Poetry
• I am the vampire I thought I was -
Hillary Kaye
• Reflections on cleaning
someone’s house - Mary Getlein
•
American Vendetta/The Terrorist Zaqawi - Gregory
Sotir
• Rumor Confirmed -
Anon
• "The Doors To Syllogism" - John
O'Kane
• Meth Pursuit, Part 2 - John
David West
• Cycle -
Vincenzo
I am the vampire I thought I
was…. only now I look the
part
Dressed in the customs of despair and
heart break, rebounded in an air
So stifling
and thick with wrong and evil.
How can I
expect to live?
Gardens yes gardens of earthly
delight.
Strange how I am not invited to
attend or tend them
The owners can see the
rage I feel inside. I am not a gringo though I look like
one.
I am not a lover of the capitalist
castration, in this world I am an outcast and find my place among the frogs and
the things that live in oceans.
Dolphins and
whales, sea horses I forgot to ask, do they still
exist?
– Hillary
Kaye
-----------
Reflections
on cleaning someone’s house
Mounds
of hair piled up -
piles and piles of
hair
all old, white,
silvery,
like it drifted down from the
Moon,
old silvery
hair
harvested from the head of a young
girl
once upon a
time
born in
’21,
now it’s ’06 - do the
math....
now she’s shedding like a cat
in the summer,
letting go of old
hair:
don’t need it
anymore
letting go of old lovers, old liars,
old ways,
shed them all like a snake sheds
its skin
it ain’t comfortable anymore,
in these old ways -
gotta wiggle out from
under -
get up out of here, out of
there:
where does an old runaway run
to?
Ran away: didn’t have no where to
go to -
only knew she had to get up out of
there -
had to
go
Didn’t want to feel unwelcome no
more -
Never did feel welcome,
there.
Piles and piles of
hair
mounded
up
dust settled on everything,
a thick coating on all the stuff -
a record player that is never played
anymore
books books books
everywhere,
more books, dust,
hair,
long silver bits of
moon-hair,
drifted down from the
sky,
to be swept up and
placed,
with all the dirt, dust, little
pieces of food
that was dropped and never
picked up -
once a month,
maybe,
someone comes in and
cleans,
but only a little
bit,
as much as she
allows;
can’t tackle the
oven,
can’t touch the kitchen
floor
can’t touch the
sink
only sweep sweep sweep
everything
no vacuums, no sprays, no modern
shit for her -
no chemical products
allowed,
only elbow grease, an old rag to
move the
dust
around
a broom: pretty elemental way to deal
with the
elements
Her mind: sharp as a
tack
Born in
1921:
She gave an outraged attack on
Christianity
in church
-
Impassioned defense of being a
pagan...
Worship the
tree
Not some man strung up on the tree
-
In the name of Christianity, what was
done
to poor native peoples all over the
world?
Forced to pick up that
religion
Forced to speak in a new
language
Forced to have a new
name,
cleverly picked out by the new
missionaries
on the
block
Forced to comply or they might cut your
hand off
Forced to comply or be killed
-
or was that the
Romans?
while they burnt down their
libraries
while they wrecked their
temples
while they pushed down their statues
of
the
goddess
Where are the
goddesses???
they are right
here,
dropping their hair on the
floor,
leaving bits and pieces of themselves
all around...
–Mary
Getlein
-------------
American
Vendetta/The Terrorist Zaqawi
We know death. He's on the
tube.
Woven into and between the crude
commercials,
a thread, a phospheme, a
subliminal, a shadow.
Eyes x'd out. Then
explode.
The final stab of
revenge.
Without
end.
End.
Traveling along the
sunny
bumpy springtime road, the thick
leathery
olive green leaves lift and
wave
and drop, hanging in the
desert.
The radio headphones cut in and
out,
waves of sound changing to
static.
The buzzing revving roar of an
engine
becomes crescendo racing whirring
fast
behind us. Going where? Who knows? It's
dim. It is all
Without
end.
End.
I climb on my stickered
bike.
I always wear black. My legs, my limbs,
feel so tired,
sickened and deep. I can feel
in them like dusty thirst.
I think it's
normal for my age,
I think, sickened, deep.
Tired
without
end.
End.
Believe in
normality?
I don't really care what you
think. Normality?
I don't really care whether
or not you have purpose.
But...our purpose is
from God.
As God is and as time
stains
without
end.
End.
A man does many stupid
things
He acts only often in
reaction.
Problems get bigger and
bigger
Then a bomb falls onto his house
,
and another bomb falls onto his
house.
Two bombs in one day! Now
revenge
knows death. It happens a mile
away,
and it happens twenty miles
away,
a hundred miles away, a thousand miles
away...
without
end.
End.
I climb on my battered
bike.
and ride far along the depopulated
coastline.
Without safety I still have the
faith of the living.
The coast that goes on
and on
night-sky blue water and
sand,
without
end.
End.
–Gregory
Sotir
------------
Rumor
Confirmed
Cobe Joe
McGee
from Joplin
mis-er-y
came to Venice to see what he could
see
Ended this life on the
sand
messed up on
drugs
murdered by
thugs
rest
quite
America’s
Son
–Anon
------------
"The
Doors To Syllogism"
if Rhiannon
the spiritual advisor who
services drop-ins
at her table up the Boardwalk
could chart our
collective 2010 insync
she might see a town
still tangy
lots of folks riding out new
storms
and actors dogged with uncollectible
loans
beating it back to their rooms
through a cavalcade of labs bred
on boneless Trader Joe's gourmet
–John
O'Kane
------------
METH
PURSUIT
2. Zip, Bump,
Go
Gotta fix
it,
objective to
pursue
beyond my
control
feet keep
on
walking,
dancing,
walking,
searching
eyes probing in
the dark dark
place
one more
round
then I
go
one last tour then I’m
done.
Tired,
sleepy
one more key-tip
filled; sniff one right,
sniff two left,
snort one, snort two.
Zip bag,
yet half full.
48 hours not too
far
I’ll sleep at zip bag
empty and meth
no more.
–John David
West
-------------
CYCLE
DREAM
SUN
UP
SURF
UP
GET
UP
NOON
SOON
SUN
DOWN
CHOW
DOWN
FALL
DOWN
DREAM
–Vincenzo
Posted: Tue - August 1, 2006 at 09:35 AM