By Dr. Patrick A. ODougherty

Post-colonial Irish Poems of Personal and Political Dissent

     I Traveler, Story teller, singer of songs of peace and dissent,

Pray our islands in the sun may someday be free.

Let me kiss your speech with the tongue of a razor against the fence at SOA at Fort Benning, Ga, against the names on the white slips on Slim Jim papers. 

No Mas! La Luce Sigue! I cry  out the names of the fallen Zapatista's--Emmanuel, Raul, Gabe, Whalen, with a tongue double edged-razor which bites my lips into a prayer of admiration.  Let my tongue of finely forged metal turn the scene at Fort Benning, GA  into a Phoenix. All fiery steeled metal must rise and converge.

1492--A Year of Cognitive Slippage into 1961 the Year Slavery died.

     The year is 1961.  JFK is president. No Mexicans or Dogs signs litter the land.  They bear an ironic resemblance to the 1492 commemoration coming up.   The revolution of the 1960s is an act of brown, red, yellow, black, and gray sugar coming together in solidarity. It is an act of love in revolution.   It is a revolution about sons and lovers.   My tongue is a borderland. It is a Minnesota border land. Anger, and hope and doubt the words from a Barbara Streisand song implode this Wilkinson blade tongue.  Where am I going? What is it all about?  The first person off Columbus boat was named McGuire or a variation of the name. Some made the revolution out of Philly in song and new dance.  Where did I come from? I come from the  cross hairs of Marshall/Lake Street borderlands.  I come from the church seat at the Cathedral of St. Paul where JFK knelt.  My razored tongue cuts the roof of my mouth. I come from Tu.

The Crossed Papers on the Fence at SOA are Half finished Syllogisms of Resistance.

PAO 11/29/2013