Multi-Breed: Past, Present or Future
(Realizing there was no box for multicultural persons on American Census)
What if one day you look in the mirror
and you are nothing like the person
you have portrayed yourself to be in society?
That you are
A multi-breed of a human being with
No country
No ethnicity
You embody a culmination of heritage from many different
Continents
Bloodlines
The lines of who you are now have blurred so
Clear
Transparent
A culture that no one can
Tag
Label
Because nothing like you has ever existed
Oh, the people’s fear of mixing liquids is so great
Although, many have fought to do so quietly in their
Beds
Homes
Blending silken woven eggs in warm shells of womb
Not Permitted
Taboo
Yet all of these creations passed down through
Genes
Generations
The one that was believed to be damned for sins committed for not
“staying with your own kind”
Doctrines
Beliefs
If you look close enough in the mirror
Look deeply into you own eye
Around the pupil
Into the various colors streaming from the
seamless circular line that forms the globe
You will see that you are
All
One
Past sacrifices for love given in a single moment created
You

The Fog of War
Susan Lively

How can you see
through this blood haze?
Oh, if you could only,
freeze the frame.
Oh, it must make you crazy –
the fog of war.

How can you see
through this blinding hate?
Do you tell yourself
that this is fate?
Oh, it must make you crazy –
the fog of war.

How can you see
through this crippling pain?
Is this how you’ll do it,
again and again,
the fog of war.

How can you see
through these lies?
When you cover your ears,
and close your eyes –
the fog of war.

How can you rationalize?
Torture, and murder, and death,
evil, and greed, and threats.
Who is this you?
Why is this so new?
Don’t act like you’ve never met
the fog of war.

How can human beings,
choose to kill all their humanity?
Why do human beings,
want to kill all of humanity?
Why didn’t I see it before?
We’re just here to settle a score.
Ah, it is the fog of war.

Life, life it isn’t a game.
Filled with passions
you cannot tame,
and enemies that
you cannot name –
the fog of the war.

There is no one,
no one to blame.
Can’t you see?
We’re all the same.
Can’t you see?
We’re all insane –
the fog of war.

Taking your last breath,
choking and choking
your heart to death.
Ah, my friend,
it is the end,
it is the fog of war.

by Deborah S. Katz (Debi)

Certain phrases in this found poem were influenced by the
Constitutions of Iraq, Iran, and the United States of America.

We are the people

We are ocean, coral, and setting sun horizon
upon this land, upon this soil,
we are ancient forests, sunrise, seeds,

and harvest of the land between two rivers
just risen from our stumble,
pioneers of civilization, crafters of writing,

looking with confidence to the future,
promoting progress,
we are inhabitants of horizons of oceans,

we establish justice and cast aside politics
of aggression.
The constructive role of this belief,

upon this sunrise upon this land, ordains
and establishes this Constitution,
in order to form a more perfect union, we,

inhabitants of habitats between horizons,
spread a culture of diversity,
we take lessons from yesterday, we defuse

terrorism. We are the inhabitants of habitats
between horizons.
We are the writers and poets of the land

between two rivers. We of habitats between
oceans between horizons,
we inhabitants are gaining peace and strength

striving to reject violence in all forms. We are
the responsibility.
We are the planet. We, the terra firma, air

and water. This land this soil this harvest.
Between horizons, between oceans,
we are the habitats, we are the inhabitants.

Advanced Search

You can apply garlic paste
on the affected parts directly
to accordion pleated overload
causes tiny cracks minimally
in 3,000 degree heat when
each button plays two different
old English pantomime
modifications usually founded
upon the first European known
to step foot in Newfoundland
fiercely in search of livestock
and a 27 percent increase
in second-quarter income
to pillage and plunder parasitic
behaviors in the outcome.

Funding and experimentations
of mind control
have been part of
the Departments of Defense,
Labor, Veterans Affairs,
and the CIA swears to this day
that nothing beats the smooth
smoking experience
of a genuine corn cob pipe. The key
is perception. The fantasy of one
exciting rail ride transformed
some 1,200 applications filed
each year in the course of
a term of the Supreme Court
of the United States.

