Voltaire on Religion: 

If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very
possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut
one another's throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live
happy and in peace.

Spotify This: The Coup

Sometimes gunpowder smells good.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson


Sometimes Gunpowder Sounds Good:

Amoeba Records list of best for 2012, has introduced me to a number of artists.  One of the artists is the Coup.  The coup are from the Bay Area in California, and they have a blend of hip hop and Punk, reminiscent of Public Enemy and KRS One.    They made me smile like the Dead Kennedy's use to.   There sound is still entertaining and unlike Michael Frente not all preachy.  A better Fish Bone.  So this is my shout out to a band worth listening to.
BTW I wore a Public Enemy Shirt and listened to Old Ice T while mowing lawns in the summer in Longmont Colorado.   I would dance my way as I walked and cut the grass down.

Check there new album here.

Poetry Circus: The Odious Scent of the Spice Road

One way flight to Egypt,
the ticket left in Portland.

One way safe and knowable, the other
way, is not, a place I know.
lost (ticket) left on a seat
    snow storm casts white
    blanketed airplane
    snow plow clears path.  And

     we will be above all day.

Tight.  Coffin, flight all day
and tomorrow we will land
in the Saffron market
and the towers calling the faithful,
                 forward
in the overcrowded streets filled with boiling Arabs,
           Going to Work, day
           by ordinary day, but we
are newly arrived, and smelling
musky Saffron Mullahs,
not Nudists from Kathmandu,
Orange streets in Egypt not Kathmandu.
where pots hold Saffron to be exchanged
for a dollar.  I worry, "How am I going to get back home
                               without a ticket."

Crowded.  We
smell like money newly crisped.
Rare birds,
squawk at us and kids throw fireworks.
Scents
of a place clings to your American Sunglasses,
YOU.
Like Pip in Melvelle's Whale Book
I CRY OUT LOUD.
THIS IS NOT HOME
Orange Monkey.
The color of rust and congress, praying
O' delayed.
Zeus take me-find my way back home.

No ticket home.
And the wind does not blow back to Rome, red-white-
and-orange-painted temples of Egyptian Gods.
1492, blue waves.
swallow Orange colored cups of tea.
and Bedouins continue to run their daily lives,
like yesterday, and the
color orange is painted on the
ticket home,
Hell is hot! But
Stella does not quench my thirst.
White. Red. Blue: marks me.
I can't blend the colors to fade into the Saffron filled
market and left exposed fearing
                    Camus's Arab.

What key?  The
sense of Africa
where Saffron
is sold
in Coptic Jars.

Poetry Circus: Hail-storm 2005

Clouds swirled, danced
against red rocks
building into
a storm, set sail below.

I was out of breath
keeping pace with a lone doe
she would not stop.
I panted? Clouds swept

the sweat off my brow,
dripped into eddies,
sweat, dripped,
into eddies.

I laid down eyeing white
smelling the damp fetid air -
fluvial currants threatened
Boulder city below.

Clouds gained power
power gathered
into a Pow-Wow
Boulder Threatened
    echoing tom-tom strikes,

wind swirled force-
fully ready to punish sins unrepentant
tom-tom
beating into my Odyssey.

Returning to You

I return.   The reason I have been gone for so long is that my computer has been more difficult than a box full of kittens jacked up on mountain dew.   I hope to contribute to this blog daily as long as my computer is working.  Sorry for the inconvenience.   Your friend and author, Gregory D. Rothbard