She is ten feet tall\u2026 and dying in her cage.
\nWhile Obama and Cameron take \u201cselfies,\u201d
\nshedding crocodile tears,
\nour Lady Mandela gazes over
\nthe path she has made by her walking.<\/p>\n
After his funeral, American drones
\nkill fifteen people in Yemen.
\n(Where in the world is Yemen?)
\nAmerican shoppers rampage, and trample
\nthose in the aisles of their trinkets.<\/p>\n
She said she believed \u201cdirected violence\u201d
\n(just as Mandela had said)
\nwould topple the anarchist State
\n(engorged by its own helter-skelter
\nin the best tradition of Manson).<\/p>\n
In New York City or Yemen,
\nwith drones or tasers or wars,
\nthe Manifold State is watching,
\nits \u201claws\u201d abated by judges,
\nconducting kangaroo courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho will judge the judges?\u201d
\nJuvenal wrote about Rome,
\nwhich crucified a preacher
\nfor driving money-changers
\nout of the House of God.<\/p>\n
They slashed his back with lashes,
\ncollapsed his lungs on a crossbow,
\nthen shot him into the sky\u2014
\nfor mourning or redemption,
\ndepending on one\u2019s view.<\/p>\n
Now It imposes its laws
\non a woman wedded to Law,
\nwho fought for the truth of the Law,
\nto publish it like Luther,
\non pain of execrations.<\/p>\n
On pain of separation
\nfrom family, home, and her Cause.
\nEven a sentence of cancer
\ncannot deter her Cause.
\nShe can never betray her Cause.<\/p>\n
Over the matricide planet
\nher thoughts take billowing wing:
\nthe State\u2019s cells metastasize
\nin every corporate prison,
\nin every farmed-out heart.<\/p>\n
Miley Cyrus twerks her ass
\nin the face of the hubbubbed mob.
\nAnnointed pundits feign disdain,
\nthen tweet pictures\u2026, but none
\nof Lynne alone in her cage.<\/p>\n
The \u201cpeople\u201d scurry like ants,
\nmonitored and surveiled, liable,
\nwithout notice, to be snuffed;
\nemulsified like organic dirt
\nunder the heels of the State\u2014<\/p>\n
above the Law, acting in the name of Law,
\nsanctioning crime and murder,
\nin the name of marmoreal memes:
\n\u201cWe the People\u201d in \u201cthe home of the brave,\u201d
\n\u201ccreated equal\u201d in \u201cthe land of the free.\u201d<\/p>\n
____________________________<\/p>\n
Dr. Gary Corseri <\/i>has published novels, books of poetry and a literary anthology (editor); his dramas have been performed on PBS-Atlanta, and he has read his poems at the Carter Presidential Center. He has taught in prisons, public schools and universities and his articles, fiction and poems have appeared worldwide at hundreds of websites and periodicals, including, Countercurrents, Village Voice, The New York Times, and Redbook Magazine. Contact: gary_corseri@comcast.net.<\/p>\n
Lynne Stewart (born October 8, 1939) is a former attorney who was known for representing controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants. She was convicted on charges of conspiracy\u2026 and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her\u2026 conviction led to her being\u2026 disbarred. \u2026 She was re-sentenced on July 15, 2010, to 10 years in prison in light of her alleged perjury at her trial. She is currently serving her sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a federal prison near Fort Worth, Texas.\u201d Note-Update: Her breast cancer has metastasized, and her doctors predict she has about 1 year to live. Her requests for a \u201cmercy\u201d release have been repeatedly denied, despite some 40,000 signatures on a petition for such a release. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She is ten feet tall\u2026 and dying in her cage.
\nWhile Obama and Cameron take \u201cselfies,\u201d
\nshedding crocodile tears,
\nour Lady Mandela gazes over
\nthe path she has made by her walking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}