Thursday, May 10, 2012

Juggernaut Rag

Juggernaut dancer mechanical god
policeman of rigor death and despair
food chain rat race and dog eat dog
there's no end to the regime
just a new man in the chair

steam roller of history
fecundator of women
eater of gods and men
Thy accounts square to zero
Thy windows cylinders and rods
snuff humanity's pain
so we never hear it cry again

Thy book is the mystery of gears
within gears, the routes and twists
of years Thy spidery eyes splinter truth
a million ways in an endless maze

When the meat-eating god grinds
into town the glass knives get to work
children turn to ash and the wind blows down
machines don't stop streets get swept

Flesh skinned and stretched for lamps
(children have you heard about his camps
blood his smile a Mauser his penis
so fast at the death machine
his mom called him a genius)

And when we wash at Thy pool of tears
the glowing chimneys in the Polish night
will light our steps through Thy earthly paradise

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.

38 comments:

  1. dude..vicous write....the flesh skin lamps...visceral imagery....Thy book is the mystery of gears
    within gears, the routes and twists
    of years Thy spidery eyes splinter truth
    a million ways in an endless maze....dude wicked flow as well through out the whole think, it just rips off the lips with grit and heat....and the machine continues to chew us well after bones are all that is left...dont worry someone new will fill the seat and turn it toward new targets here in a couple months...hehe. love.

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  2. When the meat-eating god grinds
    into town the glass knives get to work
    children turn to ash and the wind blows down
    machines don't stop streets get swept...heck..what a tight write charles...and there's no end to this...gets better and worse like the waves in an endless ocean...great imagery and so looking forward to the prompt...

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  3. You are not pulling any punches, are you?
    This a a clash of the Titans.

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  4. Powerful piece of poetry that certainly grabs us by the throat ... strong lines these 'Thy windows cylinders and rods/snuff humanity's pain/so we never hear it cry again' .... worthy of Huxley and Orwell

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  5. ah my favorite line, streets get swept
    scary and well worth the read!

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  6. Wow...this certainly doesn't pull any punches. It really digs deep. Skin for lampshades is haunting. All of this is haunting in fact. Powerful.

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  7. I can hear you reading this and the words are like rolling punches. Bravo!

    I also like that word, fecundator. I'm writing down that you suggested it for Wacky Word Wednesday since I saw it here first. :)

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    1. You are a masterful storyteller, my skin hurts.

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  8. Such a sad reality as we continue to unknowingly (I hope at least) sacrifice the humanness to trade with cold steel and swept streets. The skin lampshades manufactured in sweatshops to forever feed the machine the light of thy gears...and as we ready ourselves for the next generation who has been born to consume, do we even stand a chance.

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  9. scary images punched out- fecundator of women and thy spidery eyes- caught in the gut...

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  10. Incredible write, Charles. I saw a street sweeper on an empty--totally--street. Humanity gone, but the machines working on. Powerful stuff!
    http://charleslmashburn.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/its-awfully-quiet-in-here/

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  11. Your words punches through the page...I specially like:

    Thy book is the mystery of gears
    within gears, the routes and twists
    of years Thy spidery eyes splinter truth
    a million ways in an endless maze

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  12. Strong piece. Outstanding imagery and defining stance through such brutality. Wonderful write. Thanks

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  13. "steam roller of history
    fecundator of women
    eater of gods and men"

    Wow. This has such a wicked roll.

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  14. Hi Charles - have you seen that movie - is it Night and Fog --You'll know it, I think, the one about the Holocaust. This reminds me very much of that - the skin lamps of course are real and the children turned to ash. To me this seems a very direct reference to Hitler, or to some machinator of Auschwitz et al. Makes me so sad. A woman in my office is a survivor of Bergen-Belsen - amazing, right? Incredible. She was kept alive by a Polish woman who'd seen her son and husband killed--her name was Luba-- who made it her mission in Bergen Belsen to save children, all Dutch. This is the camp Anne Frank was at.

    Wonderful poem, though it's made me very sad. k.

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  15. Still thinking of your poem - the Juggarnaut - Puri - I did not get there and would be a bit afraid to go during the festival. Feeling a little guilty - i posted a kind of trite villanelle, and not you've got me thinking of these terrible things. (In my defense, I am flying to and from Florida tomorrow in the space of a very few hours.) Thanks for the really wonderful poem. k.

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  16. A strong voice. Excellent lines, words, beat. Definately a rock poem amplified by your passion. One part reminded of a seriel killer stretching skins over lamps. Technology the serial murderer.

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  17. Damn good poem, Biblical in style because the theme demands it (I hear Ginsberg howling, "Moloch!"), would that the story ended with the Third Reich.

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  18. Wow, i'd like to live in your imagination for a while. just because the things you come with are brilliant
    http://leah-jamielynn.typepad.com

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  19. I'm with manic and Mark here - I definitely felt the camps and the Third Reich between the lines and the words, and also heard Ginsberg (and others) howling throughout this absolutely aching vividly limned poem. Some of your detailed images are so authentic, I found myself shuddering, hoping you don't have first or even second-hand knowledge of such evil. Your machines bear a heavy burden, as well they should, complicit in carrying out so much pain ... a very good write, it will haunt me. As Mark said, would that the story ended with the Third Reich - indeed.

