Mr. Muir - A Rap by DJ TazzieDog

My man Muir, yes,

John’s the one

The sort who took on

The Bully world

Hugging the trees, tending the bees

Stormin’ the normal

The inevitable breeze

Of greed and corruption, disruption, destruction

Hetch Hetchy fetchin’

The damn of deception

Come on back y’all

See we’ve soiled your lega-

See the giant sell out

Your imprimatur

Rebuffed, engulfed in

Carbon black and toxic

Hack, Jack the evil deed

Your field sewn with evil seed

Honor trashed by 

A mad dash for quick cash

Come on back

Your stately place, the grace

You hastened to put nature

In its rightful place

Lecture the lecturers

The wretched wreckers

Babbling, bobbling

Status quo retchers

Come on back

Lay down some

Inspiration

Through renunciation

Of this conflagration

A reiteration of

Nature’s value,

Throw out those bread crumbs

We’ve lost our way

The Chancellor and his bums

Have led us astray, no more time

To delay or parlay the sweet talking

Do nothing, empty squacking

Foray into apathy

Come on back Jack,

Show us the way.

The Right To An Abortion

NEWS FLASH: Abortion is legal in the United States.  Has been since January 22, 1973 when the Supreme Court in a 7-2 ruling in the Roe vs. Wade case decided in favor of a woman's right to choose to have an abortion if she felt she needed one. That should have been the end of the story. Those who didn't need an abortion or felt having one was against their principles could check the box, "no abortion", birth the babies and be on their way. The woman who, for whatever reason, felt she needed to have an abortion could choose that route. It was deemed a woman's private decision based on the due process clause of the 14th. amendment of the Constitution. Just a bit about the 14th. amendment: It was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the "Reconstruction Amendments" proposed in response to issues related to former slaves, following the Civil War. The amendment was very controversial, particularly with the Southern states, obviously not in favor of giving any rights to former slaves, but was ratified even by the south in order for them to regain representation in Congress.  Within the amendment are several clauses, one of which is the "Due Process Clause". It prohibits state and local government officials from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without legislative authorization. This is the clause that formed the backbone of the successful argument of the Roe v. Wade case. Planned Parenthood has been a woman's health organization that has provided an array of services, including abortion. Because of its offering these legal services, it has been demonized by the anti-abortion forces, ironically called "pro-life", as the devil incarnate. Planned Parenthood offices have been bombed, looted, vandalized, attacked; their doctors have been terrorized with death threats and some have died. All in the service of providing legal health services to women. The "righteous"soldiers who claim they are following God's marching orders to protect the right of the unborn, have become more than nuisances, they have practiced domestic terrorism and aim to take this right away from women through intimidation and misinformation. Their latest act is the hacking of Planned Parenthood's  email system and video-taping Planned Parenthood's clinics, entrapment through the establishment of bogus fetal tissue dispensary clinics and an array of other antics of brimstone buffoonery and bluster. They have captured the headlines with their unsavory methods and aim to keep chipping away at a woman's right to choose until she has no right to choose. Even though it is the law of the land. Oh, by the way, a woman has a right to donate tissue that comes out of her body to research, be it fetal tissue or tissue from an appendectomy. It belongs to her and she can give it away.

In Memoriam: Sandra Bland

Just a regular girl going about her regular business on a regular day that took a very irregular turn. Three years older than my own daughter. This could have been my daughter, except that it couldn't because my daughter is white. Sandra was black. That made all the difference. Pulled over for failing to use her car blinker for a lane change, she faced the evil of racism in one whose duty is to protect and serve all of our citizens. She was arrested on trumped up charges of nothing and on her third day in prison was found hanging from the end of a plastic bag. Death by suicide. That's the story from the authorities. I believe that's not the end of this story. Once again, I feel shock, disgust, a personal failing of some sort by the sheer whiteness of my complacency.

Take my chariot words

Mere bluster

Swill for the stampede

All I can muster

For now

And then.

Or my rapacious deeds

Pithy and brightless

Forging no light

Less than more

Light, less 

Brightness

Take my fiery frills 

Of no stance

Shy swagger, a fist raised

Sheer romance,

Thumbs up praise

I am part of IT

See fit to pretense

Anguish, incense

But I’m IT

I am IT

Could I shiver more?

