Jim Smith

Mark Lipman

Hillary Kaye

Mary Getlein

Ron McKinley

Roger Houston

Humberto Gómez Sequeira-HuGóS

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NOPD, NOPD, a thousand times NOPD

By Jim Smith

Venice is a beach town

Not a highfalutin suit-and-tie town

The waves come and go ’cause they’re free,

and, yes indeed, so are we.

It’s a pleasure to live by the ocean blue

but that don’t mean you can’t come too.

Our friends drop by when they please

there’s no need to R-S-V-P

Come on down and you shall see

Venice, the greatest place there’ll ever be

It’s goin’ on now, and 24/7

in our little piece of heaven

We’ll make new friends every single day

if we just loosen up and share the right-of-way

Dear neighbors don’t hide behind fences ever so high

Don’t drive away Venetians and visitors between 2 and five.

So visit often and bring your board, or kids,

a picnic lunch, your drum, and a little fizz

Come escape that summer nighttime inner-city heat

Swing shift workers head for the beach, what a treat

Watch that late night Moon over Venice sink into the sea

Sit on the sand while the stars shine oh so bright, whoopee!

Come one, come all, rich and poor, beautiful people of the rainbow,

LBGT and otherly abled, come see Venice before it’s just a fable

We like it all, that’s true, but let me make it very clear

NOPD, We don’t need no stinkin’ OPD permits around here

That dumb old Pay to Park

Just makes me want to barf.

——————————————-

GMO, WTO, G.I. Joe, OMG

By Mark Lipman

GMO, WTO, G.I. Joe, OMG

GMO, WTO, G.I. Joe, OMG

First they take the seed

the fetus of our food chain

and modify it genetically

splicing it with poisons

and things that should never be

like scorpion genes

and all things unholy.

They change the nucleus

the very center of all life

to be resistant

to the most toxic pollutants

they can round up.

Yet, contrary to their advertisement,

resistant is not immune

mutations begin to bloom

and laboratory human rats

limp with tumors to their tombs,

while judges and lawmakers

sanction all this gloom upon us,

forcing farmers to plant these deadly crops

that have untold consequences to our DNA.

GMO

and so too must we go,

the way of the honey bee.

GMO, WTO, G.I. Joe, OMG

Taking down trade barriers,

while erecting walls

between human beings

and their humanity,

I wanna talk

about illegal immigration.

Open up the history books

to Columbus and Cortez

to John Smith,

the Doctrine of Discovery,

(as if Native Americans

  did not already know that they exist).

Stealing as they go,

destroying any trace of our native culture.

Bulldozer in tow, they take what we sow,

and pervert mother earth for their greedy purpose.

Now they export their killer corn across all borders

while impoverishing local farmers

and entire countries.

The poor denied the human right to travel freely

denied their right to self-determination.

Who gave Monsanto the right

to immigrate into my body?

to pattern my blood cells?

to change my genetic structure?

Is this what you call Free Trade?

GMO, WTO, G.I. Joe, OMG

As if the theft were not enough

the abuse of modern technology

to gain the ill-begotten

to steal the land, the water, the air

to destroy our food supply

Here’s comes something to really make your skin peal

brought direct to you from the makers of Napalm:

The private army,

the Z/Blackwater para-military,

C.I.A. trained mercenaries

and their puppet governments

to do the bidding of the highest bidder

to hold a gun to your head

while they force feed you

genetically altered tofu and mutant fish

all approved by the CEO-FDA

It’s all connected

from bullets to butter.

Did you know that someone makes a buck off it

every time a drone strikes?

I want that person arrested.

And oh, my God,

I’m here to contest this

assertion of the corporate person

and assumption of privilege

of some company having more rights than me

of playing god with our lives and ecology

of pushing humanity to the very brink of extinction.

Their money is a fiction

to keep us enslaved

to keep us in chains

and it’s high time that we break ‘em.

—————————————————-

Memorial Day

we will live on mars

someday if we are lucky

and the palm trees illuminated by the azure sky

i know how life is stolen

I know the darkness that invades the soul

before suicide

think on these soliders today

their cursed lives eaten….. their flesh consumed by imperial dictators

held hostage by their own small hopes

killers in three piece suits drag their young bodies to be choked

by dreams of empire

we will live on mars if we are lucky

this planet will be eaten by bugs.

hillary kaye

—————————————–

Going Home

maybe it’s time for me to walk somewhere else

there is so much more than this

these fights year after year

for mere survival

maybe it’s time to hear something else

than the endless discussion of us and them

who are we against this year?

who are we for?

are we for the Earth or against it?

are we for our Mother Earth, our Mother Ocean?

or are we content to keep the cruelty going

the killing off of species, including our own

why will we do this?

we want so much money

not realizing the money will do us no good

when we shiver with fear behind the gates

of our gated community

by deciding not to act in a human-like fashion

we are just machines of rage and cruelty

we condemn our children to a future filled with nothing

no trees, no birds, no animals, no love

just endless miles of concrete

with no shade from the burning sun

we cut down all the trees and burned them for fire

in the global chaos that is surely coming

who will survive

when water costs more than oil

what will we drink?

meanwhile the green sea turtles are swimming slowly

slowly slowly they travel home

to a beautiful blue-green island

a beautiful home! they don’t know what concrete

feels like

they are swimming slowly slowly they are home

– Mary Getlein

——————————————–

Face The

By Ronald K. McKinley

Face the mask that looks like a face

The soft that is hard

Face the high that is low

The righteous that is godless

Face the wit that is dull

The mannered that is unpretentious

Face the facts that are facts

The cooled constant wind of synthesized hate

Face the about face

The lack of grace

Face the countenance of character

The mote in God’s eye

Face the time

The place

Face the immovable

The actual

Face the fate

The experienced but unskilled emotions

Face the first

The last

———————————————–

01:05 Wednesday, May 15th, 2013, Adullam ….. One hundred twenty-seven years

have passed, Since you took leave to leave, to breathe your last. So many

winters left their chilling mark While other eyes took notice. All the work

Enscribed in pencil by your noble hand, Would gradually see daylight. It would

send A letter to the world at your request. Recipient am I, here in the west.

But what’s a century? As friend to friend, I sense that you still breathe. I

feel the wind, While other ears heard voices in the dark. Was that your ghostly

touch, creating spark? Your “Complete Poems” lingers, to attest That you are

welcome here, an honored guest ….. Roger Houston, for Emily Dickinson.

————————————————-

The Sensation of Being

Everyone, seduced by illusion,

devises a self impersonation

with face and proud intonation.

Beware of the pitiful conclusion,

when death numbs the sensation

of being an object of excitation.

—Humberto Gómez Sequeira-HuGóS

Los Angeles, 20 May 2013