• Poetry at the Church – Mary Getlein
• The New Year – Jim Smith
• inside the Free Venice Beachhead Offices – Roger Houston
• No Slice of Apple – Anonymous
• the truth – angelica love valentine
• Attitude – Louis Garza
• Wikileaks – Cosmo (page 4)
————————

Poetry at the Church
By Mary Getlein

All the seats in the front row were empty;
no one wants to sit in the front row
just like in school
no one wants to be singled out.
It’s easy to imagine them filled with the spirits
of our friends who are no longer with us;
poets and friends of poets –
“Are you a poet?”
“Not yet, but I’m a reader.”
Readers are very important to poets
otherwise it’s just poets talking to poets.
Everybody has a story inside their hearts,
hidden away from the rest of the world,
which might come out in a poem.
My friend, FrancEye, started this poetry scene 12 years ago.
Now she is no longer with us
but her spirit lingers around,
listening to the young poets,
with a smile on her face,
her eyes sparkling in anticipation –
“Poetry saved my life,” she declared one Sunday.
“Me too,” I said.
Books were my friends long before I had
flesh-and-blood friends.
Books told me there was intelligent life on this planet
and I was not alone.

———–

The New Year

By Jim Smith

Did something just happen?
I felt a flux, a shift in space-time.
A far off tinkle of bells
or gears grinding or
the core of the earth vibrating.

It seemed to me that things
hit bottom and now they’re rising.
What things?
Well everything. Our future, etc.

Was it something Obama did?
Or was it Steve Jobs?
Are they in league with each other?
Perhaps The Age of Aquarius
has finally arrived, with a thud.
Are the Masses finally stirring?

Maybe it was just me
working though some psych thing.
But it seemed like it was “out there”
something turning, turning as the top
of the year begins
and the days – and our chances –
grow longer.

In a few years someone will remark
Don’t you think everyone is nicer lately?
You don’t hear that doomsday talk
and you don’t hear those haters.
We are more considerate of each other
and the earth.
Don’t you think?

And in a hundred years
they’ll say, how strange people used to be.
Must have been all that stress.
———-
20 :34 Monday, December 27 2010, inside the Free Venice Beachhead Offices….. I’m at a loss for words, and this is rare. Believe me, other times I would not care. A good time to be thankful, and how true, For otherwise, I could not write to you, Dear Beachhead reader. We have met before.  This marks a fit occasion, so I pour A year of observation into lines That won’t be washed away by winter rains. An anniversary is at our door. It’s knocking softly. It has come before. How wondrous, what the decades seem to do. Before we know it, they have broken through. Commemorate with me, as Januaire Pulls us along toward I know not where…..Roger Houston, Venetian
———-
No Slice of Apple Pie
(The following poem was given to a Beachhead collective member by a down-and-out neighbor who wishes to remain anonymous.)

This New Year 2011
No UI benefit extension
No cash in my pocket,
Wallet or bank
No job to speak of
Certainly – no funds for the rent.
The lights and the gas are in a daily competition
To get shut off-
Which will be first?

The food on the table has to stretch
“stretch” – just like the juice in the fridge,
If you add a little water to it-
It will still quench your thirst.

No ticket to Oprah
No winning lotto
No reality TV show about my friends and me
while we all are forced to let go…
Let go of the American Dream.
We are living the American nightmare.
“Get help or go to jail” is all there is here in my town.
My town where new neighbors and some old ones living in fear
succeeded in criminalizing the poor.
Where will we go?
Just where does ‘the tough” end up –
when we get going?
What we will we do when we get there?

No slice of apple pie,
No baseball
No Chevrolet to afford.
No Extreme Home Make Over
Knocking on my door.

No Christmas tree
No holiday cheer or glee
No family or friends to tell
of this predicament-
It’s a small personal comfort
when I made it through just one more day.

No Dr. Phil; no free advise.
No confidant to give me a hand up-
Not a hand out…
No answers to my questions
What will become of me?
What will become of my child?

No President or government rep
to speak for me.
No voice.
I am disposable
I am
No one.
———–

the truth

By angelica love valentine

i have an opinion about that …
but be clear that
there are no truths
only beliefs
and beliefs manifest
in form
in front of our eyes
but
that thing
in front of me
that i can see, feel, touch, hear and taste
it isn’t really what it is,
it’s actually
energy vibrating
according to science
which is all that
i am

what the fuck is going on here

————

Attitude
Will get you Altitude,
And Gratitude
Will keep you there.

–Louis Garza

———–

Wikileaks (page 4)

By Cosmo

Wikileaks is not a hula in Hawai’i
or a faucet in the basement.
It’s an ongoing story;
a practiced pretense of nothingness
exposing our guts to the world.
Backdoor people
in charge of our freedoms
spreading our nirvana,
thinner and thinner,
until we are guilty of the untruths
that are said in our name.