Poem for Autumn – John Thomas

Nervous Skin – Humberto Gómez Sequeira-HuGóS

Fire in the Lake – Hillary Kaye

you’ve forgotten how to scream – Rex Butters

Too Weird to be a submission – Roger Houston

“Democratic Womanism” – Alice Walker

____________________________

POEM FOR AUTUMN

By John Thomas

So many fine words falling

out of the language one by one

like leaves, or teeth from

an old man’s jaw. Who,

for example, says Autumn,

any longer? It’s always

merely fall, now. Fall, Fall, Fall.

Never beautiful Autumn.

If I want to hear Autumn,

I must say it to myself.

Hence these sentimental lines. Hail

and farewell, bright sad Autumn

—————————————–

Nervous Skin

I put on my black gloves of natural rubber

to insulate the red current of sensation

that runs through my open palms

and leads me to the habitual incitation

to overcome the emotional uncertainty

of orgasm and fear

in the nervous skin of deception

before I begin to auscultate my self.

—Humberto Gómez Sequeira-HuGóS

———————————————–

Fire in the Lake

By Hillary Kaye

When I expose myself to the

elements

when I ask again and again

for love and am denied

when I couldn’t break out of myself

and blood poured out of

every orifice

when I demand the truth

and am scorned

when I am homeless

and helpless

and bereft

when wrong is made right

when evil is made

palatable

when vision is blinded

when hope is an escape

when things pile up

and can’t be dealt with

when love is lost

when friendship spills to

the street like sewage

when angels walk among

us in agony

when light is spellbinding

when when when

things are wholly

different

when things are

wholly changed

& the roof & the

floor & the walls

are split apart

and then becomes a beginning.

————————————————–

you’ve forgotten how to scream

did you think one day

you’d wake up to find

everything was fair?

do you get up in the morning

and pump up your head with air?

do you think your leaders work for you

and all right thinking folk?

don’t you see them with their child sex slaves

doing endless lines of coke?

to them you’re another worker ox

tethered to their yoke

taxed to pay for their misdeeds

the butt of all their jokes

the alarm’s gone off

you’re still asleep

you prefer your waking dream

with t.v.’s lulling reassurances

you’ve forgotten how to scream

your doctor sells you poison and death

that comes on long and slow

you’re addicted to their lies like meth

you just don’t want to know

that you’re a guinea pig

a consumer report

sucked down by the under tow

your chronic ill health

provides their wealth

your misery makes them glow

the alarm’s gone off

you’re still asleep

you prefer your waking dream

with t.v.’s lulling reassurances

you’ve forgotten how to scream

it’s election time and the ruling class

has coughed up two more of its sons

they both think the same

in this transparent game

that guarantees nothing gets done

it should be clear to any fool

it’s always been one party rule

the only thing rising is scum

no one thinks it’s strange

only the spokespeople change

their agendas enforced with a gun

the alarm’s gone off

you’re still asleep

you prefer your waking dream

with t.v.’s lulling reassurances

you’ve forgotten how to scream

– By Rex Butters

——————————————–

Too weird to be a submission: 15:56 Monday, September 10, 2012, Chateau Lockwood

….. I’m here, but then; I’m not quite really here. I must be somewhere, right?

I might be there, Light years from now or eons in the past. I might be hiding in

the manifest. I’m here, apparently, writing these lines, But, at the same time,

somewhere else; combines The retrospect, the introspect, inject The sense of

being somewhere, to detect The sense of non-existence; something drains Into

event horizons; timeless grains Slip through the hour glass, from east to west.

Is that me, in the crow’s nest, the main mast? I think I’m here, just now, but I

prepare For that awakening, to find I’m there….. Roger Houston of

digital-linear space-time continuum, with my heart in Venice, eternally.

————————————–

“Democratic Womanism”

By Alice Walker

You ask me why I smile
when you tell me you intend
in the coming national elections
to hold your nose
and vote for the lesser of two evils.
There are more than two evils out there,
is one reason I smile.
Another is that our old buddy Nostradamus
comes to mind, with his fearful
400 year old prophecy: that our world
and theirs too
(our “enemies” – lots of kids included there)
will end (by nuclear nakba or holocaust)
in our lifetime. Which makes the idea of elections
and the billions of dollars wasted on them
somewhat fatuous.
A Southerner of Color,
my people held the vote
very dear
while others, for centuries,
merely appeared to play
with it.
One thing I can assure
you of is this:
I will never betray such pure hearts
by voting for evil
even if it were microscopic
which, as you can see in any newscast
no matter the slant,
it is not.
I want something else;
a different system
entirely.
One not seen
on this earth
for thousands of years. If ever.
Democratic Womanism.
Notice how this word has “man” right in the middle of it?
That’s one reason I like it. He is right there, front and center. But he is surrounded.
I want to vote and work for a way of life
that honors the feminine;
a way that acknowledges
the theft of the wisdom
female and dark Mother leadership
might have provided our spaceship
all along.
I am not thinking
of a talking head
kind of gal:
happy to be mixing
it up
with the baddest
bad boys
on the planet
her eyes a slit
her mouth a zipper.
No, I am speaking of true
regime change.
Where women rise
to take their place
en masse
at the helm
of earth’s frail and failing ship;
where each thousand years
of our silence
is examined
with regret,
and the cruel manner in which our values
of compassion and kindness
have been ridiculed
and suppressed
brought to bear on the disaster
of the present time.
The past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave
it there.
I am thinking of Democratic, and, perhaps
Socialist, Womanism.
For who else knows so deeply
how to share but Mothers
and Grandmothers? Big sisters
and Aunts?
To love
and adore
both female and male?
Not to mention those in between.
To work at keeping
the entire community
fed, educated
and safe?
Democratic womanism,
Democratic Socialist
Womanism,
would have as its icons
such fierce warriors
for good as
Vandana Shiva
Aung San Suu Kyi,
Wangari Maathai
Harriet Tubman
Yoko Ono
Frida Kahlo
Angela Davis
& Barbara Lee:
With new ones always rising, 

wherever you look

There is no system
There is no system
now in place
that can change
the disastrous course
the Earth is on.
Who can doubt this?
The male leaders
of Earth
appear to have abandoned
their very senses
though most appear
to live now
entirely
in their heads.
They murder humans and other
animals
forests and rivers and mountains
every day
they are in office
and never seem
to notice it.
They eat and drink devastation.
Women of the world,
Women of the world,
Is this devastation Us?
Would we kill whole continents for oil
(or anything else)
rather than limit
the number of consumer offspring we produce
and learn how to make our own fire?
Democratic Womanism.
Democratic Socialist Womanism.
A system of governance
we can dream and imagine and build together. One that recognizes
at least six thousand years
of brutally enforced complicity
in the assassination
of Mother Earth, but foresees six thousand years
ahead of us when we will not submit.
What will we need? A hundred years
at least to plan: (five hundred will be handed us
gladly
when the planet is scared enough)
in which circles of women meet,
organize ourselves, and,
allied with men
brave enough to stand with women,
men brave enough to stand with women,
nurture our planet to a degree of health.
And without apology —-
(impossible to make
a bigger mess than has been made already) -—
devote ourselves, heedless of opposition,
to tirelessly serving and resuscitating Our Mother ship
and with gratitude
for Her care of us
worshipfully commit
to
rehabilitating it.