By Deborah S. Katz (Debi)

“wholly holy holey”
by Jim McGowin

there are those adept at seeking out the alien and different,
blind to similitude,

those who so easily run into the buzzsaw maw of
rent anger and smoke filled sky, fueled only by vague mythos
and monster truck intent,

ignoring the downtime possibility of dream, of exhilarant pow-wow
and pillow, trading instead for pill-pops and cheap thrills
hidden in the dark of windows and drawn shades,

would rather tear down the mountain
just to obliterate all the other paths to the top,
find it better to torch the grain that feeds one mouth to keep from another,
divvy out the chaff to the unbelievers.

always the talk of love and peace, and piety and pity,
but demonstrated only thru superior blunt force trauma,
diameter of bullet crater, length of flesh parabellum.

“we are the chosen alphas of this dirt pile!” cries the reptilian brained
nylon sack from the pulpit, red faced, the pack roaring in delight,
pupils dilated and fixed upon salvation thru salivation,
terrorists of the worst sort, hijackers of choice,

grown so big and strong, sucking the paranoia marrow of
militant ancestors, gulping crude, belching racist jokes,
one hand on sacred tome of choice, the other on silicone jiggle.

blossomed into fearful beasts ready to claw and break jaw
at the most minor offense or incidental glance.
‘what are you looking at boy?’

banded together, a psychotic beehive, stinging the air,
singing gleefully ‘only the like minded thru these golden doors,
others need not apply, now bring us some whores!’

violent pathologies settled for,
celebrated with copulatory undulations of squeaky clean sheet and genitalia,
fabric softener fresh w/the scent of false flowers
to offset guilt-ridden dirty mind projectors.

hypocrisy? lies? surprise!
what should be expected from devout followers
of imaginary paradox and pseudo sound waves,
bullet for your thoughts? as you hang there on your cross?
make sure everyone can see the nails are real!

all worship the day glo man!
spray paint images of prophets onto warheads with cute humanitarian slogans such as
‘hey hey the BANGS all here!’
coordinate automobile bumper sticker gangs promoting
agenda of white wash triumph and paper tigerisms.

every raindrop that falls from their sky is ambivalence,
all their pretty rainbows are colored with
blood, bile, jaundice, gangrene, cyanosis and fresh bruises.

mouth bullhorns, blasting out polished jackboot conformity,
in the guise of being liberated
rally up the group mind, you, the sheep!
the more the merrier, the more the scarier!

to all of this, i can only say one thing:
let them all drown when their blessed flood waters come
o lordy lord,
let them all drown in their own holy gravy

and leave the rest of us alone

Music In The Air
By Phil Gounis

Keeps slept under the stairs
he did not speak
a word
in his mind
Keeps would repeat
the same Prayer
night after night

it was night most of the time
& freezing when it rained
which was all the time
still
Keeps was faithful
to the duty
of keeping hope
& bright expectation
intact

the day after Thanksgiving
as dawn cracked
Keeps awoke on his knees
& heard a commotion
up above his head
he reached upward
& felt the belt
of an escalator,
then he knew
that his petitionary days
were over

( first published in Soulard Culture Squad Review #1 ,1986)

workers in the world
By Phil Gounis

the bus was parked out by the tree
we were inside where we could see
the people walk, the people pass
the money men first, the torn children last

we are all workers in this world
we all labor, we all toil
your boss is my boss
your lay-off is my job lost

the only pay, the only dough
is to understand & know that I know
that there’s no contract or no plans
except to share the burden & do what you can

I was out in the rain looking for work
aimlessness you can’t ignore or shirk
I was out in front so I knocked on the door
it just opened & closed, nothing more

we were all searching, we were all in need
people’s faces said,” I’m human… I bleed.”
there was grime on their hands & tears in their eyes
there were people joking & laughing in suits & ties

we are all workers in the world
we all labor, we all toil
your boss is my boss
your lay-off is my job lost

(america)?
By Michael Sullivan

America, half blind to speak
half deaf to hear—

your sights
unseen by lauders,
unheard by faithful.

America what a pernicious fulcrum you’re resting on:

what listless actors,
what hollow audience.

