Kicking the Cage

By: Gus Victoria

Hostage to your ignorance,

We kick the cage

In righteous rage!

Oppressive oligarchy,

We kick the cage

In righteous rage!

Elected leaders

By your vote

Hold you back.

Elected leaders

Fuck you ten times

Before you fight back.

We kick the cage

In righteous rage!

There is blood you drew

By inaction spilt,

Innocence shattered,

Ammo gathered,

Guns gathered

By a diseased mind

A murderous trigger pulled,

We kick the cage

In righteous rage!

On the pile of bones

From children gathered

You demanded as price

To ignore responsibility

You rejoice in death,

You call it a right

You spew hate,

Fuck your ignorance,

Your Reagan too,

The second Amendment

The murder weapon

Of the nation

You fight for

As all your leaders

Fuck your corpse.

Few survivors…

Kick the cage

In righteous rage!

Blade of Resistance

By: Gus Victoria

In the fires of Truth hammered by Justice

The Blade of Resistance is ever forged new,

Tempered by Chaos,

Given strength by Law,

It is a weapon to destroy,

It is a force to create,

The Blade carried by heroes,

Sanctified by their blood

Spilled in struggle,

To make right the broken world,

To shed light where shadow dwells,

To vanquish evil in its home,

The Blade is heavy,

None may wield it alone,

Only the pure touch it long,

Madness is the price

The weak must pay,

Corruption poisons the soul

Of the Unjust,

The Blade destroys the Unworthy,

No armor protects from this wrath,

No lie is believed,

No crime unknown,

The Blade respects no positions,

It knows no rank,

The Blade of Resistance

Harbinger of Justice and Truth,

Herald of Hope

Where Peace and Love are remembered.

Because Dinosaurs That's Why

By: Gus Victoria

My past few posts if you were paying attention, and why wouldn’t you be, were about serious subject matter. They displayed an anger, righteous in my eyes, with the state of the world and our society. Today I wanted to shift gears a little bit and stray away from the poetic and lyrical yet still retain some sense of seriousness. Then I realized it wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working? I’m still angry right? The words should come to an experienced poet without too much trouble. What was I doing wrong? A struggle must have balance. Everything must. Outside of love, faith, and hope it is never good to let one thing so consume you. And even with those three you must retain perspective.

So with that in mind I decided instead to write about dinosaurs. Why dinosaurs you might ask yourself. Because it makes sense dammit! Well for me it does, there is not a time in my childhood where I do not remember having easy access to a book on dinosaurs. I was a strange child so these books often were more like encyclopedias, but it was ok, I could tell you the difference between velociraptor and deinonychus. I was probably the only 8 year old kid in Northern California that could correctly pronounce Opisthocoelicaudia and Pachyrhinosaurus correctly and laugh at you when you couldn’t. I was the real-life version of the annoying kid in Jurassic Park before the movie. For the duration of my childhood, until about the time I hit high school I thought I would grow up to be a paleontologist. It seemed a given. Now I can’t tell you why that did not happen because frankly I don’t know. I found other interests and pursued them eventually getting a degree in religious studies. What a turn right?

I do not regret that particular path I took. I very much enjoy what I studied and am proud to have a degree that fulfills my deep desire to learn. It may not be marketable, but it makes me happy. Can you truly put value on that? All this notwithstanding, dinosaurs are my balancing force. They awaken in me memories of youth and hope and joy. I was always excited to talk about these giant animals that died out millions of years before. Though I have forgotten much over the years in the way of facts and pronunciations thankfully I can still call upon those feelings when thinking about my beloved lizards. And I do.

The topics I am passionate about and that I have written about recently are not those youthful, innocent topics. They are not ones we can see with open, wide-eyes full of wonder and optimistic expectations. They are problems that require much sacrifice, much pain, much grief. To constantly carry those feelings. To constantly feel that and nothing else is to risk numbing oneself to the world. When one ceases to feel and becomes numb he can no longer empathize. When that happens we cease to be part of the human community. We become disconnected. Without communion there is no change. You become an empty howling voice in the wilderness, more a danger than an aid.

So when I feel myself get to that point where I am consumed with anger or indignation. When I want to scream to the fours corners of the world at the injustice of it all until I feel nothing I remember my old friends. Diplodocus and Styracosaurus; T-Rex and Ornithomimus, Ankylosaurus and all the others.  I remember also the coolest dinosaur of all, the Arthur Fonzarelli of the the animal kingdom; Iguanodon. Ayyy!

What are your dinosaurs?

