As America prepares to shut down because the politics of greed and the desire not to permit the sitting President gain political capital by increasing jobs, shut the country down instead, stop economic growth and jobs and increase the misery index for individuals to perpetuate the greed of the those yet to be charged for the chicanery of every major financial institution in America:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Richard the Third, Act 1, Scene 1.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. Isaiah 40:4, G.F. Hanel, Messiah, “I Have A Dream†M.L. King, Jr.
"Stuff your eyes with wonder; live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." (Ray Bradbury)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
The streets are alive with your radioactive smile,
your distinct glow, not quite pumpkin, not quite
squash, not quite orange; no, not anything organic.
You are your own corona of light, a cubic sun blessed
with your own properties of gravity and motion.
We imagine building whole cities from your
dense, coarse texture that does not bend easily
to any knife or flame you come in contact with.
You are the answer to urban plight, the gift from
white flight, the response to nightly newscasts
constantly heralding our impending demise.
Like every good Messiah, you come unannounced,
sent from angelic convoys of delivery trucks
in the cover of night and bureaucracy
to finally fill the promise of empty cupboards.
We never asked for you in this way. Our prayers
were for sustenance to survive the workday.
But we are not enemies; you take pride at your
place on the dinner table. Like us, you ask
for a chance to fulfill your function and feed us.
We won’t turn you down, we can’t afford to,
not because of poverty but because of culture.
We were taught early to take advantage
of all parts of the animal; learned the tongue
and eyes make a savory broth; ears
and intestines mixed with rice and hot
sauce make for a royal banquet.
With that knowledge, we take a broad knife
to your radiant heart, cut you in uneven
strokes, lay you down with margarine and
Wonder Bread, bake you golden, press you
against our mouths, and sing your praises.
–Oscar Bermeo
Oscar Bermeo is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest, Heaven Below and To the Break of Dawn. He makes his home in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
You will never be great, no shirt, no shoes,
no servitude. Just a regular Joe, Josephine
who walks around, has thoughts, and makes way
for Whitman. You’re John the Baptist,
a footnote, not your own story.
Can you handle the not-a-tightrope or noose fix?
Who am I to speak of barbarism? I’m not even
anesthesia, not even appendectomy.
The world’s plans spill overboard, spinning an axis
it barely owns. Your neighbor eats Wheaties
from a box without your face on it.
Your Cheerios turn sponge discs like life rafts.
No one’s drowning. Just the eating, dipping
the spoon, the up & down, milk to mouth
on a slow drift raft, thinking out the later pages.
Your work sets a stage you’ll never cross.
You bear anger’s head, an angry bear,
a heel at the foot of Achilles’,
a fourth wall without the prison bars,
the snow bank’s crescent, little kid
absence, adult disappointment. But turning
to the field through the window called lawn,
you spot a wrangled few daisies jutting
sun from the ivy’s edge, one bunny
nibbling at leaves. So much happens
without the paper, the news without
an eye baring out her soft socket
of a blood’s hole rush, an iris honing
in on what’s not me, not any of us, what’s not
anywhere but the next field over
with the lone old mare, which is somewhere too.
We mistake and focus in,
as in so many vampiric pleas for Grade A
passage over. That bunny maybe never knew
how the hemoglobin dripped
from the prophet’s patterned head,
how the queen felt mixed with what
her tongue made out and the fear of guilt
that knocks at the middle of midnight or when she
spooned honeyed oats by sunrise each day.
We are all like this: balloons of cramped sizes,
a particulate serum from
gravitational force, a planet’s town leanings,
or even exactly where the equator
meets itself in past events no longer
in total: visions of greatness and vistas of presence,
those that rely on exactly how to pen
their inner air donating history’s deflation.
After resting, we inherit: lift the spoon, pool the red,
bite salvation’s corpus, eat a rabbit’s stew for bread.
–Amy King
Amy King is the author of Antidotes for an Alibi (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), I’m the Man Who Loves You, and, most recently, Slaves to Do These Things, all three from Blazevox Books, as well as a number of poetry chapbooks. A new book, I Want to Make You Safe, is forthcoming from Litmus Press.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.
But I went walking a long time across the dunes
and in all that time spoke not a single word,
nor wrote one down, nor even thought anything at all
at the window of my heart.
