostly fairways.

Landing in the Sand Trap

Sometimes happens to a

Free Swinger. 
 

Seems it costs quite a bit of money

To swing the club at

Several holes, as opposed to

Settling for a Hole-In-One. 

Gerry Malone a.k.a. SubZeroPoet

A Poem to the Memory of Michael Jackson

We are all aware of the media feeding frenzy Michael's life became. We also remember how big of a music artist he was back in the 80's. We also remember the little boy with brown skin. But most of all, we will remember him for his musical legacy:

*Hey Mister Michael*

Hey Mister Michael, you didn’t walk the path.
Man you Beat It.
I Remember the Time when you mesmerized,
With Your Talent.

Hey Mister Michael, we will miss your dance-step,
You were Thriller!
Tried to Heal the World that couldn’t heal your soul,
Heal the healer.

Number one celebrity in the world,
That’s what you were.
Thrown into fame at an early age,
You Got To Be There.

Looks like every sufferance,
Eventually showed on your face,
Was it Human Nature for you
To feel out of place?

Tabloids and scribes tell of the
Many versions of Michael,
Talk forever they will because there will
Never be another like you.

We remember you Michael…
Pirouette-Spin…
Tippy-Toes…
Moonwalk…
R.I.P...

America and Race: The Obama Presidency

If there are those among us that think racism in America was on its deathbed with the election of Barack Obama to President of the United States, they should pay attention to the madness swirling around this country in regards to Obama being Black and President. If the craziness coming out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck of the Fox Network sounds outlandish, then it’s because it is. Obama has been called socialist, fascist, a Muslim and a Magical Negro by denizens of the Far Right. They are saying he is a failure although he has only been in office for 5 months. The Republican Party is in tatters and in the absence of anything worthwhile to say, they say the most outlandish things. I only wish this was craziness that could be easily dismissed, but the fact is that its not.

Let’s take a look beyond the numbers of the 2008 National Election from a race and ethnicity point of view:

• Whites make up 74% of all voters. 55% voted for McCain, 43% voted for Obama
• Blacks make up 13% of all voters. 95% voted for Obama, 4% voted for McCain
• Hispanics make up 9% of all voters. 67% voted for Obama, 31% voted for McCain
• Asians make up 2% of all voters. 62% voted for Obama, 35% for McCain

(Source: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html )

Final popular vote tallies were 66,862,039 for Obama versus 58,319,442 for McCain. Obama’s victory was very definitive, but he did not win because of a racial watershed moment in America. The fact is that the majority of white people voted for McCain and this was in the wake of Bush’s eight-year reign of ineptitude. Obama won because he was able to forge a coalition that was multi-racial. We can only wonder as to how many people that did not vote for Obama did not due to the fact that he was not white.

The point I am driving at is that there are lot of pissed-off people on the extreme Far-Right of the GOP that have convinced themselves that Obama’s presidency is not legitimate. The most-reported reason is that he was not born in the US, so therefore cannot be President. They think he is part of a global Muslim Brotherhood. In my opinion, these are all pseudo reasons, yet the real reason is that their idea of what an American president looks like is not Obama. Reports of gun sales going up immediately after last November’s election, to me is a sign of ugliness to come. Some of the ugliness has arrived already with the murder of George Tiller, the late-term abortion doctor and the killing of National Holocaust Museum security guard, Steven Johns. What makes this really scary is the fact that these sociopaths believe they have a noble cause in committing murder of people they deem worthy of dieing. I wonder how many of the crazies think Obama should be put to death because he was not their choice for President and he is Black.

Before there is a rush to judgment, let us consider and remember that all of us have a racial identity and at most times are aware of it. However, we don’t let it override our common sense and humanity to force us to treat people of different racial background in a negative and defeating manner. But just think, there are people that feel strongly enough about ethnicity and its power-dynamic in the history of the United States, to want to kill other people over it.

The November election night celebration held in Grant Park in downtown Chicago was a truly special moment for me because I was there to witness people of all ethnicities standing together to usher in a historic moment in America. It is we that know and understand that we are all in this together and that we must continue to show solidarity and hope that all of America joins us in making our country a better place to live for all. Together we formed a voting majority and won, however it is individually and collectively that we must keep each other from falling prey to simplistic thinking about people based on their skin color. Obama’s victory last November in no means signals the death knell for racism, but it was a step in the right direction. There is still a long way to go on that front. It’s just really unfortunate that such a moment has to be related to the ugliness to come.

Gerry Malone a.k.a SubZeroPoet

America, Land of The Cheat

With yesterday's news of Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers testing positive for a banned substance or PED, if you will, I started to again to wonder when will this steroids nightmare be over for baseball and other sports. Some of the biggest names in baseball (read as most successful) have been disgraced in recent years by cheating scandals. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, and now Manny Ramierez have either been caught cheating are under a cloud of suspicion that just won't go away. These guys were the heroes that everyone held up as being the very finest the sport of baseball had to offer. America's past-time had its better days in past times. But before we go headfirst into condemning baseball, let us ponder for a moment what this says about American culture at large. 