Sorry John It Took So Long, But I'm a Dreamer Now

By: Gus Victoria

Religion. It looks like a dirty word doesn’t it? To me it is. It carries with it the combined baggage of our collective human existence, its origin predating the very foundations of culture. This article does not begin there. Rather the genesis of this particular rant is found years ago in one particular song; Imagine by John Lennon. For so long I had spurned this song as a soulless heathen daydream. How can one imagine let alone wish for a world without religion. Friends and family adored this song and I resisted. I was at the time a self-styled intellectual with deep spiritual roots and happy in my conservative Catholic tradition. I saw a world so different than what was ideal, but a world where religion was crucial as a means to bring back that ideal and create a better world. Imagine was a childish fantasy I wanted no part of. And then I grew up.

Years of study and living has led me to see the best and worst that religion has to offer. I could assign the bad to Satan and credit the good to God. A younger me probably would have. An angry, equally foolish me would have reversed it ironically.  I choose to do neither, because those two figures have nothing to do with it. Every action, good or bad, began as a choice. Religion is a mask we use to protect us from the truths of the world. The best and worst that religion can offer is also the best and worst that humanity can offer.

It is easy to condemn religion as an opiate or a panacea for the weak. It would be hard to argue the hate that has originated from all religions despite the message of love they all seem to convey. However it would be equally hard to deny the power of love and justice that religions all over the world throughout time have championed. The cycle of hate must not be allowed to carry on by condemning believers, nor must the cycle of love be allowed to end through a difference of belief.

Just imagine it; a world without religion and without nations. The differences of mankind would no longer divide. These are not the words of a foolish man. They are the words of a person that understands we are one. Now I understand that song. I am a dreamer. Are you?

Executions - My Two Pennies Worth

“Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.”

--Pope John Paul II

This week there were five scheduled executions in this country, last week there were two and next week three. That is a total of ten executions in 8 states this month.To be fair both executions last week were granted stays, two this week and one, possibly two, next week as well. Still that leaves a minimum of four executions this month. Granted September is a relatively busy month for executions this year, but the issue at hand to me is not the number of executions being scheduled by this country rather it is the fact that they exist as punishment that troubles me.

If we lifted our eyes long enough to stop complaining about Facebook’s new change we would have found it hard to ignore the noise being generated by one case in particular; that of Troy Davis. Davis, 42 was a black man convicted of killing an officer in 1989 and sentenced to die in Georgia. The details of the case were such that many believed there was sufficient doubt to question culpability or at the very least stay the execution for further review.  

Lost in this heated case was Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44 a known white-supremacist convicted in the dragging death of a black man in Texas in 1998. He was executed hours before Davis. There seemed to be less an uproar about his execution than of Davis’s. Was it a racial issue? Brewer was white, his victim black. Davis was black and his victim white.

Perhaps the case against Brewer was stronger and in that case doubt was nonexistent where in Davis’s case the acquisition of evidence was controversial or downright illegal.

As it pertains to human life I would say none of it matters. Race or culpability, white or black, guilty or not a life is still a life and to take it can never be right.  

I do not favor the criminal here. Nor do I forget the victim. A life taken can never be brought back in the taking of another. All I seek is an end to the cycle of death and hate.

It is said, and it will continue to be said, that I do not know what it is I am talking about. That until I know what it is to suffer such a loss I cannot speak.  While it is true I do not know the depth of sorrow that one goes through in the traumatic untimely loss of a loved one I do know that all life has value. A value that is intrinsic and unconditional. I also know that evil exists and that in order to preserve the good in the world justice must prevail. That the State does the killing only serves to disguise vengeance as justice. It is an ill-fitting dress.

Justice must maintain peace and it must do so without violence. Violence is a destructive force that by its very nature cannot create. If we seek to foster justice and instill lasting peace we must not resort to murder. The taking of a life no matter how just it may seem in light of the crimes the accused has committed cannot be considered justice and must always be considered vengeance. And vengeance carries with it a heavy price on those that participate in it. Some may feel that a murderer “got what he deserved” and some leaders may use a reputation of executioner as a rallying point for elections, but we that keep the good in the world that value life above vengeance must never resort to such base emotions and vile tactics.

Some will say peace is weakness and that our “bleeding hearts” make us blind to the evil in the world and allow us to make excuses where none should be. That we plead for those who willfully and gleefully seek to harm others at the expense of the innocent. And I write here that the opposite is true. Those hearts of ours do bleed. They bleed not for the murderer that has taken life, but for the victim that in repayment takes a life. We seek to preserve that innocence. In the taking of a life all those that participate lose a bit of their humanity by partaking in something inherently evil. The murderer damns himself, but in the execution of that murderer the State damns us all.

Texas is that you?