Caitlin Johnstone – “Speak”
Once you go backward it’s hard to regain what you have lost
Your voice can shake the sand dunes
and make farm flowers grow on the beach.
Your voice can knock down the tall castles
of the Bastards chortling against the smoggy night sky.
They don’t make you afraid of using it because it is stupid,
they make you afraid of using it because it is powerful.
So use it.
Speak.
Let your voice awaken the embryos in their cells.
Speak.
Wipe the grin off the faces of those recursive laughing Buddhas
and make the very fabric of the universe look up from its TV dinner
and take note.
Speak when your enemies tell you not to speak.
Speak when your friends and allies tell you not to speak.
Speak when your better judgment tells you not to.
Speak when every fiber of your being tells you not to.
Speak to shatter the conspiracy of silence.
Speak to end our ancient heritage of not speaking.
Speak so that others may lose their voicelessness.
Speak because only the Bastards are speaking.
Speak for the angels who are choking on chemicals.
Speak for the children sprayed red with blood.
Speak for the sea turtles drowning in plastic.
Speak for the dreamguides bulldozed and paved over.
Speak for the tree stumps bleeding crude oil.
Speak for the women trapped in small cages.
Speak for the mothers whose eyes are sedated.
Speak for the sky whose dragons have vanished.
Speak for the cities full of medicated childhoods.
Speak for the dreamers about to give up.
Speak.
Speak!
We are sitting here waiting
to find out if this play will go on.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone – “Naughty Little Boys”
That little boy’s mum is going to be so upset.
He hasn’t combed his hair,
and his clothes are filthy.
And what’s he gone and done with his legs?
Where are your legs, little boy?
Better go and find them before your mum sees you.
Those legs are very important to her.
~
They sent the little boys up into the sky
and over the ocean to go play soldiers.
They gave them toy guns
full of toy bullets,
and they screamed toy screams,
and bled toy blood,
and cried toy tears,
and had toy nightmares,
and called out for their mums
in the desert.
~
The man on the TV keeps calling them heroes.
Don’t call them that, TV man,
you’ll only encourage them.
These are little boys,
and they’re being very naughty.
They are worrying their mums sick
and it’s time for them to go home.
~
Find your legs, little boy,
and go be with your mum.
Find your hands and your face too;
she’ll miss those as well.
Find your mind and bring it back
from that dark, scary place.
You’re not there anymore.
You are home.
Stop screaming toy screams
and crying toy tears
and go tell your mum that you’ve had
a bad dream.
Caitlin Johnstone
HA Goodman with Caitlin Johnstone – “Exposing the Trump-Russia Myth” (2017)
Oct. 23, 2017…
Caitlin Johnstone – “Gaps: A Poem”
While the tides rise,
while skullface late night talk show hosts try to make neoliberalism funny,
while the war drums of the Bastards vibrate the air,
remember:
You are supported by the emptiness between the atoms,
by the emptiness between the stars,
by the emptiness between your thoughts,
by the emptiness which surrounds your perception.
The end has always been as nigh as nigh gets.
Death was lounging between your electrons from the moment you were conceived.
We who look with both eyes see the gargoyles,
but we also see the emptiness.
We recline against that space between,
cradled in the heart of the timeless.
~
So when the TV is lying and your friends are all blind,
when they call your light madness and strike your diamond from your hands,
when Grandmother Tree confesses that she is worried about the water,
take heart.
Birds of all colors roar out of the darkness in each moment,
join together to form all this, then fly off.
The needle-toothed Bastards cannot touch your magic,
cannot know the emptiness,
cannot see the birds.
A few howling primates gibbering about finance
on a spinning rock that is hurtling through blackness
in a universe that they do not understand.
They do not run this show.
They do not lead this dance.
~
There is a castle at the center of two forest lungs
with a dead angel on a swing made of ivy.
Eel ogres hurl cars in the gaps of your neurons
and between your electrons,
owls soar.
~
What I’m trying to say,
in my bumbling way,
is that there are so many hiding spaces.
There are miracles lurking in the gaps of all things,
and so little of life is yet known.
~
I ran into your mother on the underside of a dream,
beneath the hull where the oil bats sleep.
She gave me a sandwich and a necklace of teeth —
oh yeah, and this letter for you in a jug:
Don’t be a smartass, don’t pick your nose,
and never, ever give up.
This thing will not move how you think it will move;
there’s so much more going on than you know.
Say please and thank you and don’t bite your friends,
and remember we all love you to death.
You have conjurations of galaxies deep in your guts,
and my child you are covered in feathers.
So listen — Listen! — to those spaces between;
sit and watch until angels march through.
The thing that will save us (don’t scratch your butt in public)
will come from the gaps, where the old withered patterns don’t tread.
It will be unexpected, when you’re about to give up,
so sit up straight and just do as I say.
Be ready to act, be alert, be polite,
and when the time comes,
let it through.
Father John Misty – “Bored in the USA” (Live – 2014)
From Late Show with David Letterman (March 11, 2014)…
The Beat Patrol 