Tag Archives: racism

Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (written by Brendon Behlke and Pablo Ramon)

Spotlight; me:
peace starved,
hunger met by darkness,
Not sated –
            stoked.
Become bullish fire,
horns of flame,
eager to gore
an audience of errant toreadors.

Stage Direction:
“Destroy”
“Murder,”
Scene – Infinity,
enter: monster (me).
Raze the set to rubble,
fade to black.

House lights on,
Reveal: Wreckage,
horror,
me.
Not the fiend –
but the human takes a bow,
for all the vindicated matadors,
dead eyed, slack jawed,
red with the weight of requital,
as thick curtains fall,
secreting away every
                        exit;

I leave, but linger,
haunting the now dimming theater,
where shadows stretch and merge,
a figure lost in canvas.
seeking peace,
and forever unseen.

The Frightful Things

Shh, be still now, or they’ll hear you,
at first they were just loud and mean
preaching gospel, angry or obscene
we thought they’d pass back into the blue
Shh, be still now, or they’ll hear you.

but they came from older things
long dormant, though well maintained machines
and without challenge their power grew and grew
shh, be still now, or they’ll hear you.

A Statue Stands in the City of Longview

So now they condemn the hate?
Well now, isn’t that just great?
When Nazis are at the gate
there’s no room for debate;
they come together to state,
“That’s not us, let’s get that straight.”
Such courage! To do the right thing,
take the swing, straight down the plate.

When so often they were benched,
so many voices they’ve quenched.
When oppression left them drenched
with tears, their mouths remained clenched.
The shrine of hate remains entrenched
from the ground, ne’er to be wrenched;
but you claimed the easy win,
used your grins to hide the stench.