Canyon Banter

The hawk does the talk in the morning at six
when I'm still driving home in a dream that won't stick
 and the airwaves get cued with all manner of squawk and what ensues is
Rude
Awakening, I fake the scene of quiet slumber
 outside my window, the rumble of thunder asunder
 Wonder what is up with that?
Scat you ungodly demons, you crows, clashing, cawing, clawing for dominance
It's my sense that ornithological, pathological, diabolical prominence in the wee hours
Will not relent nor retreat and my sleep once sweet
Now ends at 6:10

Wax Rapsodic

I never really thought about rap as an art form, at least not initially. My relationship with rapping was confined to either:  cars I shared a red light with that had loud strings of indecipherable rhymes propped up by a thunderous bass emitting from the crack in the car window, or my tuning in to the Grammies, where a bedecked and bejeweled dude with a propensity to fixate on his privates would prance around the stage gesticulating and shouting about someone's bitch. I was always relieved when the hard driving beat would subside and possibly a John Mayer type would face the spotlight and give me a somnabulistic snooze session. Notice, I just used the literary device of "alliteration". Well, so do rappers. In fact, they use loads of literary devices to flesh out their compositions.  What I discovered, uncovered, as I belabor my misbehavior was, rapping is poetry. Some good, some bad, some brilliant, delivered as a performance with an undercurrent of beats and rhythmic patterns that the words have to weave through. It's an art form. Who knew? Slant rhymes, homophones, couplets, alliteration, OBLITERATION. Ha, once you start listening to the rhythmic patterns, it's infectious. I was reminded of the repeated lesson from Green Eggs and Ham; keep an open mind, y'all. Here's one by DJ Tazzie Dog :

Asclepias under duress

From pesticides and other stress

Not cool, even cruel for my friends

That are pressed to survive

On less

Shout out to the Monarchs

Following the call

Of nature’s herky jerks

Quirks, y’all

Send the blasters,

The makers of un-natural disasters

To their own flim flam field of Monsantoed

Toe jam

Damn their fuckin’ antics

Fanatics, money grubbin’ frantics

Ready, round em’ up

Enough is enough.

The Stainless Banner

At this very moment, as we try to absorb the tragedy that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, the confederate flag continues to fly on the grounds of the state capitol of South Carolina.It is also present in a sacred little corner of the actual state flag of Mississippi. This is shameful. If one holds the thought that this flag is simply a little piece of our American history that should be treasured, think again. This flag (known as The Stainless Banner) was constructed to symbolize a more perfect union of twisted ideas and demented attitudes. I wish it weren't part of my country's history, but it is and fouls the very bedrock of our constitution and principles. We will always have assholes that want to display the glory of the confederacy but to have state governments partake in endorsing our sordid past is inexcusable. Here is an excerpt from the "Cornerstone Speech", delivered by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens on March 21, 1861 as the drums of civil war started to beat, which illustrates the Confederate ideology in case one doubts the symbolic intent of the confederate flag:

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth..."

Epistle

The difference a day makes. I was ready to write my thoughts on LeBron James and his seeming arrogance in light of his statement following the game 5 loss of his Cavaliers to the Golden State Warriors during the NBA Finals. Speaking at a post-games interview, under the umbrella of flashing lights and crackling microphones and ludicrous shout-outs by dozens of sports journalist wonks, King James was asked if his mental attitude had changed in the series given the state of his team's injury roster. His response: "I feel confident because I'm the best player in the world. It's that simple." Wow, that was a show stopper and lit up the switchboards plenty as the words, "arrogance", "pride", "hubris", were being rattled around through the news cycle and the water cooler chats, both real and cyber. What interested me was the question of arrogance. What is it? Why is it unbecoming and the evil twin to humility? But, my curiosity about the matter of arrogance suddenly became trite the night nine precious souls were blown away during a church Bible study gathering by a 21-year old madman with a handgun and a vendetta against the black community. Awash in his toxic veneer of whiteness and apartheid sensibilities, Dylann Roof visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, ready and loaded to kill. He was welcomed into the Bible group by the pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, and following an hour or so of prayer and brotherly communion, he turned his gun on the group and joined the growing ranks of America's mass murderers. And these nine innocents joined the ranks of those slaughtered at the hands of a madman holding and firing and reloading a gun; only this time the murderer was also a racist.  I don't understand racism and I never will. It is illogical, irrational, inexplicable.  I am white and I am sorry.