Poetry


• Thank You Dubya - Lynne Bronstein
• Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918
• Busting Heads - Stew Albert
• Our Kind of Dancing (Venice, 2003) - Ellen Lewis
• Untitled - Jennifer Hunt
• The Wave - Jennifer Hunt
• Stuart Z. Perkoff - Bill Fleeman

Thank You Dubya

by Lynne Bronstein

He took away my safe life under the covers
With an attitude that brought on
A terrible vengeance
And I saw flags everywhere and couldn’t breathe, for
He took away the barriers to industry
And the air became cloudy.
He took my boy to send to the east
To come home in a box
And I felt no safer.
He took my job
And there were no new jobs
Only new and higher prices.
He took away the affirmative
And left me to prove myself over and over
To men who had already left the room.
He took away the health places
And I sickened.
He let the industrialists ply their trade unmolested
And I got cancer.
He ignored the damage to the earth
And there was less earth to stand on
So he pulled it all underneath his feet
And told us to hang on to the edge.
I cried out against this and he took my tongue.
I played a meaningful song about his tyranny
And he took away my fingers.
He sent police everywhere
But turned his head while a gang grabbed me
And when I was pregnant
He took away my choices
And said I had to bear the baby
And bring it into his cleansed America.
I cried out: “MR PRESIDENT
DON’T YOU SEE?
I WAS RAPED BY TERRORISTS!
My baby is already
An Al-Queda!
My baby who you say
Is alive within my womb
That does not belong  to me
Is at this moment planning conquest!”

And he said:
“I love and respect
your right to give birth
and I will support you
as you bring up the child
and when he’s a man
and has weapons of mass destruction
I then will kill him.
But until then
He has the right to life.”

And I said:
“Do I have that right, too?”

************

Dulce Et Decorum Est
(published posthumously)

by Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918

Fallen in action in the last exchanges of fire in World War I, commanded in spite of armistice negotiations underway

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

************

Busting Heads

By Stew Albert
Ashcroft
struck another blow
for white bread America.
He's closing down headshops
and
arresting their owners.
He's closing down web sites
that sell bongs
and
arresting their owners.
Go to one of those sites
and you get switched
to Ashcroft
telling you bongs and spoons are illegal
and
ha ha
we know where you live.

Someday soon
when you go
to an antiwar website
you will get switched to Ashcroft.
Ha ha,
he knows where you live.

************

Our Kind of Dancing (Venice, 2003)

By Ellen Lewis

We who have danced all night
around the drum circle
in our tie-dyed shirts
(home-colored)
or just our naked, tattooed skins –
writhing to our own rhythms,
smoking illicit substances –
transmogrify,
in the morning,
into white-shirted waiters,
GAP salesgirls,
low-end businessmen
worrying over numbers on papers,
staring at green screens.
We don’t forget, though.
We move restlessly
in this restrictive clothing.
Uniforms are not conducive
to our kind of dancing.
We listen all day
for the sound of the drums.
In the evening, we will
kick off our shoes again.

**********

Untitled

by Jennifer Hunt

Boulevards
rush
toward polluted destiny
soaring

beyond
my reach

I’m left with potholes half filled with
light rain and oil leaks

Whose silver pools reflect everything
I could
ever
hope
to know

Where images hover, sometimes scatter
with passing volition
Fashioning lucid incantations for the windows through to gaze

Dreaming of being more clear and
sinking into

sweet,
murky
reverie

***********

The Wave

Makeup is sliding down again
In hot LA sun
Into and out of Venice Beach
Lights lips across eyes under lashes

Spray streams into deep pictures
And poets chisel their names
Down into infamy concrete gray
Wandering some paint or speak watching

Makeup slides down in deep pictures
Sidewalk cracks abandon some buildings
While people move in sequined bathing suits
Music floats up beyond through

Paint abandons my buildings
Lashes hide LA’s hot sun
Names chisel deep pictures

Sliding down beneath sidewalk cracks
Into infamy
And some paint
While others watch

Wandering beneath lights

– Jennifer Hunt

***********

Stuart Z. Perkoff

By Bill Fleeman

head and shoulders bobbing
like a promenade pigeon
pecking bread crumbs & butts.
artfully dodging work-for-money
u finished yr poet walk
more or less unknown.
penniless u paid yr dues.

Posted: Tue - April 1, 2003 at 06:29 PM          

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