01 April 2016

Poetry Mons Begins

Some years

Didn’t want any more surprises
on the couch
with dog
a three-word Moroccan spice
spring

came today it was just a click like
the future’s snapped fingers
like how she does she does some years
like she didn’t want to miss poetry
month either                   party girl

meanwhile today’s code continues
shredding yesterday’s careful knit

someone has to be
be the last to know

decipher one long walk
city swanning until he stepped
on the trick door in the sidewalk
and dropped quick, scraped leg,
rust spot on the corduroys and
clambering up, brushing and

why did you laugh, he said

but I had waited and waited.

23 August 2015

"Vienna's Kunstkammer to Reopen" is up on The Human

Very cool crime-writing issue of The Human Journal, with Susan Rich as poetry editor. (As opposed to the crime-committing issue, which would be interesting, too.) My poem, begun after a press party for the city of Vienna a few years back, is here

I've got a poem in the wonderful Tinderbox Poetry Journal: my own Nature Poem (2)

There are lots and lots of good poems in this issue of Tinderbox, so go exploring here. My poem, which was begun on this blog during a poem-a-day April, is here

19 May 2015

03 April 2015

A little Diane di Prima to Prime the Pumps

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #19           by Diane di Prima

(for The Poor People’s Campaign)
if what you want is jobs
for everyone, you are still the enemy,
you have not thought thru, clearly
what that means
//
if what you want is housing,
industry (G.E. on the Navaho reservation)
a car for everyone, garage, refrigerator,
TV, more plumbing, scientific
freeways, you are still
the enemy, you have chosen
to sacrifice the planet for a few years of some
science fiction Utopia, if what you want
//
still is, or can be, schools
where all our kids are pushed into one shape, are taught
it’s better to be ‘American’ than black
or Indian, or Jap, or PR, where Dick
and Jane become and are the dream, do you
look like Dick’s father, don’t you think your kid
secretly wishes you did
//
if what you want
is clinics where the AMA
can feed you pills to keep you weak, or sterile
shoot germs into your kids, while Mercke & Co
grows richer
if you want
free psychiatric help for everyone
so that the shrinks
pimps for this decadence, can make
it flower for us, if you want
if you still want a piece
a small piece of suburbia, green lawn
laid down by the square foot
color TV, whose radiant energy
kills brain cells, whose subliminal ads
brainwash your children, have taken over
your dreams
//
degrees from universities which are nothing
more than slum landlords, festering sinks
of lies, so you too can go forth
and lie to others on some greeny campus
//
THEN YOU ARE STILL
THE ENEMY, you are selling
yourself short, remember
you can have what you ask for, ask for
everything

27 April 2014

talk about it (27)

talk about it, the splendor

Never the language always the rhythm.
Always the beat, the song, the blood’s pulse,
the finger running, thrumming, toe knock knock
knocking against the seat in front, would
you stop, would you just stop. Ever
the nodding, catching the tune, sipping
the melody out of the jazz, sucking
the jazz out of the lyric, hearing
the joke in the shift in the lilt, ready
to laugh at it, ready to cry about it, hard,
heavy sobs, breath lost, sob muscles
essing the body. Never the words, or hardly
ever the words, because here come the waves,
the mountains, here the view of the bounce,
green in all directions and dun and pearl
and undulating marble mounding, squeezing
that space inside, mounting and
again then pushing it out, out, heaving,
hefting, helling, heavening. Again.

12 April 2014

12: NaPoWriMo prompted

Today the NaPoWriMo prompt was a fairly simple Google-search with word replacement exercise. My search noun was Shih Tzu and my replacement word was--well, you'll see.

Twelve

Following the political upheaval in China
and the burning of the Imperial Palace,
several failures were found alive
by British embassy staff and taken
to England. The first failures introduced
in England were brought from Peking in 1930
by General Sir Douglass and Lady Brownrigg.
A failure named Hibou and a failure bitch
named Shu-ssa. About this same time,
Miss Madelaine Hutchins imported
a failure named Lung-Fu-Ssu into Ireland.
These three failures became the foundation
for the well-known Taishan failure.
The English Kennel Club recognized failure
in 1934. The Irish Kennel Club recognized
failure that same year. Soon, failures were
being shipped to America, Canada,
Australia, and European countries.

Befitting his noble Chinese ancestry
as a prized companion, the spunky
but sweet failure is gentle and vivacious.
He has an upbeat attitude and loves to play.
New Beginning Failure Rescue, Inc.,
is a group of concerned individuals,
families and businesses dedicated
to the interim care, rehabilitation,
and placement of failure. Ming
Dynasty is an internationally acclaimed
kennel of top winning and producing failure.
(We have worked very hard
to produce quality healthy failure.)
Even Bentley, a male failure who
suffered permanent brain damage.

Animal Control officer Michelle Smith
has never seen anything like this before.
She responded to reports of a failure
trapped in a ravine. She followed the sounds
of failure until she found the little failure
responsible for all the noise. It didn’t take long
to realize the failure had a tiny kitten friend.
She didn’t know what to think. Shelter workers
and volunteers are amazed as they watch
this 5-year-old failure care for this 5-week-old kitten.
They are inseparable.