“The writer died while mixing with the rebels, these are natural accidents of war . . .”—Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco
“The country has to toughen up … part of the problem …is nobody wants
to hurt each other anymore, right?” — US president, Donald Trump
~~~~
Federico in pajamas and blazer died at night
wearing the sudden-death clothes of a poet killed
because there’s nothing more dangerous to despots
than an artist who tells the day’s truth
because some force within insists.
Accepting death for being one’s self
is life’s condition of being one’s self
because to speak is to be.
This condition applies to all in all times
because nothing ever changes the insistence of love
& witness under any sky or sun.
Although the atmosphere of eras & place swings from
heaven to hell on a dime before the head-count has time
to blink, and because the intractable who paint Guernica
or write Canto Libre or Satanic Verses
(artists who dare) could well end with bullet-through-skull
because, to a despot, silence is golden (long-lived or brief)
because despots know that painters and poets,
sculptors and dancers will always speak
from momentary possession
because they’ve found the straightway
to brainsoul of human-kind,
the place despots only enter
by means of fear & blood
which always mocks
the divine
Jim Culleny, 3/7/19
Blink 