Bedazzled, by Yusef Komunyakaa

A jeweled wasp stuns
A cockroach & plants an egg
Inside. In no time, easy
As fear eats into someone,

The translucent larva grows
Beneath its host's burnished
Shell. The premature stinger
Waits like a bad idea, almost

Hidden. Summertime
Breathes on a thorny leaf.
Before the new wasp breaks
Free, they are one. No longer

Fat on death's fugacity,
By tomorrow afternoon
It will cling to a window screen
Bright as Satan's lost tiepin.

(no subject)

I wrote this last month (2/16 to be exact):

I find I have empathy for Colin Powell. He is, in the historical sense, in the role of the house nigger. I really do feel for him. I mean, why didn't he run for president? He was amply qualified. Was he afraid for his life? Did he think he could bargain his way into that role (and thereby ransom his life) if he did this Cabinet stint first? He doesn't fit in. Where is he going? Why is he doing this with his life? He's getting mangled, like in farm machinery.


Then today, I came across this at the New York Times:

Why Colin Powell Should Go

Interesting article. While I don't think it brings enough force to bear to push Powell to resign his post(!), it does express some of what I've been thinking. What is going through that man's head? Why is he even part of this administration?

Thank God for the Internet....

Television news is scary, comparatively.

Since the end of World War II the United States has at least formally agreed to international constraints on the right of any nation, including itself, to start a war. These constraints were often evaded but rarely just ignored. And evasion has its limits, enforced by the sanction of embarrassment. This gave these international rules at least some real bite.

But Bush defied embarrassment and slew it with a series of Orwellian flourishes. If the United Nations wants to be "relevant," he said, it must do exactly as he says. In other words, in order to be relevant, it must become irrelevant. When that didn't work, he said: I am ignoring the wishes of the Security Council and violating the United Nations charter, in order to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution.

[...] Putting all this together, Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.

from By Whose Authority?, The Washington Post