Poetry
• who are we - Hillary
Kaye
• Too many meetings - C.V.
Beck
• Meth Pursuit, part 1 - John
David West
• I Am Northamerican -
Margot “Pimienta”
Pepper
• Welcome to my creation - Chad
Prather
• Bumper - Sherman
Pearl
who
are we
who
dance
and
sing
and know
not
why
and
have not
wings.
-Hillary
Kaye
-----------
Too
many meetings, all the
time
Too many meetings, get
it?
Too many is – too many . .
.
Y’all crazy
now.
Must be the money-greed
thing
– C.V.
Beck
-----------
METH
PURSUIT
1. Crystallized
Solidarity
Just having
fun
Just having
fun
Tomorrow I
stop
Back to
normal
Back to
responsibility
Back to upward
mobility.
L.A. jail bars of
Glass
easily shatter, I break
out
I am free.
Okay.
Relax.
Rest.
Morning
comes, cell rings
last night’s laughs
turn
to crystal cries,
needed at
sunrise.
Morning’s guilt frost bitten
to burned away.
Back to crystal
dreams
Back to just having
fun
Back to
immobility
Back to hyper-tongued
and limp-dick penetrated
quests.
Back to puffing
away
minutes in a repetition of
lost
clouds.
Tonight,
Tonight,
I
sleep,
godammit
tonight
I sleep.
–John David
West
-------------
I
Am Northamerican
by Margot
“Pimienta”
Pepper
Once I knew who I
was;
I was myself moving through the
world
like thoughts stirring within a
body.
México, you were my body
then:
your sun and
moon,
my
eyes;
your streets of earth and
tile,
my
legs;
the generosity of your
people,
my
arms;
my
heart,
your indigenous ways
engraved
in unassuming faces of
clay
and volcanic
stone.
And long after I
left
to become nothing
more
than another
figure
in the profit
margin
of U.S.
companies,
I believed I still
knew
who I
was,
though all I thought I
had
I didn’t have at
all,
not a
home,
not a
people,
for I am neither Mexican nor
gringo,
nor European nor
indio,
nor African nor
Asian
nor anything
less
than the sum of these
parts.
I am
Northamerican.
Nations war and embrace each
other inside me.
I am heady jazz and
Afro-Cuban rhythm,
Funkadelic and
Chopin,
Pre-Columbian and
Renaissance,
an exile, a
dreamer,
a
refugee.
I am the ingenuity that bore
pyramids and temples,
the strength that
forged railroads and cities,
the dead that
served as collateral
for cheap harvests,
textiles, steel and coal.
I am the
restlessness of the barrios,
the wisdom of
those intimate with the land;
I am stories
recounted
from fire pit to sagging
porch
on sweet, lazy summer
nights;
blood of dragon and sundancer,
elder, warrior and starched
collar,
fisherman, healer,
high heels and agile
feet;
spray paint, motorcycle
jacket
and soft bare
breasts;
rituals of sage and routine
appointment books,
the child renewed in the
hearts of lovers.
My intellect was
shaped by thoughts borne of many
languages.
My rage incited by those who would
silence them.
Mine are the eyes of a
hungry woman
with no roof under which
to cry;
the hardened stare of an
eight-year-old
in a scholastic holding
cell.
I am
Northamerican,
for home is wherever
we’ve chosen
to draw the battle
line.
And I won’t stop
fighting,
not even come the
day
I can say I’m
Northamerican
with the pride of a
woman
who has with her own
hands
built her first
house,
and know that by this
triumph
I’ve earned the
right
to reclaim
as my
country
the people of the
world.
-----------
Welcome
to my
creation,
just
a simple illustration
to understand the
condition of a cold hearted nation.
Putting
politicians on cushions
as they feed us lies
and confusion,
while we get wrapped up in
the illusion
that our rights are worth
losing.
So I continue to vent on a worthless
president,
hired to represent the US
Government.
Taking obligation for our
foreign relations,
but he seems to be
falling in love with the sensation for global domination.
Calling in the invasion as our commander and
chief,
saying we can’t pull out now,
we are in too deep.
We all know what that
means, but war ain’t cheap.
We are
taxed when we eat,
even taxed when we sleep.
I work 60 hours a week
and still hardly cut ends meat.
But there are people with bigger needs than
me,
but the government ignores us all
without apology
and silences the ones that
try to come out to speak.
Then tells us that
we have some big demands to meet.
To make
another man bleed
for a rich man’s
greed.
Forget about the hungry and weak,
let’s build more bombs and a bigger
military and invade country after country, until an empire is reached.
I say impeach,
cuz this has gone on too long!
After Iraq, comes Iran with egos growing
strong.
They seem to feel they can attack
anyone they want.
When will We The People,
realize this is wrong
and stop giving the
government everything it
wants?
–Chad
Prather
------------
BUMPER
Not
a blemish on the car
we start clean with this
apolitical beauty
certified by showroom
stickers
that show how respectable
we’ve become
bumpers baby-ass
bare
of passionate slogans or the
dust
of campaigns or the smudges
candidates
killed by causes that ruined the
paint job
and lowered the resale
value
of the trade-in the dealer swore was
worth
nothing but the nostalgia he’d
peddle
to a sucker who’d
appreciate
the philosophies squeezed into
strips
or the faded
tatters
of truths we knew when we pasted them
on
but lack relevance now that we have a
car
that’s uncluttered by
causes
that proclaim no truth but
prosperity
that glides admired through
traffic
without provoking the horns of
antagonists
its expanse of neutral color
reflecting
the bright American
sun
as we drive cautiously
over
road kill and skid marks and shattered
glass
toward the shining city on the
hall.
-Sherman Pearl
Posted: Sat
- July 1, 2006 at 03:16 AM