Poetry
• The Dark Right - Hal
Bogotch
• Simple Questions - Hillary
Kaye
• American Nero - Rex
Butters
THE DARK
RIGHT
By Hal
Bogotch
Welcome to the dark
right.
Evil pervades. Republicans
reign. Satan is
back
in his heaven.
Phony religiosity
carries
the day. A
president
with no brain
cells
puts his foot
down
on stem
cells.
SUVs are
patriotic.
USA will drill,
rape
Mother’s soil for
oil.
Forgiveness on a
corporate
collection plate.
Label
evildoers. Cover
mirror,
hide greater
evil.
Drop bombs. Bust
bunkers.
Sell water to the
poor.
Execute in rows and
columns,
never mind the DNA posthumous
exoneration
probability.
Accept crippled Jesus in your
soul.
-----------
Simple
Questions
By Hillary
Kaye
I have heard it said that in the
beginning was the word
I can not tell you I
understand
because the truth is I can not
even bear to know
how much loss we all
endure.
I stand just on this
corner
standing what I can bear and not one
step further
wondering if a word could change
the world
would I try to find
it
wondering if a poem could change the
world
would I give up my life to write
it?
Simple
questions
-----------
American
Nero
By Rex
Butters
he strums guitar in San
Diego
monkey mugs for the once
prestigious
washington press
corp
laughing with a country
star
his month long
vacation
nearly
ending
dragging their
children
those children
alive
citizen survivors in
garbage
Mississippi towns soggy
kindling
fire stations
flooded
buildings burn for lack of
water
sweltering citizens
parched
face
down
a young girl half under grimy
water
floats
her pink hair clip still in her
hair
no
ripples
submerged
American Nero strums guitar
in San Diego
draws
cheers
and
applause
from an adoring audience
at a naval base in
Southern
california
dark rank smelling house
sticky
Mississippi mud porch
slick living room
floor
crumpled
woman
still holds snake fight stick
black and white
dress
bodies rotting quickly in the
heat
rats feasting on your loved ones
dead in the street
American
Nero
strumming guitar during the Gulf Coast
floods
this time, not wearing phony ranch
hand duds
“if you’re someone
who’s having to struggle
between
food
and medicine,
those days are over with
,” he says to seniors in
Southern
california
children rest in ration
boxes
hospital patients stretchered
on airport baggage claim
floor
nurses weep leaving dead
patients
faces the color of the black mud
and brown water
4mos old 6 mos
old
they died
right here in
america
waiting for
food
their tattered dead in lawn
chairs
bodies in refrigerated trucks used
to ship bananas
sick poor black old and
left behind
stroke victims in laundry
baskets
treated like an occupied
enemy
race, age, and bank book determined
survivors
as official excuses and
transparent lies
swarm like a thick cloud
of blood sucking flies
American Nero in
sunny San Diego
strums his
guitar
eats cake in Arizona with John
McCain
while sewage soaked
survivors
cling to
life
in rising water atop a
car
rescue efforts pulled
back
to focus on
looting
Save the
Stuff
kill anyone moving
it
we can’t show the
world
we no longer value
property
the self-righteous wind wing
bellows
“Shoot On
Sight”
but the looting began long
before the storm
public
funds
shore up
defense contractors’ bank
accounts
levees left in
tatters
Nero minded
numbskull
King of
Vacations
he flew over high
above
he looked out a window
a prepared statement of
concern
then returned to the golf
course
their devastation and misery
a fly by photo op
prop
Bond, Biloxi, Maxie,
Star
Thomasville, Gulfport, New
Orleans
Mali, Somalia, and
Sudan
survivors
their names washed away
all they will call
you
will be
refugees
will they receive the
2-3
hundred thousand dollars given to
each
family
relocating off Gaza paid
by
US
taxes?
will the US govt.’s $75
million bribe offer
refused by Iraqi
Sunnis
be chipped into the Gulf
Fund?
two days after Katrina
hit
the federal rescue leader hadn’t
heard
about 15,000 desperate, dehydrated,
hungry, angry, dying
in the New Orleans
convention center
from Mobile, American Nero
smiled,
“Brownie, you’re doing a
heck of a job.”
“Give me
your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
That I may
feed them to my greedy death
god,”
American Nero sang and twanged,
laughing.
Mississippi John
Hurt
rain your sweet finger
pick
tears on the
people
Charlie
Patton
roar their frustration and
pain
Memphis
Minnie
sing
about
when the levee
breaks
it’s
1927
again
Posted: Sat
- October 1, 2005 at 07:28 AM