The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: The Twisting TruthIs not peace a form of war that silently resounds?
As class elites discuss discreet profits in their lounge
Estranged to change, they've yet to hang in the autumn air
Zapatista assets freeze as wealth steals Harlem's hair
Like Fantine, she weeps and screams, her body sold wholesale
And yet she frets for Cosette, her heart is weak and pale
You and I, we see her standing on the street corner
As we stand inside the Upper Quarter.

Like little bugs, we're crushed and flung across the desert floor.
To spring and swing into evening we wish but never soar
The workers crawl into their holes as spiders sidle out
They have devised their demise and whisper to the grout
They weep but know that life abroad can be just as fickle
And so they scoff at the drop of hammer and of sickle
For all people hear the call of the lone porter
As they stand aside the Upper Quarter.

Is not war a form of peace that violently surrounds?
As armies march into the dark and win some bloodied ground
All alike, they step onto the brick and spray their lead
Graffiti artists are soon found and murdered in their bed
The guardsmen laugh and spray their gas, masked from the storm
And little children breath the fumes as bodies fall in swarms
And as the mists part along the ranks of the soldiers
They stand alone inside the Upper Quarter.

Quote from: Beginnings and EndingsLife is such a pointless trick
Of light and of darkness.
Variations, shadows crawl
Ever silent, ever dead.

In all things lost and all things won,
Surely there is refuge?

Doorknobs lock, bolted shut.
Ears of stone immune to hope.
As I peer into my life:
Death is all I see.

Quote from: The PantherIn my dreams,
A panther growled
And licked its blackened lips.

Its purple teeth
And ice-blue eyes
Were upon me fixed.

I held a torch
In both hands
And tried to fend it off.

The panther pounced
My flesh unloosed
And devoured, I'"

I became the panther.

Quote from: Talking to the CatI've an empty mind
So full of things
Such facts and other drivel.
All my life,
And through death,
If they remember me,
It will be as HE-WHO-SPOKE-TOO-MANY-WORDS-YET-SAID-SO-LITTLE.
But like a wounded moth,
Or perhaps a brilliant butterfly,
I flit from responsibility
Into the sun
And cry like Icarus.

Quote from: SincerityTo the dearest, precious woman
The dandelion of the garden
She who breaks the ice
Just so she can go fishing
For compliments.

To the lovely
No, beautiful
No, pretty
No, cute girl

I thank you
For everything
You never gave me.

Quote from: The PamphleteerAhmadinejad is standing in the circus tent
While insurgents in Baghdad refuse to relent
A shepherd is killed and his body interred
As someone pours a drink for Henry Kissinger.

A condor erupts from an Afghani veil
A Chinese bullet flies on a Darfur trail
Bin Laden dons his Soviet-era fatigues
And his Rolex watch commands the mujahedeen.

The Free World is hardly as free as it seems
Resting on the shoulders of Third World dreams
As Mugabe and Amin and Hussein have shown
The CIA just doesn't care who holds the throne.

Quote from: Streetwise Poet

Quote from: The PamphleteerAhmadinejad is standing in the circus tent
While insurgents in Baghdad refuse to relent
A shepherd is killed and his body interred
As someone pours a drink for Henry Kissinger.

A condor erupts from an Afghani veil
A Chinese bullet flies on a Darfur trail
Bin Laden dons his Soviet-era fatigues
And his Rolex watch commands the mujahedeen.

The Free World is hardly as free as it seems
Resting on the shoulders of Third World dreams
As Mugabe and Amin and Hussein have shown
The CIA just doesn't care who holds the throne.

Amen to that.

Quote from: Neverlasting FishbowlsTo cosmic time, I'm but a blur
My heartstrings are a dulcimer
The phantom spirit in your eyes
Is handsome in its moral ties

Summer springs at winter's fall
Relinquishing a thinner Saul
Tout le monde, they say in jest
Madonna holds you at her breast.

Symptoms of a braver mind
Hidden from the slavers find
The truth that gleams in harvest moons,
The truth that seems to calm and soothe.

QuoteTo the dearest, precious woman
The dandelion of the garden
She who breaks the ice
Just so she can go fishing
For compliments.

This is the best stanza in an excellent poem. I love the way you are using line breaks here, so that each new line forces the reader to adjust his understanding of the context and reevaluate the meaning of what you're saying.

In some of this poetry (here I am thinking of "The Pamphleteer" as an exemplary piece) the rhythm and meter suggest that you're writing these as rap lyrics rather than as a standalone poem. Reading the lyrics "straight" produces no real metric pattern or forward motion, but I can easily hear them slotted, with various rhythms, into the regular meter of a musical beat.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon

QuoteTo the dearest, precious woman
The dandelion of the garden
She who breaks the ice
Just so she can go fishing
For compliments.

ElDo is our resident Tupac. I'm going to be his manager or producer or something...

Quote from: The Free-Thinkers AssociationDishonest eternities and idiot fortunes
Coupled with couplets blown out of proportion
Are loaded into caskets, then a U-haul van
As fragments of humankind fall on Afghanistan
Leeches, bleached and beseeched, cling to my wife
As blackened blood pours up the drain of my life
The cracked and salty lips of the oceanic shore
Are crushed beneath the wishes of a heavenly door
Violent and virulent is the uncharted anguish
Its steely resolve is remarkably stainless
Napoleonic formations swell and raise the mast
As the prairie turtle of the race comes in last
The captain of the guard calls to the Virgin Mary
I put my hat on my arms because they're trying to scare me
The cigarette salesman tells my mind it's out of luck
And tired of running, it would rather walk amok
It hankers down and batters down the chorus calling 'schwa'
As I abuse a pair of clueless ants and throw them to the maw
I jogged into the county fair and lifted up my shoe
'My soul is falling out,' I screamed '˜til I turned blue
The baker then mistook me for a berry from his patch
And threw me in the crust of the next pie from his batch
As planets passed and Miramax films played in my mind
I summoned reels of images of the life I left behind
Holding onto handelebars carved from granite blocks
I felt the wood beneath me splinter on the rocks
The future and the past climbed into the golden carriage
Tensely, with intensity, they conjugated their marriage
Mayonnaise soldiers played the funeral march
As the chimney sweep gently weeped, rather, wept upon the arch
The professor said I had to have a motif in this poem
So I pulled up my pants and the nurse had to send me home
To veer, or voire, to steer and saw at my hollowed bones--
"Qu'est-ce que tu as dit? I was on the telephone"
At last, the poet laureate cleared the eyes to his mind
And thinking he was free, he deigned to end his rhymes.

To respond to the above point made by the perceptive Mr. Crayon:
I don't know if I'll ever record any of these, but many of the poems are being written to a phantom soundtrack that plays in my mind. It probably makes the rhythm difficult to read, as it's very fluid and seems to change every line, and really I have nothing else to say, other than your observation is founded in reality.

Quote from: American SocietyDo you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?
Do you see the change?

Hey, first of all, you got a much-desired psychodelic crayola reponse.  I'm envious.
I will also mention that I swear to Jubilex I heard Beck's voice when I read over 'The Free Thinkers Association" the second time.

Quote from: May I Have This DanceHey there, Jenny
You were the queen of the prom
You had the perfect teeth,
The perfect little dance,
The perfect little life,
And everybody loved you.

Cold, grey, November days,
You've got three kids now?
Isn't that'"well.
Hey, how's that relationshi'"
He wouldn't marry you?
He just drives around in his truck?

All day?

Please, I'm not bitter
And, excuse my contempt;
You had so much going for you,
You were royalty,
And it's just so sad to see you
Become this cliché.