Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
You Can Leave Your Socks On
It's OK Eliot, I've known of plenty of girls who like to wear socks in bed. Nothing of which to be ashamed. Go HERE.
Sunni, Sushi, Shite, Shee-it
Anyone could make a mistake like that. Go HERE.
And Go HERE.
William Butler Yeats (fer Christ's sake)
Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Kind Of Blue
Best jazz album of all time. Best selling too.

Marian McPartland
90 and still kicking ass. Go HERE.

Today

h/t Grupp

MacDries says, "What is it that you know in the seat of your soul?"
AA
I'm working on Step 9 at the moment even though some of the earlier steps are still bothering me. All the steps making mention of this God person. I have to first make peace with the anthropomorphic god they are so fond of grasping.
Go HERE for the steps.
Kate Tells Me (repeat)
Ryan Adams Has A Blog. It's fun. The guy has too much time to contain his creativity. Go HERE.
Racist America
I love all the right-wing pundits and MSM who are "shocked" that black people could be racsist too. As if they didn't even have a reason.
According to Jewish tradition, if your mother is Jewish, so is the child. This makes a bit of sense since the mother is usually certain which children are hers unless she was drunk during birth. The man needing proof will have to get some DNA tested.
If you are 1/2 black and your mama is white, you too are black. No test necessary. Witness Obama.
Old Devil Moon
I was right about the full moon. I was awake until about 7am. Maybe this is a self fullfilling prophecy.
Blank Is The New Blank
I don't understand what that means but I hear it all the time.

16-bit Intel 8088 chip

with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his hens.
The Shrub's War
5 years and counting. 2/3 of Americans now say it was a mistake. Cheney says, "So what?" And then goes fishing off shore.
As Predicted
McCain leads both Obama & Clinton. Isn't that depressing. 100 more years of war. Go HERE.
And he doesn't even know who we're fighting.

MacDries says, "Amen!"
Even Whackos Are Right Sometimes
Remember Jesse Ventura?

Barack For Dummies
Neither the fire of MLK, nor the cool of JFK. Neither black, nor white. Obama is American and it's time for everyone to STFU. Listen to him and not what others say about him.

John Prine/Iris DeMent

Some Small Art

*collection Gretchen Hatz.
What Is Theft
the recent story of the JP Morgan/Bear Sterns buyout backed by the GOV has me baffled. The stock was listed at $30 and JPM paid $2 a pop. For more: Go HERE.
I know it smells fishy even if I don't quite know why.
Draw Me, Hillary, Barack, St. John

Go HERE.

Back at'cha Shrub. You little twerp!
Go HERE to see the whole tape.

For The Latest Dries Art GO HERE
For The Latest CyberToonz GO HERE
I've never actually watched an episode of The Simpsons (I'm more of a Pixar kind of guy) butt...
*Dislaimer

Go To: MacDries Design

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