ORGANIZER: Frank Judge CONTACT: rochesterpoets@gmail.com; 585-260-9005
Our 3rd Annual 100TPC was a success. And we’re proud to announce that our 2014: 4th Annual “100 Thousand Poets for Change” Kickoff, sponsored by Rochester Poets, will be held on Sunday, September 21, 2-4:30 pm, Ross Gallery, Skalny Welcome Center at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY. You’re not obliged to read/perform any “protest poems” or songs, but if you have any they would be welcomed — there are certainly enough things that need to be changed! The Right Wing-controlled House of Representatives for starters!
Don’t forget there will be events happening ALL week long and into October around the world. There’s a Facebook page for this year’s events at https://www.facebook.com/events/101528880036977/ The Facebook page for OUR event is https://www.facebook.com/events/637391752959328
NOTE that there’s no featured performer for this event, which replaces our regular September Rochester Poets reading. EVERYONE is “featured” — we welcome poets, musicians, singers, artists, photographers…you name it. There’s loads of free parking in Lot A right across the drive from Skalny and right next to Skalny. The building also has handicapped access.
For a map of the Fisher campus, go to http://rochesterpoets.freehostia.com/sjfcmap.htm Whether or not you’re going to perform, if you represent a progressive cause devoted to “change”, feel free to bring along pamphlets, flyers, books…whatever.. Refreshments served. Donations to support Rochester Poets, the region’s oldest literary organization (founded in 1920) will be gratefully accepted.
Change
Where do we begin?
Spike the water supply
of all the world leaders
with LSD like the Yippies
proposed and plotted
back in the 60s?
And if you could do that
and get the robotic
men and women
who want to keep their jobs
no matter what,
who’d tell them what to do?
The way things have been going,
we’d get a Jim Jones or Charlie Manson
all spruced up this time,
looking every bit like
Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or,
maybe worse, Mitt Romney.
And where what would we do
with all the toxic chemicals,
the reactor rods,
the nuclear warheads,
the poison gasses,
the unemployed (after all,
you can’t have people
NOT working — it’s
against Natural Law!),
the beggars, the thieves,
the murderers, the mentally ill
who just can’t take it anymore
but don’t dare throw open
their windows and shout it
to the the world?
That was just a movie,
and we know things didn’t
end well for Howard Beale.
And would any of it be in time
to sew the ozone layer back together,
to re-freeze the icecaps so
the corpses of dead polar bears,
penguins and ton loads
of other creatures of the cold
didn’t wash up on the
immaculate shores of Sandals
or clog Manhattan harbor?
The filthy rich would love
to launch off to some other worldly
space station and look down
at the beautiful sight of Earth,
looking much like the blue marble
it was back in the day
of those first space flights,
telling tales of the “old days”
and how deceiving
the look of the planet can be.
Wasn’t it John Lennon who,
with his mates back in ’67,
told the world one Sunday night
“All You Need Is Love”
and then asked us to imagine
a different world just a few years later?
But love and imagination
and love just aren’t enough
as we inch closer to something
too terrible to conceive..
— Frank Judge
Copyright © 2013 by Frank Judge