Speechless the snowy tissue of clouds passed over, and more came,
and speechless they passed also.
The beach plums hung on the hillsides, their branches
heavy with blossoms; yet not one of them said a word.
And nothing there anyway knew, don’t we know, what a word is,
or could parse down from the general liquidity of feeling
to the spasm and bull’s eye of the moment, or the logic,
or the instance,
trimming the fingernails of happiness, entering the house
of rhetoric.
And yet there was one there eloquent enough,
all this time,
and not quietly but in a rhapsody of reply, though with
an absence of reason, of querulous pestering. The mockingbird
was making of himself
an orchestra, a choir, a dozen flutes,
a tambourine, an outpost of perfect and exact observation,
all afternoon rapping and whistling
on the athlete’s lung-ful of leafy air. You could not
imagine a steadier talker, hunched deep in the tree,
then floating forth decorative and boisterous and mirthful,
all eye and fluttering feathers. You could not imagine
a sweeter prayer.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Summer school, and jumbo shrimp, of course.
Friendly fire, famous poet, common sense,
and, until very recently, safe sex.
Blind date, sure thing, amicable divorce.
Also there's loyal opposition,
social security, deliberate speed.
How about dysfunctional family?
Eyes blackened, hearts crushed, the damn thing functions.
Some things we say should coat our tongues with ash.
Drug-Free School Zone? No way: it's our money
our children toke, snort and shoot up while we
vote against higher property taxes.
Want a one-word oxymoron? Prepay.
Money's—forgive me—rich in such mischief:
trust officer, debt service, common thief—
these phrases all want to have it both ways
and sag at the middle like decrepit beds.
Religious freedom—doesn't that sound good?
And some assisted living when we're old
and in our cryptic dreams the many dead
swirl like a fitful snow. We'll wake and not
think of our living wills or property.
We'll want some breakfast. Our memories
will be our real estate, all that we've got.
That is quite profound Erik
)
That is quite profound Erik .....
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
As America prepares to shut
)
As America prepares to shut down because the politics of greed and the desire not to permit the sitting President gain political capital by increasing jobs, shut the country down instead, stop economic growth and jobs and increase the misery index for individuals to perpetuate the greed of the those yet to be charged for the chicanery of every major financial institution in America:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Richard the Third, Act 1, Scene 1.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
Isaiah 40:4, G.F. Hanel, Messiah, “I Have A Dream†M.L. King, Jr.
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Stuff your eyes with wonder;
)
"Stuff your eyes with wonder; live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." (Ray Bradbury)
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi
I wandered lonely as a
)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi
Ode to Government
)
Ode to Government Cheese
The streets are alive with your radioactive smile,
your distinct glow, not quite pumpkin, not quite
squash, not quite orange; no, not anything organic.
You are your own corona of light, a cubic sun blessed
with your own properties of gravity and motion.
We imagine building whole cities from your
dense, coarse texture that does not bend easily
to any knife or flame you come in contact with.
You are the answer to urban plight, the gift from
white flight, the response to nightly newscasts
constantly heralding our impending demise.
Like every good Messiah, you come unannounced,
sent from angelic convoys of delivery trucks
in the cover of night and bureaucracy
to finally fill the promise of empty cupboards.
We never asked for you in this way. Our prayers
were for sustenance to survive the workday.
But we are not enemies; you take pride at your
place on the dinner table. Like us, you ask
for a chance to fulfill your function and feed us.
We won’t turn you down, we can’t afford to,
not because of poverty but because of culture.
We were taught early to take advantage
of all parts of the animal; learned the tongue
and eyes make a savory broth; ears
and intestines mixed with rice and hot
sauce make for a royal banquet.
With that knowledge, we take a broad knife
to your radiant heart, cut you in uneven
strokes, lay you down with margarine and
Wonder Bread, bake you golden, press you
against our mouths, and sing your praises.
–Oscar Bermeo
Oscar Bermeo is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest, Heaven Below and To the Break of Dawn. He makes his home in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Invictus Out of the night
)
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi
Eat the Sinew’s
)
Eat the Sinew’s Disbelief
You will never be great, no shirt, no shoes,
no servitude. Just a regular Joe, Josephine
who walks around, has thoughts, and makes way
for Whitman. You’re John the Baptist,
a footnote, not your own story.
Can you handle the not-a-tightrope or noose fix?
