QUADRUPLE HAIKU ON THE ILLUSION OF "SEPARATE POWERS"

 

John Milton and "Blank Virtue" . . . Once Again

 Every now and then I like to revisit this quotation from John Milton (you know, fairly famous Puritan Christian, PARADISE LOST, PARADISE REGAINED, SAMSON AGONISTES, all that high-falutin' great English poetry): "That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.” The source is Milton's mighty (everything he did was "mighty," I guess) defense of free thought, freedom of speech and READING, his AREOPAGITICA. "Blank virtue," that's the kicker.

Milton argues that hiding in a closet from unpleasant knowledge, from "evil," is antagonistic to evil, blankly uninformed, and ineffectual. It is in fact not virtue at all, but BLANK VIRTUE.

Apparently, our contemporary American book-banners, ideological teacher-censors, fascist propagandists--(how in HELL did we in American get to this point? . . . we might ask Milton's Satan, but then we'd have to read about him and his evil ways)--our latest right-wing "educational cancellors" all prefer "blank virtue." The see-no-evil, know-no-evil types of self-referential, blank-blindered, self-important, power-hungry, self-righteousness that many writers have warned us about (see Orwell, Atwood, Huxley, Paine, "Founding Fathers," Jesus ["wise as serpents, innocent as doves"] Christ.

Gosh! Quick! when can we get around to censoring words in the dictionary, the Holy Bible, the very human language we are born into?

Read more, learn more, ban less, find real--not blank--virtue, and live it without beating others over the head with your own!

Birthday in the Afterlife

                                                     Birthday in the Afterlife
-- “If we live long enough we will find ourselves here. The morning after death.”—Roger Lovette, “Holy Saturday World,” 8 April 2023.
 
It’s raining today, cold rejective rain,
to drive us and our old dog inside 
our homes, warmth, our selves reborn 
each morning—often to our surprise.
Setting the clocks to rise at dawn. For what?
 
It’s coming up Easter Saturday, this grieving
Saturday, rising sun expected in the morning
at 7:08 a.m. in our little spur of South Carolina,
where some will blinker-eyed rejoice that
everything’s the same, as it should be ever;
 
And some will not. For they cannot. And it
would be wrong to do so, those dead children
in Nashville (this week, again, so soon, and ever),
my grandchildren entering a maelstrom, whose _­
very spelling dodges the ken of those in charge.
 
Hi, there! You with your birthdays in Heaven,
you communicants from Parkland, Newtown,
Columbine (so long ago, that we can ignore!)—
and we’re only talking children here (God bless 
the dead adults, too, in groceries, mosques, 
 
concerts, churches, temples, train stations, and
the world at large wherein we fear for our lives
for no good purpose (Hey! Change my mind!)
largely because some people just get a kick
out of gun-steel and recoils. But it’s the hearts
 
of people need changing, they say, as the hearts
grow bleak, shifting to cold calculus, doctrines,
Returns on Investment, lottery tickets of instinct,
bloody hopefulness that someone else falls down
and leave our heritance, our hard-earned safetiness,
 
because (and so often we claim the “causes’ are 
adamantine!) we do not want—we shall not want—
our fumy principles to be beached, or swum, or 
microscoped, or engorged in an indelicate instant 
by some apocryphal Leviathan who shall blame us
 
for divine indigestion (can God really SWALLOW 
what we claim to be the Divine Order—really?)—
so many broken promises of humanity in lieu of
divinity, purposely sadistic blankets of our poxes
tucked around our children, our fellows, our slaves.
 
I am more or less an American Christian (there are 
lots of us who believe in America as a Secular 
Constitutional refuge for those of the world who
have suffered under authoritarian pols who often
said, so painfully, We are The Righteousness of USA.
 
Trust us, We are trustworthy, from purest islands afar.)

 

  

 

 Probably the most cynical poem I've written, surely the most cynical villanelle, but now--given what's just happened in the Tennessee legislature--the last five lines seem to catch the mind of cynical politicians (whose numbers appear to be increasing, both locally and nationally):