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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , AUGTEMBER 2002
SUMMER’S CHILDREN
We do not know who chose us
but we are the chosen
we were chosen not to be you
we enter your cities like fog
with our bedrolls and our portable lives
our ragged coats always too big
the better for sleeping in
we follow summer
and we all look alike to you
with our uncombed hair
we look like winter
when we are young we look older
when we are older we begin to look young
you do not want to look at us
and since we are invisible to you
we can urinate anywhere
we are not lost we know where we are
but our itinerary is chance and weather
we do not believe in destinations
and we are in no hurry
we have learned patience
from statues in a thousand parks
and joy from dogs without collars
we envy you nothing you want
we can live on what you throw away
we envy only birds of passage
their ability to fly
sometimes we ask for your spare change
but never your credit cards
otherwise we keep our distance
avoiding the germs of your misery
the wolf does not come to our doors
we have no doors
we have lost our names somewhere
and are required to sign nothing
we do not pay taxes we feed the birds
we do not vote why should we vote for you
we do not join the army
we are an army
and we will not fight in your wars
we have lost our return addresses
our forwarding addresses
our social security numbers
and are secure in our own society
we leave messages to one another
on the undersides of bridges
in a code you cannot decipher
but we plot to overthrow nothing
we escape we are summer’s children
bom into your winter
we are not
a problem we are a solution
to a problem you are the problem
-RICHARD SHELTON
THE AMERICAN WAY
These gray days
there aren’t shadows enough
for ghosts to hide in
we’re so susceptible here
out of our element
away from the diversions
that help us forget
the bloody hand
that feeds us
is our own
Come on, Sun, shine!
We have plenty enough
of regrets today
the phantom jets ripping
through the clouds
along the shore
must remind us the exact substance
this easy life is made of:
force
simple brutal force
we just turn to ash
what we can't win
the love of
It's the American Way
Come on, Sun, shine!
Today we need to get out
on the beach
and forget who we are
-J. D WELLS
we saw into the redness, like running waters...
In stopping asked to look ourselves over, again
-SHARE ZANERA
WHEN I WAS CONCEIVED
It was a humid summer night
our sixth week without rain,
only those with air-conditioners were at peace.
Mother in a skimpy blue swimsuit and modest wrap-an
leant across the banister
to catch whatever breeze should happen by.
Father beckoned to her from down the street,
she arrived short of breath,
her long red hair plastered with sweat.
It was the sudden gush of cool air from the open door
that lured her inside and upstairs.
■KIM ROBINSON
DIGGING UP THE STARS
We could hear them humming
as the moon came out, and
with hoes and shovels we gathered
at the edge of the Wheatfield.
The grain rocked in the night breezes,
hugging, then letting go. We trampled
and uprooted countless stalks,
stalking the places the stars lay
buried, tracking their hum.
They were spongy and trembled
at our touch. The first broke,
and we felt its dying song
with a sorrow we did not know we had.
After that we grew more careful
and the children among us brushed
the last of earth away
with small fingers.
One by one we freed them,
and when the last lay uncovered,
they ceased their throaty sound
and began slowly to rise above us.
Standing in our broken field,
we tasted our own deathsongs
like a hunger. Dawn spread
its thinness across the sky
and we gave it the voice of something
soft, and alone.
-JOSEPH MATUZAK
"I'm all bone, just solid pure bone. I’m good
natured, but hideous as an old horn toad."
-MARIANNE MOORE
(POET. D.2/5/1972)
JUPITER EVENING STAR
They weren’t there anymore, the high clouds
we watched out our window at dusk
From the airport in the distance the airplanes came
into view, starting as thin needles in air
then flaming out over the bright egg moon
and the flat still blue sky The city lay before us
under a blackberry sunset. You’re my mother,
he said suddenly Who the cap fits, let her
toss it, I thought in my little-girl voice
And then the brightest thing in the sky rose.
-JUDITH BAUMEL
SUMMER SHE
Gravity nails your flesh to earth
and spins your blood for balance
through the spheres of your mind
which intends freedom.
You surge like thread through cloth
and we whom you outdistance say
Goodbye.
- michael M c C usker
WIVE’S TALE
On the night
that my grandfather did not come home
Grandmother
felt the airy lift of the mattress
that was missing a body,
a roll away from her
That night the ocean rolled over him searching
his pockets
curled him down
with his small boat and
a keg of beer.
“We don’t know if he screamed”
I tell the callers next week
watching her in the corner.
She who doesn’t think I see her
fingers tracing sea shells
on her placemat.
-MONICA KOSKEY
FOR BILL
There once was a curmudgeon incorrigible
Whose opinion of most was “Deplorable!”
Two percent of mankind
he thought might be fine
but as for the rest,
"Shockin' horrible!”
-COLLEEN VIOLETTE
(Bill Berlin died last Dec. 3. His ashes were scattered
on his 74th birthday, May 17.)
i am here
you are there
and confusion
links closely
through our
minds...
she yells
standing in
the kitchen
thinking of
the piety she
never knew...
sitting in a
chair of cruel
meanings i stride
to procreate the
intaglio pains
which point to
laugh in my
direction...
my harpy mind
seeking whatever
can destroy me...
with haste i
search for reasons
one can find
in caring for my
life which flies
from the deepened
closures to the
sorrow paved dead
lands where lamenting
bodies are thrown...
she now sits near
sewing laces for
reasons we neither
ever knew our hatred
grows in petty arguments
which are laying lifeless
on fires of insanity ..
they proclaim my crazy
being is of no purpose
i am finding great
truths in such accusations ..
i in returning my outcast
illusions within, remain
in trying
hallucinations for
what is proving a
time abstracted
word, love...
with it questioned
-SHARE ZANERA