America your rouge is smudged,
your mascara drippy.

‘America woke me up
in a dream,
said I had been writing
in my sleep.
It made Her cry.
There was an academic
executioner turned exiler
and America left me
for my best friend.’

Something’s been lost;
the world is trembling—
my skin is trembling
from hearing words
that can never be written again…

(and there was so much else that needed to be said then,
and now—nation of perpetual noise—
now—June 3rd, 2011—
now, words have learned to fly off
on wings of lacerated tongues.)

Look, this responsorial
need not be an empty page,
and even if it’s true that nothing can ever really be said,
I’d sooner suffocate from manic exasperated attempts of expression
than become a drunken hermit
in my cave of things and cynicism.

You’ve stiffed yourself
America.

America,
America?
are you imaginary?
are you Santa Claus?
are you Hallmark?
are you Disney?
are you Pornography?
are you a Rock?
a Dimesack?
a Used Bottle of Hair Bleach?

America are you dieing?
America why aren’t you answering?

America I saw you disregarded
in a thrift store bin.
America I hear an echo.

America no one cares about flying or burning
your flag anymore;

cops are no longer pigs,
except we are all still niggers and spics.

America can’t you write a love song anymore?

Is it true that only bad guys carry guns?
America have you come up with a good enough slur for the muslims yet?

‘Have you heard?
They stopped playing
America on the radio.’
America will you turn that shit off!?

America my car’s broken down again.
America yesterday your stock was up 26 and ¾ points.

Hey
America! your children can buy adventure on the internet now.

America are you a sum of people—
of personal minimum wage celebrities?
America I don’t want to pay taxes;
I want a 3D HD Flatscreen TV.

America what’s a suspension bridge?
America what is a bundled derivative?
Wikipedia can’t quite tell me…

America what do tulips look like?
Who you callin’ fagot
America?

When did you start wearing a bra
again
America?
America when will dinner be ready?

America when did you get “GRIME”
tattooed on your placid thighs?
Did you stop working out?
You’re arms are getting pretty flabby.

America I’m having problems
keeping my eyes open,
how much for a cup of coffee?

America,
America?
Why aren’t you saying anything?

Though tainted and diseased
with corn manure poison,
your aquatic veins are still pulsing
and I swear I’ve heard them sing
before…

but the speakers are blown out
and the repairman’s out of business.

Poetry is not commodity,
America—
MFA will not save you:
MFA—Mother-Fuck
America.

Love is not commodity,
America:
I lost
rose lip
idol eyes
in a sea of
rose lip
idol eyes

and it only cost me 11.99
and one day perusing boutiques,
treading through malls,
wondering why they don’t hire life guards
to protect 14 year-old catalog girls
and their “are you going to rape me now?” mouths.

God is not commodity
America:
I see you, you naïve atheist,
you capitalist christian bastards.

Words are scary
but please, please listen to them again,
please speak them again.

You’re gonna leave me looking foolish,
America,
begging for your lips and earlobes

…please
America, please.

Value
By Deborah Mashibini

One little life
Just ended
on my windshield.

If multiplied
by the number of specks
I see
the toll is staggering.
A toll that has nothing to do
with turnstiles
or highway maintenance fees
and everything to do
with the speed
at which I move.

Weighing the cost,
in lives,
is something I somehow
neglected
to consider
until now.

Published in the Harwood Anthology, Old School Books, Albuquerque NM 2006

25 Cents
By Deborah Mashibini

All the man asked me for
was a quarter,
and here I am tripping.
All caught up in my assumptions
about who he is
where he’s been
and what my little 25 cents
or lack thereof
might do
to change his destiny.

The man did not ask for
my opinion.

He didn’t ask me to save him
or damn him
all he asked for
was a fraction
of what it costs me to wash one load of clothes
and I ain’t even going to the laundry mat today.
I know I lost at least
that much in gas
the last time I filled up
trying to squeeze one last drop
in the tank.

It makes me wonder
what exactly it is
about this man
that makes my little 25 cents
mean so much more to me
just because he asked.

