Word Envy: The Brooding Persian Satellite Series

one of the chief pleasures of reading brooding persian is that his posts are poetry shamelessly, brazenly masquerading as prose. but, my friends, they cannot pass. the rhythm always gives them away. this evening, i read aloud the following excerpt to emily0 (lightly edited to better fit poetic form) and said, "brooding persian is not a writer, he's a poet." and she replied, "of course. he's persian."

This Is A Time
The age of heroism is long past and should best be forgotten.

This is a different era we live in,
and a fundamentally disenchanting one.
It is not as if history ever ended.
It is merely that "grandeur of spirit" has finally vanished.

This is a time for sneak attacks,
and for striking the vulnerable and unsuspecting --
for molesting the defenseless,
and incinerating women and children from afar.

This is a time when jailers torment their hungry, thirsty wards
with the aroma of barbecue or the offerings of excrement and urine.
A time for hoods, claustrophobia and lynching,
the era of petty tyrants and their petty spirited foes.

This is a time for spins, meanness and smears.
I am no longer certain there ever was a time when Titans clashed.
We have now the confrontations of the entitled and self-absorbed,
with their murderous jingoism and onanistic tribalism.

Unless there is a sustained outpouring of decency,
which I am thinking highly unlikely in the foreseeable future,
we'll be made into Tutsis and Hutus -- most of us.
It is a grave mistake to delude ourselves by assuming our superiority.

-- brooding persian aka H.
August 21, 2005
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