Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Monday, March 19, 2007

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

by Victoria Day


The US Government reminds me a lot of my ex-husband.
        This is not a compliment to either.

Violence is their shared language.
        The desire to control everything, everyone around them invades every fiber of their personalities.
Force, the weapon of the weak, is their weapon of first choice.

Both are Bullies.

Saturated with dangerous power
        and damaged by paranoia.
Acting in ways that they can defend as rational
        but disconnected from the real-life consequences
of their actions,
        they reap unacknowledged tragedies
                and leave their devastations
                        like slug-trails
behind them,
        messes for others to clean up and live with and somehow, survive.

They are men that have no idea
        that compromise, as a concept, requires a movement,
                                a risk,
                                        a sacrifice
from
all
sides.

Nor do they understand that their risk,
        their sacrifice, must
really matter,
must be an honest offering,
        a giving up of something valuable.
Without this knowledge, their gestures of peace, are by their very nature, hollow
                of any truth.

My ex-husband
        And the men who run my government
both seem to live in a mindset, a black or white duality,
        where it is imperative to create the
desperately desired
                 illusion of rightness.
And to balance their world view, they create

                a monster

one who carries the weight
of the responsibility for all
that is wrong
in their world.

Addicted,
        obsessed with their insatiable need for satisfaction,
        willfully forcing themselves into other’s lives,
        irresponsibly consuming the life blood of others,
        over bloated, pompous, selfish and dangerous
        commanding, demanding order and perfection from others
        while willfully failing to take care of their own.

My ex-husband behaves a lot like my government,
        and this morning I wake
        feeling very connected to the people of Iraq.


Victoria Day is a priestess, mother, dancer, creatrix and activist doing her best to work and play in a spot of purple-tinted blue in the middle of a very red state. All that she does is connected with, inspired by and a homage to her deep belief in the Divine and the necessity for peace in our lives.