Published in Untamed Ink. Lindenwood University, 2008

To Have Peace
By JoyCe Blue

I got arrested for peace disturbance yesterday morning,
I went to get my unemployment check
and they said I had depleted my allowance
that I was not eligible for any more funds
so I got angry, got loud and got no results
then I went crazy and to jail,
didn’t get no peace there either.
when I got out and got home,
I found that the public was selecting at random
the remains of my life’s pieces,
cause while being in jail and unemployed
I got evicted.
so I took the left-overs and a bus
to go to my mother’s home
for shelter, comfort, and warm mother’s loving strokes
to help sooth me so I could continue to seek peace
but mother was being taken away
by white men in white clothes
to a place where people get peace from pills and needles
and the county pays, providing she don’t stay too long.
so I went to a pay phone to call a blast from my past
cause I was gonna beg for peace
but the number had been changed again.
realizing how many things have so drastically changed,
I hung up the phone and my bright ideas
and went to sit in the park to think for awhile
but a man with a knife came up to me
and demanded of all things
a piece of my female anatomy
so with a knife at my throat
I gave up a piece of myself
and when the white men in white clothes found me
I was well on my way to meet the peace maker
at heaven’s gate
to get some for-real peace
for absolutely free.

Published in Where we can read the wind, VSA Missouri, 2011

My First Lay Off
By JoyCe Blue

Friday the 13th, birds are chirping, the sky is clear
it’s my last day on the job
we’re having a barbeque
old friends are here.

the food tastes delicious,
good-bye, good luck and best wishes;
I’m smiling all the time
so no one can see what’s really going on inside of me,

I feel like a kid
when your mom decides to tell
that there is no real santa claus
she thought you’d take it well,
and she is surprised to see you cry.

What They Didn’t Say
By Dena Molen

It’s what THEY say, they say, if you accept the technology, your
descendants will grow a nub, this is what they say when they say
cut out the carbs-no-digest the word, they’ve said so, so they say
listen to Oprah and they will have a say, on who gets the Oscar, of
course, they have never asked him- who they are, though they might
live in Hollywood or D.C., they have been known to say not to smoke-
and we fume, weren’t they those who struck the match while
breastfeeding they say, will grow wiser children than those who
listen to what they say, and they say, and they
have said, to accept what they say,
so as to,
forget to ask,
who are they?

THESE STATES
By Pamela Garvey

Honey faced and hoarse, our children
throw small pumpkins like grenades
to take down signs, splatter
strangers’ yards. One trips an alarm.
Skeleton masked, they bolt
daring one another to set fire
to a full trash can.
Next to it, the nursing home’s
bed bound peer through the latticework
of a fire escape, their absentee ballots
like kindling amid magazines and old news
around the edges of their beds.
It is election night and so wind swept
the pollsters forecast low turnout, a landslide.
Sugared up with his friends, my son
said he never meant it to happen. His lantern
was the first to explode against the can.
His friends were playing war like on television.
They elected him president.

INTERVIEW WITH A MOTHER OF PLAZA DE MAYO, ARGENTINA
By Pamela Garvey

What was it like then?
In the plaza my anger turned
into a long skirt, glasses
and slippers.

What did you think of?
Not hoods or heavy chains, not the bearable
truth of a body, not cold,
not planes over the ocean, sharks, cold waters.

What was that like?
I hovered always
at the epicenter. As if gravel
were suddenly winged.
I had to march.

What did you think then?
I was a slit down the belly.
Nothing.

Could you speak then?
The white kerchiefs blazed.

Could you speak out loud?
I walked a billboard.

And now?
Once I felt joy. This was as old as
pots on the fire, straw in the mattress.
There was a boy

whose laugh was diamonds.
He was my breath’s arrow.
A creature wild as a river. I wish

I could drown in his rushes.
A log, loitering. A wind, less
than a whisper.

By John Samuel Tieman

if asked to judge
my age I’d say we wasted
our best years on war
from Nam to Iraq we saw
the whole world through sniper scopes

A Concise Biography Of Original Sin
By John Samuel Tieman

I’ll tell you a little horror story.
There’s nothing people won’t do.
We’ve seen the squad snap
at attention, heard the colonel
cry “Ready!”,
and though we looked away,
we too took aim at the heart.
It’s always been like this,
the muzzle, a puff of smoke,
someone muttering “Justice, justice …

__________

You ask me why times are worse.
In just a moment of utter stupor
we ignore the beggar’s gray sore,
ignore the slow tolling bell,
skim over articles on death.