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  20. I got a shudder worthy of a Stephen King horror...thanks! Really well done!

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  21. What can i ad raw and visceral in fact fantastic with the impact of a kick in the balls

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  22. A poem full if excitement.

    Passage such as

    Thy book is the mystery of gears
    within gears, the routes and twists
    of years Thy spidery eyes splinter truth
    a million ways in an endless maze

    Worth a few more reads, I reckon!

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  23. The first stanza brought echoes to me of King Crimson's "Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man," which I guess is apt since there's more than a little jeremiad in this steely praise to the Lord of the machine. A poet's job (h/her bread, at least) was to compose heroic epics of the king, but the job is more complicated now since our Employer prefers epical profits (thanks to efficiency, economies of scale, innovation and a robotomized workforce). The rumble of the Blizkrieg -- marching on to the holy Fatherland of Metropolis -- has seen some management changes over the decades, but the iron boots grind on. Gotta praise these cats o so carefully. Fine write, Chazz.

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  24. "Thy book is the mystery of gears
    within gears, the routes and twists
    of years Thy spidery eyes splinter truth
    a million ways in an endless maze"

    This is amazing, Charles! There seems to be a mysterious aura of movements. At the end of the day the eye is as yet to unravel. A lot of answers being awaited. Great verse!

    Hank

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  25. Some new words here...me being a vegan...find this gory. very poignantly written.

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  26. Both the vocabulary, the insidious rhyme scheme, and the use of archaic address points out the scalding difference between humanity's real core and significance as animal and social beings, and the pathetic but omnipotent Masters we serve who recruit and impound us in their self-serving constructs, picking and choosing who lives and who dies. The Third Reich (and its ongoing echo in our world of jackbooted facism)is perhaps just the most recent and most terrifying example of these machines we build and lose control of as soon as they're out of the workroom. Very fine poem, Charles, both as an example of craft that heatseeks the brain of the reader, and as a social indictment.

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  27. This section is my favorite:

    "When the meat-eating god grinds
    into town the glass knives get to work
    children turn to ash and the wind blows down
    machines don't stop streets get swept
    Flesh skinned and stretched for lamps"

    "a Mauser his penis" ... Ha!

    "there's no end to the regime
    just a new man in the chair" ... This made me think that 1) you were talking about politics in general and then 2) you were talking about computers as the mechanical god; I also looked up some historical references as well as movies, mythology, etc. But I'm just going to stop trying to crack it precisely and say that I enjoyed the dark, grim tale.

    What a lovely, sarcastic ending.

    rosemarymint.wordpress.com

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  28. I tried to comment yesterday but for some reason couldn't get the computer machine to work... What a powerful poem, you really hit a nerve, so many hideous things have been done thanks to the human machine of power. It brings back those haunting images of the holocaust for me...those evil men and the atrocities they commited. Something we should never forget! Great poem!

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  29. it's like you're connecting the holocaust to technology, what a grim way to look at it. :(

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    1. Yes, I believe technology made the concentration camps of the Holocaust possible.

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  30. For me, this sort of had a Third Reich meets The Rise of the Machines kind of feel, very eerie and ominous. Certainly gives the reader a lot to think about regarding the balance between making our lives easier and losing our humanity. A powerful poem.

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    1. Yes, that's right. There's a reason they talked about the Third Reich as a machine. Nazi Germany was the most amazing technological machine up to that time. I think that with technology comes need to turn people into resources, good bad or indifferent. "Fungible assets" as a senior software architect used to tell me as we smoked outside the office.

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  31. There's no end to the regime....just a new man in the chair...the steamroller of history....these lines resonate for me as does the entire poem. I feel the hopelessness, the grief, pain of our lost humanity...we have become machines...and we eat each other alive. The visions of the holicaust are a perfect reminder of our grinding, mechanical existence, our cruelty to one another..this poem has teeth..fangs...and I feel every bite. A powerful sociologic statement, and the use of words like thy...show the ancient, ongoing severity of our lost humanity. Bravo, Chaz!

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  32. Perhaps we are pre-conditioned to march to a tyrant's tune, and love distruction almost as much as life. A powerful and well observed poem.

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  33. i feel our poetry to be nsnyc this week both on subject/content and the applicable reflections... my work less explicit... and yours is none the worse for being so... sharp and to the quick of image and sense - i found your write darkly exhillerating, in as much as it fingers the tragic course and the symptomatic condition of ego driven political dialectic and the sickening consequence of human weakness.... the crulety...it is the technological machine and the proficient excersise rendering the horror banal and mechanic - you nailed it in my book... from the title to the final word.... the standard of craft only serves to exagerrate the discomfort awarded by the subject - a most excellent piece (all things considered).

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  34. Very intellectually stimulating and wonderful to read

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  35. fascinating in theme and language/style... much enjoyed this visit to your world of words

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