Who am I to speak of barbarism? I’m not even
anesthesia, not even appendectomy.
The world’s plans spill overboard, spinning an axis
it barely owns. Your neighbor eats Wheaties
from a box without your face on it.
Your Cheerios turn sponge discs like life rafts.
No one’s drowning. Just the eating, dipping
the spoon, the up & down, milk to mouth
on a slow drift raft, thinking out the later pages.
Your work sets a stage you’ll never cross.
You bear anger’s head, an angry bear,
a heel at the foot of Achilles’,
a fourth wall without the prison bars,
the snow bank’s crescent, little kid
absence, adult disappointment. But turning
to the field through the window called lawn,
you spot a wrangled few daisies jutting
sun from the ivy’s edge, one bunny
nibbling at leaves. So much happens
without the paper, the news without
an eye baring out her soft socket
of a blood’s hole rush, an iris honing
in on what’s not me, not any of us, what’s not
anywhere but the next field over
with the lone old mare, which is somewhere too.
We mistake and focus in,
as in so many vampiric pleas for Grade A
passage over. That bunny maybe never knew
how the hemoglobin dripped
from the prophet’s patterned head,
how the queen felt mixed with what
her tongue made out and the fear of guilt
that knocks at the middle of midnight or when she
spooned honeyed oats by sunrise each day.
We are all like this: balloons of cramped sizes,
a particulate serum from
gravitational force, a planet’s town leanings,
or even exactly where the equator
meets itself in past events no longer
in total: visions of greatness and vistas of presence,
those that rely on exactly how to pen
their inner air donating history’s deflation.
After resting, we inherit: lift the spoon, pool the red,
bite salvation’s corpus, eat a rabbit’s stew for bread.
–Amy King
Amy King is the author of Antidotes for an Alibi (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), I’m the Man Who Loves You, and, most recently, Slaves to Do These Things, all three from Blazevox Books, as well as a number of poetry chapbooks. A new book, I Want to Make You Safe, is forthcoming from Litmus Press.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
These pools that, though in
)
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
Robert Frost
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi
Mockingbird By Mary
)
Mockingbird
By Mary Oliver
Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.
But I went walking a long time across the dunes
and in all that time spoke not a single word,
nor wrote one down, nor even thought anything at all
at the window of my heart.
Speechless the snowy tissue of clouds passed over, and more came,
and speechless they passed also.
The beach plums hung on the hillsides, their branches
heavy with blossoms; yet not one of them said a word.
And nothing there anyway knew, don’t we know, what a word is,
or could parse down from the general liquidity of feeling
to the spasm and bull’s eye of the moment, or the logic,
or the instance,
trimming the fingernails of happiness, entering the house
of rhetoric.
And yet there was one there eloquent enough,
all this time,
and not quietly but in a rhapsody of reply, though with
an absence of reason, of querulous pestering. The mockingbird
was making of himself
an orchestra, a choir, a dozen flutes,
a tambourine, an outpost of perfect and exact observation,
all afternoon rapping and whistling
on the athlete’s lung-ful of leafy air. You could not
imagine a steadier talker, hunched deep in the tree,
then floating forth decorative and boisterous and mirthful,
all eye and fluttering feathers. You could not imagine
a sweeter prayer.
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Oxymorons by William
)
Oxymorons
by William Matthews
Summer school, and jumbo shrimp, of course.
Friendly fire, famous poet, common sense,
and, until very recently, safe sex.
Blind date, sure thing, amicable divorce.
Also there's loyal opposition,
social security, deliberate speed.
How about dysfunctional family?
Eyes blackened, hearts crushed, the damn thing functions.
Some things we say should coat our tongues with ash.
Drug-Free School Zone? No way: it's our money
our children toke, snort and shoot up while we
vote against higher property taxes.
Want a one-word oxymoron? Prepay.
Money's—forgive me—rich in such mischief:
trust officer, debt service, common thief—
these phrases all want to have it both ways
and sag at the middle like decrepit beds.
Religious freedom—doesn't that sound good?
And some assisted living when we're old
and in our cryptic dreams the many dead
swirl like a fitful snow. We'll wake and not
think of our living wills or property.
We'll want some breakfast. Our memories
will be our real estate, all that we've got.
"We must be the change we wish to see."
Mahatma Gandhi