Poetry
Walking the boardwalk - Leah
Rose
Circles - Jerry
Harrison
Dogstar - Hal
Bogotch
listening to a recording -
shanna
Violence Just Ain't Right -
Kids at Inside Out
Untitled - D.T.
Jenkins
Flower Girl -
Lynette
Bushmandias - Percy Bysshe
Shelley (tweaked by Jim Smith)
Walking
the
boardwalk
by Leah
Rose
I see a beautiful
Sunrise &
sunset
I also
see
A dream
dying
A shell
of
A man
crying
A lost
soul
Once
loved
By
someone
Who
Cared
In such
agony
And
pain
Drowning
in
His own
despair
And
misery
Cops
blow
Like the
wind
They
come
&
go
Harassing
the
Homeless
Seen by
all
No one
cares
A jumping
here
An overdose
there
A stabbing
here
Do the
cops
Really care
Or is it just
a
Game to
them
Tear drops
from
A child’s
eye
Like rain
gently
To the
ground
At the sight
They
see
A man Knock’s
on
Deaths
door
Waiting to
die
Day by
day
In a back
alley
Somewhere
From
the
Torture
of
This life &
His
own
Agony
&
Suffering
People pass
Him
bye
And step
over
His lifeless
body
And spit
on
His
grave
Like he
is
Not even
there
The
boardwalk
Claims
victims
Yet we
all
Are blind
to
What
happens
Every
day
As they
are
People
like
You & me
------------
CIRCLES
(from
the Beachhead Archives, Feb. 1977)
BY
Jerry
Harrison
Want
to
Inform
You
That
Your
Monthly
Rent
Is
Being
Increased
By
10.
As
of
1/1
2/1
3/1
4/1
5/1
6/1
7/1
8/1
9/1
10/1
11/1
12/1
1966
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
And
the 1st of each month
Every
year
There -
after.
----------
DOGSTAR
By
Hal Bogotch
Accordion
emotions
squeeze in and stretch
out
a barrel roll of dolphin
power
flexible
Edison
strives to
reinvent
the spiral
galaxy
out far
beyond
Inverness
lighthouse
cosmic golf balls
collide
glittering white
teeth
a light-year
smile
majestic cuneiform
asterism
parallel lily pads
lie witness to sticky
tongues
shot out to
snag
unseen
grasshoppers
skip by
bellhop
sign hotel
ledger
TV remote
bolted to end
table
flip familiar digital
signals
disingenuous polka
party
wholly lonely
planet
hold up clump of
daisies
straight to the horses
mouth.
------------
listening
to a recording
the dark poets
voice
reading stu
perkoffs
riff for the
lady
lightened, him up for
me
he was a dark
blur
in my
memory
outside the Venice
west
in the
breezeway
talking
story
he never had a
face
I never heard his
voice
he was Jimmy’s
friend
a poet in a dark
place
from a dark
city
gave me dark
thoughts
opening a
vile
spilling
poison
into his
veins
spreading to his
pen
black on
white
bare bones of a
city
whose
people
never look you in the
eye
and stab you in the
back
anyway
–
shanna
art is love is
god
----------
A
New York Poem
By Hillary Kaye
I say, “ How have you
been?”
and you tell me, what
you’ve been,
and to
whom.
---------
Violence
Just Ain’t Right
When violence
becomes real,
People know how to
change
When it hits your
family,
It causes too much
pain
Bush needs to stop
lyin
So mom and pops can stop
cryin
For all the soldiers
dyin
Dick Cheney shouldn’t hold a
gun
Trouble everywhere creates
fear
Nervous anxious
sadness
This tension isn’t
fun
Violence just ain’
right
Violence just ain’t
right
Violence just ain’t
right
And bein in a gang ain’t
tight
When violence becomes
real
People know how to
change
When it its your
family
It causes too much
pain
Look, bein in a gang ain’t
tight
When you get shot yo mom go cry every
night
Then all the gangs at school gonna
fight
And then the police gonna think
it’s black on white
And parents,
don’t let your kids play those
games
They teach you how to fight, and be in
gangs
Violence just ain’t
right
Violence just ain’t
right
Violence just ain’t
right
And bein in a gang ain’t
tight
– Written by the kids of
the
Neighborhood Arts Project of
Inside/Out
------------
Untitled
The
new cancer slowly exposes itself to
me.
Skeletal
fragments,
enough to affiliate it
form.
Light is only complimented by
darkness.
Sanity by
madness.
I am the sunlight on your face right
now.
And when you touch the
bottom.
I surround you.
–D.T.
Jenkins
-----------
FLOWER
GIRL
July the
10th...
She follows shadows in empty
rooms,
Alone
now,
Gliding her hands across the cold satin
bedsheet,
Where he
slept,
Between love and pain--and the
Darkness.
Dressed in a wedding gown of midnight
lace,
the ceremony is
complete,
She was his
girl,
Innocent red-haired waif wearing
flowers,
A sacrifice to the dangerous
poet.
Her happiness was the
road
music, whiskey,
parties,
Scars and
needlemarks
a grisly diary recorded on thin
freckled arms,
Today demands another
entry.
She trembles like a caged
bird,
Vulnerable in
black,
Groping through a fog of memories for
instant bliss,
Her fate is
sealed,
Another fix for the
rock’n’roll widow.
To kill the loneliness forever on July the
10th...
--Lynette
------------
BUSHMANDIAS
I
met a traveller from the ancient Iraq
land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless
legs of stone
Stand in the desert near
Baghdad, in the sand,
Half sunk, a
shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And
beady eyes and sneer of cold command
Tell
that its sculptor well those passions
read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on
these lifeless things,
The hand that
mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And
on the pedestal these words appear:
“My
name is George W. Bush, leader of the free
world:
Look on my wars, ye peace-loving
people, and despair!”
Nothing beside
remains: round the decay
Of that colossal
wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level
sands stretch far away.
– by
Percy Bysshe Shelley (with a little tweaking by Jim Smith)
Posted: Thu - February 1, 2007 at 06:30 AM