Poetry
• Buy Now! - Rex
Butters
• Philomene - Stuart Z.
Perkoff
• Like a dream - Hillary
Kaye
• People Don't Understand Progress
- Nancy McCulloch
• Going to Noodles -
C.V. Beck
• Strangers in the Park -
Lily Tanner
BUY
NOW!
as anarctic ice
caps
melt
and
waters rise
red blue
green
computer generated
models
portray a soggy
London
soon
underwater
Florida
flooded
panhandle
plunged
sunk like
Atlantis
even rebuilt New
Orleans
submerged
I
see the bright side
to global
warming
as remnant rebel culture in
Venice
driven out by jagged
edged
gentrification, voodoo
investing
and greedy glutinous ground
grabbers
soon enough
witness
a saline
solution
to the architectural
aggression
neighborhood
negation
and demolition
delirium
bloated real estate
bubble
long
burst
inflated
assessments
corrected
by
the conquering persistence
of righteous
reclamation
waves
–Rex
Butters
------------
Philomene
––
I had a
flash/image
of you standing
in
what I cal yr
“nun’s
position”--hands
clasped,
head bowed,body a
straight line
-––
& looking at you
standing
that way in my
mind--stunned
by
the beauty of
you––
I realized you look like
Maud Gonne––
the Angel of
the
Irish
Revolution,
Yeats’
lifelong
passion &
muse
figure––
Philomene––
daughter
of lite
bring yr luminous
dance
to open new
visions
within the
black
against
which
all
struggle
– Stuart Z.
Perkoff
------------
Like
a dream
By Hillary
Kaye
They arrive fashionably
late
this new
year
fresh as
daisies
shining like
stars
meanwhile the seventh
son
is overcome by feelings of
darkness
and does not
arrive
but the goat and the
elephant
get on.
Springtime has no monopoly on
flowers
the garden never stops
blooming
there where the sun never
sets.
It’s a dream and like a
dream
it’s coated and
coded
and marched
through.
The soldier cleans his
rifle
it sparkles in the noon day
sun
all these things become like
miracles.
Unnoticed the miraculous,the
bountiful has come and gone.
Suddenly there is a storm on the
horizon
things have to be
rethought
the whole concept has to be
redone.
Volunteers are expected from every
corner of the world
till then the spider and
bird eat
dinner.
-----------
PEOPLE
DON’T UNDERSTAND PROGRESS
UNTIL IT
GETS IN THEIR WAY
WE UNDERSTAND
PROGRESS
EACH TIME WE LOSE OUR
HOMES
OR PAY A RENT INCREASE,
BECAUSE
OF A TAX
INCREASE
OR WATCH A TREE COME DOWN
OR
THE GRASS DISAPPEAR
OR
THE DUCKS
DISAPPEAR
AND THE CONDOS GO
UP
WE UNDERSTAND
PROGRESS.
IT’S UP TO US NOW TO
STOP THE
PEOPLE THAT LOOK AT LIFE AS A
COMMODITY
TO BUY OR SELL WHEN THE MARKET
DEMANDS
IT’S UP TO US TO BE
STRONG, FREE,
UNITED AS ONE, ACTING AS
ONE.
IT’S UP TO
US!
–Nancy
McCulloch
------------
GOING
TO NOODLES
I’m going to
Noodles
& open a needle
place
and raise
peedles
won’t need a
beedle
keep your
oedles,
don’t need
it
--C.V.
Beck
----------
STRANGERS
IN THE PARK
March 25, 2006 starts
the end of commercial and handicraft
vending
on the Venice Beach, CA Boardwalk
My
mind fails
I will
start.
Leaders wear hats covering one
eye.
So tempting, so
evil.
Cement mixers roll over a bed of
daisies.
Modern structures and dogs take
their
place.
America
will die in an
earthquake-proof
house.
Traffic
is heavy on the 710 North.
Shut up and
listen to me. Leaders love
what
they’ve got. You don’t know the
secrecy.
The
council shouts and you die at their
voices.
I
will tell you my secret. Soldiers took
away
my ten liter
snake.
You don’t know God is
talking to you.
The sellers are being
chased into the sea.
Craftsmen and vendors
go out with a wave.
I will write a
book: The Importance of Saving Vendors. Better title: Renaissance Craftsmen of
the Future.
The
epitaph:
The muse and the sellers
wander the town
no place of their own no
place to go
It’s
over
the picking of goods and telling of
secrets.Go home
to your friends and take off
your shoes. A decade here
here, a decade
there to give away. I hear the wind.
It sings
curses.
– Lily
Tanner
Posted: Sat
- April 1, 2006 at 11:26 AM