I hear there’s fresh air somewhere
or a woman I might someday love,
but here I smear my door with blood,
for wise men pray for the plague
and a black fog fills the streets.

__________
Having failed in similar endeavors —

the 2nd wife, the last war, even
some tortures — the colonel turns

to you for help.
A single wick still flickers.

In a corner cell, there at the wall
your prisoner stares — the priest

for hours without a sound;
an executioner be shadow light

watching this one breathe
in, out.

But that’s last night’s story.
The creature is no more; now you

look weary, very weary from your work.

__________

Now climb the next rise and stand back.
See — who would have guessed?
Shadows so frail they fade,
a small boy plays a requiem
flute, ivory white, while you knot
promises of venom, chants, wet grass.

At My War’s Wall, A Vietnam Requiem
In Which The Veteran Accepts The Dead

By John Samuel Tieman

Your resurrection destroys all
our years of silence. Still it
happens, a hang-round, Chi-Com grenade,
an AK maybe, RPG, these initials scribbled

in that last after-action report, your DD forms
that slam closed that file like this, that
silver casket. Now your name forms part of a wall,
the final record, as if Taps is static.

As if my days groan on now
like some beast of burden
drawing the plow through the padi.
The padi has a name I remember

no one knows now, no one remembers
that my burden is a name, your name
simple as black granite — Hank,
Pete, Greaser. No one speaks

as we spoke of home then, a woman,
a commune for dope smoking Nam vets.
Our clothes clean. Our skin healed.
Our languor brutal, brutal and pure.

I pause. I walk away.
I am so alone, so alone
with the wall that became your name.
Let the years do with us as they will.

Let the birds of prey alight.
Who can kill you?
I will wear your name like a bracelet.
I will make flutes from your bones.

For A War Buddy After Taps

By John Samuel Tieman

What can we say, buddy?
So much we could tell
we’ll never tell —
the look of wheat after
we ate bullets to come home,

the look of a woman for who
you’d kill to love again,
the way the sun falls on
that patch, so they say,
nailed to the dink kid’s skull.

Listen. Maybe we’ll say
What’s it like, a theater
of war, I’ll tell you: the hole
in his throat measured
only a fraction and tags

they IDed measured
say a square inch each;
the citation resembled
his diploma
and the VA donated

a simple modest slab;
some pals paid respects
from all across town
and all the way from LA
his fiancée. Around the grave

they formed a circle of pain
which made infinity
small. And I’ll not measure
that last lament
heard only by God that night.

Or maybe we’ll say–Listen!–
we’ve never seen a C-section
and cancer, but we’ve seen
this innocent kid in shreds
and we know it was no mistake.

Passchendaele

By John Samuel Tieman

A party of ‘A’ Company men passing up to the front found … a man bogged to above the knees. The united efforts of four of them with rifles beneath his armpits made not the slightest impression, and to dig, even if shovels had been available, would be impossible, for there was no foothold. Duty compelled them to move on up to the line, and when two days later they passed down that way the wretched fellow was still there; but only his head was now visible and he was raving mad.

Major C. A. Bill
Fifteenth Battalion
Royal Warwickshire Regiment

A man raves against God. And war
among its faces
turns just one to you, the face
which is your own, your own.

It’s not the kind of place that would worry
you in the usual June, your uniform manly,
your brass polished, sharp, so proud you
would recite your unit’s history as if
it were a canto in its own Iliad.
But that was 1914, when freedom was measured
in the medals instead of the dead.

To look at it, there isn’t much
of a ridge to speak of, 250 feet high,
its only claim to fame being
a splendid view of Flanders for which
544,897 die (maybe 4,700 a day)
give or take a half-dozen divisions.

