Black Bird Crazy

Inebriation


Old Crow                  
can show         
how Poe
's
Black knack
snatched      
back              
his rap,
Tap, tap, tapping
evermore
on
your floor

Somewhere, Somehow

On the Far Side of a Dakota Sunset

" ... why oh why can't I?" Judy Garland

In the upside down world Hillary won,
General Custer smokes peyote root with warriors,
Politicians draw pundit cartoons.
Being last is heroic.
Refineries make cars disappear
& buffalos lie down with their greedy enemies.

The souls in that world vote for fools, who
Descend to earth & turn into public servants,
Saviors who tell the truth,
Walk to the sky and back each morning
Making love all the day long
Just as proclaimed in their holy books.

When they say war it means peace.
When they say peace it means compassion.
When they say shop it means rebuilding
& reparation for creation.
In the upside down world Hillary is naked
& Children feel her beauty,

Termosapiens cower in wind cooled mounds
Hiding from the Ecitoninaen hordes.
Hope is the dream of a place, where
Monica is a bonobos name for friends
Who couple with you in joy
& Praise the mythical goddess of virtue.

This poem was linked to Totally Optional Prompts, hence the comments. I really like that community of poets - it is interactive and supportive.

When bad maps point the direction

Common Roots

As cool as the morning calm
Cold vowels drifted onto the steppe
Seeking soft romantic companions

Met with a Cyrillic harshness
Old political divisions multiplied
Turning mere symbols to enmity

Touched by a silent sentience
Sweet pheromones of amour
Changed the semiotic of warming

When Poets take on Precedents

In memory of the protest sonnets of Claude McKay
on Martin Luther King's Day

... by observing the ideological paradoxes manifest in America's treatment of minorities and by adopting Western literary traditions, and thus he gains a voice among those whose project of subjugation has been to efface the native cultural heritage of African-Americans and to silence the discourse of dissent. McKay challenges the American power structure.

from African American Review, Fall, 1994 by James R. Keller

Waltzing over a Cyberian Sunset


Are you sure there is no good reason
Why a people would live in a fog?
If it’s not about fear or cov’rin
Your behind, then buying a watch dog

That is way out of touch and knows it,
Is like living with clowns that wear shit
Eating grins on their face, a disgrace
That American’s had to embrace—

Eight long years with a stupid oil fake
Because Clinton’s hard penis goon child
Was the symbol of freedom gone wild,

Made hypocrisy the country's namesake,
A torment that will outlast the grief
For a war that bestowed no relief?

In the a world of supervillians and cyber comics,

Doctor Cyber was the commanding presence behind a global criminal network around the same time when Wonder Woman had relinquished her powers and her fellow Amazons retreated into another dimension.

I continued the experimental aesthetic by composing the Pushkin sonnet in bluesy 3-beat trimeter instead of conforming to the iambic dogmatism of the traditional sonnet,

for more on this sad debacle in American governance that won't go away...click here.

Unspeakable Word

As it happens, today was the day I had my annual checkup at the VA. For me, it is the hardest thing about being a DAV.

24/7, 24/7, 24/7, 24...

An out of balance hammer
pounds in the middle kingdom of auditorium yammer
Tinnitus tingling without a single sound anywhere
No winning combination here or there

It rings like a diabolical plot against humanity
a Conspiracy Theory of insanity
Punishment in the here and now of my ear
For sins committed long before this new year

For being among the limerick readers who cheered
when the boy from Nantucket appeared
gave us a grin
Raised his “toast” to the great somethin’

(In a modern sense of an old fashioned word
Frozen on lips that cannot be heard)
A stern librarian from out of the guilt of our youth
Screams quiet! But it is only an unobtainable truth

“It’s all in your head
or under your bed,” she said,
calling back that first turn of the phrase
The euphemism that said no in so many ways,

figuratively portrayed as a sonic
wave that vibrates until it became a near chronic
hum that will ever remain unseen
to serve as a surrogate for the in-between

Under statement

Totally Optional Post

Perhaps you may have gathered from the November 17 post. Things are changing.

I like the TOP concept---however I often produce something that I don't mind sharing but I may not want to publish, i.e. many poetry publications consider something posted on websites to be published as it is openly accessible, so I am investigating alternatives.

A couple links for this week:

Something old about Animals, etc.

&

Something under construction In the beginning ...

The second is on a Yahoo Group than can be restricted to members only. A suggestion: a TOP group for the purpose of sharing work that authors do not want published and to make it possible for sharing of comments and suggestions.

How about a Frappr Map