Emanuel AME – Ronald McKinley
To be awake
More than not sleeping
More than red-brown pink-gray
Status and hierarchy
Back to stardust some particle of why
Thinking doesn’t make you so
Recital of synthesized want
Evolving into need
The flag will not change a thing
Remove it from now
Nine more souls have crossed over
I grow older without ageing
Still pieces fall from me
The air still warm
The cycle of knowing not doing
I will see others go before their time
As others that have sight
Choose not to see
I tingle and flash some connection
Life force eddies crashing against some concept
I am no longer human
Just a skin color
Some prototype of revenue
Something or someone can take away by binding covenant
My future my past my rank
Engender a new form
That could be set into a closed loop
I can see it when it’s happening
Not before
When you’re talking
You’re not listening
Only hearing
Seeing is not even half of it
My hue makes me different
Not quite there
If ever
I know better
That helps some
For there to be a we
No parts can be left behind
I want more than wishes hopes
For now
That is all I have

Venice is sinking

By Jim Smith

Venice is sinking.
No, not the one
in Europe,
which is also sinking.

Our Venice,
Venice West,
Venice of our dreams,
Venice of sorrowful streets,
of secret doorways
and sudden epiphanies

Venice is sinking
in a sea
of speculation.
Venice is sinking
in a sea
of hipness.
Venice is sinking
from the weight
of tourists.

Who will save
our distressed damsel?
Who will be
the righteous women/men
who will give us back
our city?

Venice:
oasis on the edge
of the desert.

Venice:
island on the edge
of the endless ocean.

Venice:
rising or sinking?
Your choice.

Fear

By Majid Naficy

Have you returned home
After your nocturnal ride with Elijah
And perhaps Katrina who sits behind the wheel
And looks at you
From the corner of her eyes?
I know that when you get home
You turn the key gently in the lock
And slowly close the door behind you.
You climb the stairs on tiptoe,
Open your bedroom door
And drape your shirt on the hanger in the dark.
When you go to bed
You wear your earpiece
Lest I am awakened
By the rap of your drunk camel.

But now, in the heat of midnight
I awaken to the sound of a mockingbird
Who is untimely calling his mate
Outside my bedroom window.

Suddenly a fear falls upon me
As I hear the sound of an ambulance.
I get up, and without opening your door
Look for signs of your presence
And from the closed lid of the throne
I gathered that you have returned home
And did not push down the handle
So as not to wake up your father.

May 7, 2005

POSSESSION IS DISPOSESSION

Posession is Dispossesion
Flesh of the Earth denied the Earth !

Becaues Unlawful Law concedes
The Earth, its Life, and Hour
Are Greeds –
Cain’s Bludgeons evolve in Contentions
Cosmic Goals dissolve in Disruptions
Life…Love…Place…Time…
All Values extend to Hell’s Dimensions…
And still– The Hoodwinking High Priests absolve
The Greed-Power Corruntions!?!

Posession is Disposession !
Earth’s Orbit enclosed in the Greed Power Girth !
The Earth Child and Alien to good Mother Earth.!!!

– Anthony Fiorillo

Cost of Learning
By Lulu Carmone
Growing up I was told,
the absence of a degree means you can’t succeed.
But why does a higher education rely
on currency?
Almost 10,000 dollars adding up in fees,
living off of noodles due to lack of groceries.
I could think of plenty of things to do
with all of that green
Is it not enough that I’ve been in school for 19
Years, that’s my whole life!
When can I start living it?
In the after life?
I understand that doctors and lawyers
need to train their brain,
but if that’s not the path I want,
why must I endure the same?
Biting at the bit,
eager to get my life started
But society will reject me
after school and I have parted.
10,000 dollars, is a trip I never took.
So instead I have to prepare for life
by reading about it in a book.
Why can’t experience be my professor?
Just as book smart
as I am street smart,
would you think of me any lesser?
Professors don’t get paid enough,
which makes them apathetic but it’s fair
for me to pay for a lecture that’s pathetic.
A classroom can not teach me all of life’s lessons.
So why should a degree determine my succession?

“Opposition of Ideas” – Miles Krumpak
No, no. Yes, yes
A deep voice utters: “Come back to where you belong little boy.” Caution! Here immigrants cross the border like wild hyenas searching for an omniscient prey. Am I the prey? A mixture of hate and love and lust and alcoholic haze.
Squeeze me like a blackberry, butter your toast with my jam. It’s so darn cold, the needles pierce a layer of fur poncho, moving so fast the world can take a breath
to honk the horn and sell some.fruit to the Spanish speaking part of the neighborhood, ripping apart connections in the big pink brain filled with the blackness of seeds marking places where we have forgotten things.
Put on your 3-0 goggles because here comes the light!
Pelican, swallow, willow, upside down sunflower feet over head the things I would do to you!
The library a public cemetery, but careful at nighttime, you know a plaza bench is the dark place where I was conceived.
Sounds like a bullet echoing into a cavern Miss Octapussy, concluding one journey to twist up another
but the first never really finishes, it just gets thrown into a library and flipped over naked converted into an hour glass filled with sand.
Ah the always existent desire to see behind that fancy blue door, silently accumulate dust and ponder a young writer from above!