What you have heard is true.
3:10 AM, 7 June 1917, Messines Ridge.
In preparation for the larger offensive,
1,000,000 lbs. of TNT detonated
along 5 mi. of galleries dug
under the Germans. By 3:11 AM,
20,000 dead. Survivors
mindless, infantile, gibbering.
The opening round. Then Passchendaele,
a funeral cadence of muffled drums —
Hill 60, The Death Trench, Blood Chapel,
Ypres, Whitesheet, Hill 70, Goldfish
Chateau, the Vlamertinghe-Wipers Road —
a map no longer than a Mass card, requiem,
the litany of the dead angel of lead.
4,250,000 artillery shells fired
during the 1st 19 days alone. Alone.
A fact. And the fact of the matter is
simple: God is not on your side tonight.

And a man raves against God, earth,
man. To think of you decomposing
even as you speak, humus once more,
once more a few pounds of ground,
earth, the many faces of earth, one
of which is a tomb and the tomb is
at once both earth and man.

Like vertigo, you twist into the earth
and beg the sun to blind you. Instead
a sun spot burns a hole in a vision
you would kill if only you could
hang on till your mind gets right.

Who but a madman? Who but a madman?
Who but a madman would have imagined mud
enough to die in? Who but a madman would
put guns in the hands of all God’s children,
tell them stories of glory then kill them?
Who but a madman would imagine Ypres salient?

A man raves against God. And war
among its faces
turns just one to you, the face
which is your own, your own.

Your captain has his gas mask on,
standing near the sniper’s nest,
advising the sergeant-major never
to show his face here again.
Your sniper has no face, no mask. You
too will learn to burn out your eyes,
to take it like a man, to smother
under mud, to go mad like a man.

But what you thought was only darkness
has its own kind of light, like being
caught in a flare where the only terror
belongs to you: a German mortar crew
with nothing better to do than take aim
at you, just you, only you — there.

Besides the madness, there’s the woman,
there’s always the woman, delicate as a lie,
clean and white, someone the mud doesn’t touch,
not someone who runs like the meaning
of speech, but a woman, a woman, your woman,
the one woman in the world who could save you.
The one woman in the world you wish to die with.

Adrenaline. The word burns the very marrow.

In a moment no longer than a flare,
in the time it takes a scream to reach
Sweet Jesus, among a hundred dead, another,
another man trapped in mud, another man then
another, another sniper takes aim, another
bullet goes astray and finds a home, the heart,
and the bullet will burst like a mortar in the gut
and the gut will turn to lead and the lead
to the rain, always a slow assault of a rain,
speechless as incest, shrapnel like a rapist,
definite as barbed wire, permanent as the front,
always the past turns its face to ebony rain
and tomorrow will be just like today.

__________
__________

Note:

Following the capture of Messines Ridge, the Battle Of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle Of Ypres, properly began on 31 July 1917 with a British push toward the Belgian coast. After four months, the British penetrated a total of only five miles into the German lines, this end point being the village of Passchendaele. The Germans recaptured all this within six months. The British pronounce this place “Passiondale”.

valhalla nirvana heaven
By Treasure Sheilds Redmond

we all saw the egg
at various stages
of its descent:

me from my lower window. the kids
from higher.

it hit the sidewalk
and as the shell
broke open, and life
spilled out,
i knew this was truth:

we are opague
and fragile as we zoom
past our lives
toward an inevitable
breaking,

toward a reason to leave
our shell behind,

to seep miraculous
into the valhalla
heaven
nirvana.

into a word that is only
a corruption of the original word.

into god’s blouse
as she cracks us open
like mussels on an otter’s chest.

transition is painless;
we are made of cracks –
it is our built in obsolescence . . .

and then we will see each other
shed of what separated us

our yolks will become one

and we will know heaven
heavenheavenheaven
heavenheaveneavenea
venevenevenirvenir
vana

ROTATE YOUR TIRES
Brett Lars Underwood, 2011

Negative Nellies and Sweet Polly Purebreads,
He-Men, bullhorns, underdogs, clicking mice and fraidy cats,
Cronkites, security cams and helmets, safety goggles and empathy
true love and gravel fucks
don’t stop the wars hawks drop and
the rain of bloody injustice in the dustbeltistan
as you flip through the channels and pages
looking for the rest
of the wrestling of your mind
in the high definition specs that
fail to capture the cosmic slop.

