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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JULY 2002
OUR REVOLUTION
our revolution
dried dreams into paper scattered
in gusts of unanswerable questions,
it scooped up stars from an eastern sky
just to prove they were imitation diamonds
junked in a downtown pawnshop,
it supplanted your memory
with molotov cocktails stored in mason jars,
it kicked down the latticework of thousands
of embracing vines with steel-toed boots
to be used for kindling,
it shot a hole right through a sunflower
sending seeds into a chaos of black crows
pecking at shells,
it eclipsed passion with the cold-blooded
fist of irreverence and cast an anemic shadow
over the future,
its leopard teeth ripped the meat from my bones
and then fractured my skeleton against a wall
of indifferent bricks,
DARREN ORANGE
POETRY
LETTER TO THE DEAD
Friends, nothing has changed
in essence.
Wages don’t cover expenses,
wars persist without end,
and there are new and terrible viruses,
beyond the advance of medicine.
From time to time, a neighbor
falls dead over questions of love.
There are interesting films, it is true,
and, as always, voluptuous women
seducing us with their mouths and legs,
but in matters of love
we haven’t invented a single position that’s new.
Some astronauts stay in space
six months or more, testing
equipment and solitude
In each Olympics new records are predicted
and in the countries social advances and setbacks.
But not a single bird has changed its song
with the times.
THE FLAG FLAP
Some raise the flag, salute and pledge;
Pretend symbol is solution
To problems posed by patriots.
I hold up the Constitution;
Not symbol, but document and law;
Propose the wavers waiver not.
Uphold the words (the fatal flaw),
The purpose purposely forgot.
-LARRY BARROWS
A CASE FOR UTOPIA
The world would be better off
if people tried to become better
and people would become better
if they stopped trying to become better off.
For when everybody tries to become better off
nobody is better off
Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried to become richer,
and nobody would be poor
if everybody tried to be the poorest
And everybody would be what they ought to be
if everybody tried to be
what they thought everybody else ought to be
We put on the same Greek tragedies,
reread Don Quixote, and spring
arrives on time each year.
Some habits, rivers, and forests are lost.
Nobody sits in front of his house anymore
or takes in the breezes of afternoon,
but we have amazing computers
that keep us from thinking.
On the disappearance of the dinosaurs
and the formation of galaxies
we have no new knowledge.
Clothes come and go with the fashions.
Strong governments fall, others rise,
and the ants and the bees continue
faithful to their work.
Nothing has changed in essence.
We sing congratulations at parties,
argue football on street corners,
die in senseless disasters,
and from time to time
one of us looks at the star-filled sky
with the same amazement we had
when we looked at caves.
And each generation, full of itself,
continues to think
that it lives at the summit of history.
-AFFONSO ROMANO DESANT'ANNA
even in grief
water through rock
light through leaf
leaf shadow on wall —
the assault of beauty
a plummeting
into the well:
the last of our emotion
-CAROLYN DUNN
-PETER MAURIN
it rolled out of our tongues into giant runways
for fighter planes and squadrons of metallic flies,
it yanked away the net and then cut the trapeze ropes
as you hung by your knees and I spun off into a triple somersault
in an amphitheater of suspended faces,
it stole the script lines and turned up the hue, tint,
and volume of a television soap opera,
it packed up your boxes in one afternoon,
it measured desire against truth.
but I watered the paper with ink, the diamonds found their ways
into treasure boxes, the mason jars exploded in your own mind,
the wood lured our rage into a pit of ash, earth enveloped the
seeds to harvest new flowers, the fist opened into a hand made
to work, my bones healed crooked and more strong, our runways
sank into oceans of speechless kisses, the trapeze act flew off
into the dreams of retired clowns, the TV picture tube blew
and applied for a library card, the crones recorded an album,
you opened all of your boxes, and the scale of truth and desire
teetered for weeks. ..
because, it was not, after all, the war to end all wars,
but rather a mutiny of passions, and the grand pageant of our
imperfections.
-JUANITA HUEBNER
“Idealists live under greater pressure to reckon with politics
than politicians do to compromise with ideals.”
-ELIOT JANEWAY
NEAHKAHNIE MOON
White pearly moon
observant as an eye,
shine on bone-white
snags Disgraceful race
decimates great Douglas fir.
Sunset is salmon pink
to sea Slaughtered
fish runs. O Khanie —
god witness of a
1000 generations —
remove scavengers
from the scabbed land
Primitive Pacific Coast
scarred by their
deprivations. May they
and their seed die out,
lead depleted lives.
O most beautiful
place on earth, rainy Eden,
of dewy jade-like trees
and Taoist rocks!
Ocean fog leaves a kiss
on wounded landscape
Indian God, forgive us
our trespasses, as we
cannot those who pass
this way trespassing
against primordial beauty
May this race die off
and their offspring slough
into the ocean, scraps
of maggoty meat
for wheeling gulls
and pounding wave smash
Pitiless moon, see all,
be a searchlight
for natural justice,
reflecting pearl, bone
and polished shell
-WALT CURTIS
AMERICAN MAELSTROM
With everyman hawking that he is the way, what is a poor soul's path?
The maelstrom of competitive heat beating down the grassroots of insanity
like the swollen Yangste River, leaves little life except on the highway of delusion.
Insects will not survive a nuclear war...only the distant stars.
Sasquatch doesn’t encroach, just wants to range in memory’s trust
However teaching humans is the business of eternity.
Each other’s occasional cold shoulders just smolder like hell.
Mongoose chasing scorpions cover the ground like strutting hippies
while downed souls act like wolves pissing around in rock quarries
I am feeling murdered and it is firing back everywhere...tough shit.
Move out move out General Patton roars and the antimatter fans hit the shit.
Patterns of power and annihilist plans move prophets to curse.
Terrify yourself says God you little spot of bloody shit.
You wanna you wanna you aughta you aughta
you gotta you gotta, how you gonna?
Oh baby let's go at it, purple remains of love at the Filmore East.
Why don’t we all want to live more lovely lives?
Sagacious humor and patience bide time in purple robes.
It is medicine time...my temper must have a decent end.
I have been scaring myself to perdition’s gate but still I sometimes feel dead too.
Seems like God won't allow the death thing for very long.
God God God God God sleeps in a bog bog bog bog
Let’s just not murder the boss morning...oh forsworn and stupid it is.
Strike not these natty Britons for the wheels of justice roll with the stars
My God ..my God...who has stolen my wings but the jealous folk.
Grounded and tortured my strength requite from the grace of Christ.
What are we to this man but vexation...graceless and demanding death;
control freaks breaking golf clubs over his head and tossing cups of the River Styx.
Pain, oh pain it is mercy I seek but empathy rebounds upon popular affection.
I throw my fate into Hell and it comes back mercurial and steely, lithe but aging.
I pray to my abandoned modem world, oh strike me less for I fear I am dying.
What thought I my seed but the rocket tipped rainbow of the covenant’s ark.
Mercy oh my God mercy.
Chatty too chatty molted and boiling cast and sent to the myriads of universal strength.
Can I love myself some of the time whilst I hate absorbing cold hearted law?
But I know its purpose has a love behind it prudent and caring but I lose my grasp.
When the sun starts raging nowhere to run, everywhere to be just love myself.
-CHRISTOPHER KRAEMER