ORGANIZER: Carl Macki
CONTACT: carlmacki@gmail.com
Depot Bookstore reading. Don Alberts and John Macon King
Fairfax Poems by Don Alberts
100 Thousand Poets for Change
Poems from the
100 Thousand Poets for Change
readings in Fairfax, CA
2017-2018
(For access to the 100 Thousand Poets for Change website, visit 100tpc.org.)
“The Last Days of Jan Kerouac“
by Carl Macki
We wanted her to be like a figure in a painting by Botticelli [or a China doll ]
instead, we got Jackson Pollock [in all his glory].
A friend gave me her address before I landed in Hollywood
I looked for her apartment in Hollywood. rang the bell and as we talked spread my writings across her living room floor
The Dodgers won their game in Chavez Ravine that day
it was still sunny
when we went to a Moroccan restaurant on Sunset
overlooking the hotel where John Belushi died
It felt dizzy and not at all glamorous
[She was] like St. Lucy forced into prostitution
And I some unnamed Sicilian jackal
Peddling saline drachmas in a salt-encrusted temple
Of timeless interference
when she died, my vision was restored.
“Geri Digiorno and
100 Thousand Poets for Change”
By Petaluma Community Access
(Originally Published on Dec 26, 2012)
Geri Digiorno
“The Trumpeters”
by Michael Rothenberg
Cowards in white sheets, the skinhead cops
and racists, the religious working men
and women who think a woman’s place is
in the kitchen and children are to be seen
and not heard, and believe people of color
are here in America as a privilege not a right,
who blame Obama for 9/11, but he wasn’t
even president then, the ones who say racism
didn’t exist in America until Obama,
the blowhards, The Trumpeters, the ones
who will murder to be in the driver’s seat
of a big white capitalist car, who will never
be in the driver’s seat, will always be
second-rate white people, in the rich
man’s eye, they might as well be black
for their marginalized existence in the grand
scheme of the upper class American
power elite, but still they buy into the lie,
with their heads up the ass of the real oppressors,
the powerful whites who will never share
a piece of the pie with their middle-class
and working class, poor white cousins, who
only see these ordinary folk, these regular
people as grist for the mill, unruly ignorants
who they can use to help them build their
oligarchic empires, the front line of their
marching band, The Trumpeters, blowing
the horn of oppression, blowing the horn
of the white man’s dream to rule the world,
the white man’s dream to carry guns
in the street, free to murder kids in Sandy Hook,
free to beat their wives, and practice rape
as a contact sport while they graduate
from Stanford University with a big white
degree, free to treat a woman as property,
like a piece of shit, these Trumpeters, they blow,
and blow hard, The Trumpeters, the 40 percent,
maybe 50 percent of America, who will sell
their souls for the promise of ever- elusive
power, the good old Christians who spit
in Christ’s face and rape him on the cross,
the ones that covet cruelty, The Trumpeters,
the patriotic Trumpeters, the ones who think
the USA is a page in an owner’s manual,
clear as day, that they can own democracy,
rig and twist justice and truth to their
self-interested lies and aspirations, that justice
can be bought and sold, as long as white
people rule the world, The Trumpeters,
the ones who think the USA is a big fucking
TV set, as they slurp down their supersized
cans of pharmaceutical sugar and poison,
The Trumpeters, who mimic some hallmark
illusion of The Great White American Way,
and lick the boots of a reality show star,
The Trumpeters, may they suffer the pain
they wish on the poor, the weak, the abandoned,
and rot in the hell of their own vanity,
greed, envy, pride, lust, and sloth and ten
more sins that are their legacy, the sins of
The Trumpeters! Oh, Trumpeters, come on,
blow, blow, blow, your trumpets, here
comes your monster daddy, he comes to give
you another script to read because you can’t
think for yourselves, and he will fuck you
in the ass, and he will never kiss you, never
ever be like you, or with you, he will only
bleed you, and bleed you, fodder for his wars,
fodder for his ecocidal factories, fodder
for his machineries of deception, yes, you
will be his robot army, because you are,
accept it, only Trumpeters, only soulless slaves,
at your very core, behind your brassiness
you are only a procession of cowards, and you
will follow and pronounce your yahoo
independence as you walk to your hate-filled
grave, you will follow the goosestep of the
high boot and genocide, get in line proud
Trumpeters, the future is yours, there’s a banquet
waiting for you beyond the gates of Valhalla,
come on, you are the lucky ones, the entitled ones,
not only the desired guest for the feast, you are
the feast itself, so bow down and open your collar,
your red-haired father is coming to devour you.