A wedding ring and the keys to the minivan
when daddy’s taken for a goose ride
and we’re all conked out like Mr. Van Winkle
makes no nevermind to the vortex or the fish tails because
The Viet Cong didn’t watch the Waltons
and Good Times so you could buy
cheap tee shirts and the scrap metal Coca-Cola cans
from a ground zero china shop away from the bull
of Wall Street.

So flit around in the mind of Billy Pilgrim
or pretend we fed turkeys to helpless savages
and that the radios help us
consider all things in mid-commute from
cubicle to air-conditioned podcast twitter feed
facsimile of life.

Change your tires
Change your oil
Change of scenery
Change your mind
Change for a dollar
Loose change?
Sex change?

Feel better?
Well, if you weren’t full of shit,
you’d be changing your pants.

So there’s something.

If you think too much about the difference
between the damage you have done and the
frugality that you promise yourself,
remember that shrink-wrapped vegetables
and leaf-blowers ARE FUCKING RIDICULOUS!
…and so are you.

Ha!

Manageable decisions and necessary delusions
at all other times.
Or…
Is it reality for you?

History confirms our banality
stupidity
and destructive proclivities.
…and all the time pimpin’ is in effect.
You know what I’m sayin’
Bitch better have my money!

Take a dose of satire when needed.
Baffle the dumb-ass.
Kiss a smart-ass of your liking.

…and prepare to be chastised.

Take care of yourself.
The only real control we ever
have
and need
is with self…

and the self is a fallacy.

…BUT! when you can manage,
remember
the only commandment,
according to that bag lady in the cathedral:
DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE!

Oops!
Too late?
Well, here’s this:
Focusing on what you don’t want
brings it to you.
So watch out!
You’re gonna die.

Los Alamos
By Debra L. Edwards

They applauded themselves
for their timing,
to be a part of history
in the making,

taking leave of their sanity
to excess their senses
for the goodness of state.
They dug themselves a cesspool

and rendered the ultimate thrill,
a 56 million dollar blow job,
and a guilty conscience still
trying to buy forgiveness.

©Copyright Debra L. Edwards 1998

I’m Tired of Turning the Other Cheek
By Debra L. Edwards

I always thought that I was born gifted.
and if given space to adventure, maybe I’d find
a certain peace of mind to help lift
the burden of being born in the wrong time.
You see, I searched far and wide and did not seek
to hide what I am and trying to be.
In fact, the further I went the closer I came to me.
to the four corners of the earth and back I would fly.
I experienced the senses of every race.
and almost believed I achieved universal love.
But the grand façade cost a price I chose to rise above.
For the right to be nice I refuse to debase.
And though the gifts I bear are still intact,
I can no longer deny the fact that I am tired
of trying to love, and be loved by a white world
which has no heart to visualize the power and beauty
of one well intentioned black girl.

©Copyright Debra L. Edwards 1998

The Orphans
By Debra L. Edwards

They roam the highways and byways,
Outlaws, bandits and desperadoes,
in search of escape from flight.
Riding their winged stallions
with motorized hooves
they speed along through vast wastelands.
Conquering wind, air and dust
blazing trails of hope
and trampling pasts of trust,
repeating their journey over and over again
until all direction is lost.
And where once stood a clear vision
now stands erected a maze of trails
with no destination.

They sail the seas and oceans
pirates riding the waves of expectations
searching for another horizon
to give meaning to endless movement.
Neither loving anchored sanctuary,
nor foundations of wants needs, compassion,
dwelling only to excrete their haste.
And where once glistened a sea of hope
an ocean of love,
now arises a bottomless mass
of drained aspirations.

They are not to blame
for their journey starts from whence they came.
All that lies within their paths
are their shadows distorted by their fury.
Their anguish, their lust for
their lost and secret treasure.
They are the orphans of fate
in search of silver phallic and golden wound
their faith in humanity that was tossed to the winds,
Scattered and abandoned unto obscurity.
They are their mysteries questing peace
from silver phallic and golden wound,
legendary creators of hearth and home.

