At the White House speak easy
Blah blah blah blah blah blah
The media drinks it up
At a mine-blowingly vapid clip
In the mean time
On the plantation
Grounds to a halt
Surrounded by offense
In arose guardin’
At least since 1984
Black sheep a massing
Estate clearly
As to klan destined premises
And as such a tract
An overwhelming farce
Met with all arm
As privates in public places
And wile mill or tarry
As eventuality
Weather picked up for loitering
Or trashing national security
Hour constitutional is put down
And though wee are like
A communal terrain
Pigs offer another forum of public transportation
A signing
This won in the can
Matching our zeal to the maxim
In another banner day
For homeland security
Or whatever it scald
As free speech grows smolder
And another die cast
For the prints of darkness
Wielding a pitchfork for the signs of the tines
A tail never to be told
This is a poem about police and/or military — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference these days — putting down a protest at the White House. Typically, the corporate media give little coverage to such democracy taken into the hands of ruly citizens, and what coverage they give is often superficial and dismissive. The demonstration in this poem has overtones of a Black Lives Matter protest, making it contemporary, but it could very well be most any protest in modern times at the White House. The title of this poem, Signs of The Tines, has what may be an easily missed pun, referencing the tines of the devil’s pitchfork casting signs into a bonfire, which might very well be the preeminent renewable energy source in America. Protest politics and direct nonviolent resistance has always forced America to confront a legal and political conundrum of law enforcement routinely violating constitutional rights, often under the pretext of national security. Most any perceived threat to the state triggers an overreaction, even an existential crisis, from most any nationalist from right to left. Exposing the naked sovereignty of the state, particularly when in moral bankruptcy, is one of the most useful effects resistance offers. The veneer of civilization can be quickly peeled back to witness the assertion of brute force in the religion of nationalism and state sovereignty. And for those of you who may dare to believe that we are a nation under God, think again. I confronted this directly in my legal challenge to draft registration. As a motion to dismiss based on draft registration offering no opportunity to indicate conscientious objector status, the federal judge rejected the motion citing a Supreme Court case from the 1930’s which stated that the federal government has the absolute power to conscript anyone in the United States, regardless of conscience or anything else. Conscientious objector status is merely a historical and political concession which was literally referred to as “legislative grace.” I must admit, in this decade-long resistance to forced military participation in Team America, this was the only thing that truly surprised me. I, for one, am unwilling to concede absolute authority to any government. I actually wasn’t even very excited about this motion for dismissal, but my pro bono lawyers wanted to test this legal argument. Frankly, I wouldn’t have registered even had there been a way to meaningfully indicate conscientious objection. I think I registered my objection quite meaningfully without their approval or feigned “grace.” You might want to pay attention to the wizard behind the gracefully flowing curtain, dutifully colored, red, white, and blue…