As we look around our culture, cheats are being uncovered everywhere. The current downturn in our financial system  is a result of some very "smart" guys turning the whole system into one big casino, except it was the coolest casino ever known to mankind - the suits on Wall Street were able to place bets with money they didn't have. Bets were extended that the house could not cover. And to top it off, after losing all of their money and ours they became recepients of a HUGE mulligan from the Federal Government and they got to stick the tab to you and me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Wall Street cheats are on welfare. 

Going back a few years during the run-up to the Iraq War, we were being told that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Years later, the WMDs were never found. President Bush and his men simply lied to the American people so they could have their war. That's cheating. Not to mention the numerous ties to Big Oil companies that many in the Bush Cabinet held, but when you think about how big Exxon Mobil and Shell's profits were during Bush's years, you have to wonder was there any connection to the oil guys and girls in Bush's inner circle? Hmmnn. No bid contracts in the Gulf Region awarded to former employers of Cheney. Not to mention the Enron and WorldCom fiascos.That's cheating. 

No sense in beating a dead horse to death, but in retrospect it seems that the steroids scandal in baseball and other sports were just a tip-off or a sign to a much larger problem in the fabric of Americana. In America, we love to win and we love the shortcut. I guess we should not be surprised at what happens when those two obsessions converge. 

Desire

Her energy flows toward me,
Arousing my inner essence.
Sweet musical moans speak
The language of passion.
Come to me, for me and with me.
Let us count time in ecstasy
Like verses of poetry, 
Rhythmically fitting.
Sing to me mi amor
Your primal song of desire.
From shadows composed of moonlight,
Light my internal fire.

Particles In The Stream

Particles in the Stream

 

The stream began in Space,

But Space is so unfathomable,

There is no way to focus on it.

 

Time, the ultimate trip,

A soldier worker-bee incessantly

Building and disintegrating,

Yes, even you, it has coordinates

stored for your demise.

Creator, forgive us for thinking

Earth had many lives.

 

The Future is Downstream,

And oh how the Rapids Roar

Mightily. If only I could stop pondering

The Cosmos...the existence..

The essence...its too Awesome.  

 

I have decided to look the

Abyss in the face, and am

No less in awe before the

Stare-down.

They can't touch me now,

Because I have freed myself

of Triviality.

 

Particles in the stream,

Don't cling and hold onto

Prosthetic reality,

Particles in the stream,

Don't consider economic

Woes a calamity.

 

Particles in the stream,

Let us coalesce only to

Separate in time. Would that

Sound better with rhyme?

 

Particles in the stream,

Had nothing to do with

Arriving here.

Particles in the stream

Wanting Nothing more

Than just to Be.

 

Particles in the stream, 

Are you and me... 

America's Financial Sleep-Walk

“Im just a no-name reporter, I wish I had nothing to say”… from the song Chaos and Disorder, Prince,1996 

            In retrospect, it seems that the Enron and WorldCom financial scandals earlier in this decade were only the tip of the financial-system-mess iceberg. Looking back at the deception and fraud at the core of the aforementioned scandals, few among us could have imagined that it would ever get to the current levels of a downward spiraling of the entire financial system. Just think, some of America’s biggest banks, Bank of America and Citgroup, are for all practical purposes, are dead banks walking. Technically, from a financial perspective, they are insolvent. Yes, that means they should be shut-down and their assets (mostly toxic) should be liquidated. However, the worth or non-worth of said assets is so horrible, to sell them off, revealing their true real-time worth would probably be a shock to the fragile American collective psyche. I am not so sure if all of Americans have a good sober perspective in understanding and knowing that the American financial system has been officially crashed. Collusion from checkpoints throughout the financial sector, with greed as its fuel, has led to the demise of Wall Street. The system became too top-heavy(99 percent of money in the hands of 1-percent of the populace) and fell over face first, and no one yelled “timber” until it was lying on the ground. Imagine a building being imploded or exploded. Imagine that the engineers charged with replacing the building with a new one, instead decided to glue back together the building from the now broken bricks and mortar of the old building. Let’s stop right there, for there is no need to take this line of reason further. 

I guess we will not know the wisdom of the government’s strategy of capital infusion until down the road, where either the bailout and stimulus plans will have worked or not. This is new territory for the American capitalist system; I just hope that collectively we recognize that sooner than later. The time for denial is past us now. President Obama and team are attempting to solve the financial crisis, but what if the tipping-point has already passed? Is that a thought that you or I can truthfully bear? Maybe not in a full-frontal fashion, but the time is now to begin to fathom it. We Americans are known for our audacity to dream, which may be the reason we are sleepwalking.  

-G. Malone a.k.a SubZeroPoet