©Copyright Debra L. Edwards 1998

Change
By Debra L. Edwards

It is said to be all that is constant
But I know no such truth.
I have been as I am for so long.
I do not know how I was before.
Or shall be later.
I know my imperfections.
Some of them I like.
They give me character.
But I want to lessen the flaws.
To lighten the load.
Of belonging to this world.
Yet loving the individual.
For the solitude.
That so often enraptures me.

I perceive change as evolution.
And I am where I started.
When I discovered I was here.
And that movement is only secondary.
To motivation.
You have to care.
Or there is no purpose.
Just empty actions.
But my caring has not gone.
Beyond questioning.
Has not taken physical form.
In action or influence.
I have not touched or been touched.
To the point of change.

Perhaps I am too lusty.
And should flow.
From a simple touch.
Rather than wait and wait.
And wait for the heavy impact.
Wait until my stomach
cracks from hunger.

Wait until I too
can not afford the heat.

Wait until I am barren
because I can not afford it either.

Wait until diplomacy
has united world corruption.

Wait until the bomb
drops ay my doorstep.
How can I be so personable?
About what is not mine?
I think perhaps the only time
my life was mine
was when I survived birth.
And my will to live.
Gave me life.
But from that point on
I became “everybody”.

I laughed, I cried
I hungered, I feasted
I was cold, I was warm
I hated, I loved
I gave, I received.

So what is change?
To do it all better.
To even the odds for
the “not everybody”
To market and distribute the good
and recall the bad.
To create a balance of humanness.

I have come to know the problems,
An evolution of our better selves
will solve them.

©Copyright Debra L. Edwards

Utoya
By Cris Gualberto

Upon the waters,

my life closes

falling into blackness

waves

screams reverberating

my silence lisping

Eliza, Eliza

Faces now obscured

Crashing into voids

Is this dying?

Is this death?

Submerging into the depths

Mother

I see you.

I see everyone.

Drowning

Thoughts becoming whispers

Eliza, Eliza

I am reaching outwards

A last

Touching

Wait for me

Await

So faint

Light

Eliza,

Eliza

I am coming

From Misrata
By Cris Gualberto

Our arms upraised
Our voices a single scream

We have set the world ablaze
Now, there is a new dream.

No longer will we suffer.
No longer shall we cry.

Once, they called our homeland, “Mother.”
Now, we only see their lies.

We do not fear their hatred.
We shall not conceal our pain.

We stand before their bullets.
We stand before their flames.

Our hopes are the chasm.
Our lives are the call.

The past is ever a phantom.
Let all tyranny fall.

We have seen our fathers die.
We have seen our children weep.

Our beloved dead now lie
within the vast desert’s sweep.

Yet, our struggle is only beginning.
The dream shall never cease.

Libya’s blindness is now ending.
Now is the season of her release.

By Ben Moeller-Gaa

afternoon heat
wasp shadows
in the curtains

By Ben Moeller-Gaa

cicadas

tornado sirens

cicadas

By Ben Moeller-Gaa

tornado sirens
finally
something to talk about

Audobon
By Susan Trowbridge Adams
September 2011

The answer to violence is not silence.
The need for peace is not met by tact.
(Music is honest always, but that’s a code).
Stare. Get out your binoculars, your microscope,
and develop an eye problem. Look but don’t touch.
You break it, you buy it.
Say what you know, with your cheek turned.
Be what the radio broadcast ought to be,
News:
I am white, and American.
No one can celebrate a difference
they refuse to notice.
“All men are created equal” is not “We are all the same.”
If you are a physicist, if you are black, or Latino,
if you speak Tagalog, if you have raised sons,
If you till your fields behind a water buffalo,
If you have been married, if you are male,
If your hips do not ache in your sleep,
Then you are not me.
This is a beautiful thing.
When we choose to bird-watch the rest of humanity
we can celebrate.
We can become xenophilic, we can leave others tranquil
to do as they must.

Philistines:
By Susan Trowbridge Adams
1976

The idiot who told the story
to the moron who reported it
must have been insensible
or dreaming
Perhaps he was not even attending
because obviously
Goliath won.