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.
Categories: Poetry
You must log in to post a comment.