Michael Rothenberg is the editor of BigBridge.org, co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c), assisting poets in crisis. His most recent book of poems is Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016). A bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story and the poetic journals Tally Ho and the Cowboy Dream/The Real and False Journals: Book 5 will be published by Varasek Ediciones (Madrid, Spain, 2017). Wake Up and Dream will be published in 2017 by MadHat Press. He currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
100DaysAction.net
100 Days Action presents a calendar of activist and poetic action as a counternarrative to Trump’s one hundred day plan.
“The Chill of Grace”
by Cathyrn Shea
Climb into the profound snow of high altitudes,
the synod of trees bent with the weight.
In guiltless knowledge of the wind, in the bitter
custody of winter, be there to listen.
Amid the stunted pines, the absence of bird song,
the attenuation of the light, your change takes place
among that radiance, may give you grace to forgive
how you raised your children.
Such a spent feast in the crystalline air
chiseled sharp that blinds you
where steam from your body struggles, escapes
above the deck of clouds. Your breath hangs
in wonder, ready to drop in an avalanche
unhinged from a cornice, thriving on moments of fury.
Sometimes we only want sun.
Then we want snow instead.
Wild like a sleeted noon,
a whiteout to erase the road.
First published in West Marin Review.
Cathryn Shea’s second chapbook, It’s Raining Lullabies, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in late 2017. Shea’s poetry has recently appeared in After the Pause, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere, and has poems forthcoming in anthologies that include Luminous Echoes: A Poetry Anthology by Into The Void and “The New English Verse” by Cyberwit.net. In 2004, she received the Marjorie J. Wilson Award for Excellence in Poetry from MARGIE. Shea serves on the editorial staff of the Marin Poetry Center and has worked in technical publishing for many years. She lives in Fairfax, California. Seecathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.
Poet’s Note
“When I wrote “The Chill of Grace,” I had been reminiscing about how I felt the first time I stepped off the ski tram at Grand Targhee on the back side of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. The tops of the pine trees were so windswept and encrusted with snow they looked like old men in white robes entering heaven. I had never seen such blue sky in contrast to blinding white snow. Below-zero air entered my lungs, and I wondered how I would make it down the slope. I had a job there after college and the seasons I spent at Grand Targhee were life-changing magic for me. I met my husband and we had two children together after moving back to a busier, urban life. The poem reflects fleeting awe, joy, and puzzles about choices and consequences out of our control. I also remembered the terror I experienced in a whiteout when a friend and I were caught on the road in a blizzard.”
“Fix By Fix,”
by Daniel Michael McKenzie
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
All the Coeurs Noirs
We do abhor.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
open the chant
keep you au courant.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Kalinda and du Maine
Sing Le coup de Main.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Red dust Corn Meal
Seals the Deal.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
du Lac and du Maine
close it more.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Papa Legba
Expects some more.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Enclose the Circle
Anytime Lord.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Madam Paris there
In the Congo Square.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Erzule-Dantor
Claims what’s abhorred.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
You don’t stand a chance
That’s for sho’.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Mock the golden chalice
Y’all will feel his malice.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
No more Gumbo
We have sworn.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Stay in our circle
Forevermore
.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Keep ‘em in the room
Conjurin’ they Doom.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
No way out,
From the circle on the floor.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Du Lac
Et du Maine
Done fixed the Doors.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Enter the mirror
Captured in yo fear.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Ain’t no charade.
This be Elegua’s Parade.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
You don’t believe
so remain on the floor.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
This is yo Fate
There ain’t no escape.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
No Second Line
For what you done tore.
Fix by Fix
Door by Door
Look what’s comin’
Au revoir Coeurs Noirs.
Bird and Miles,
by Don Alberts
Bird cried out across the plains..
Miles bent that note…
Bird smiled and played a scatter..
Miles looked wide..
Bird flies on, away…
You comin’?, he say..
But Miles lay low upon the swollen note…
cool the flutter of Bird’s powerful heat..
And play a small group, neat…
Bird storms the door…
No one standing…
The riveting sound of his repeater
sears like an automatic..
People duckin’…
Miles blows erratic..
Float the understatement..
Bird charges on, no abatement…
Things explode..bottles, bulbs…
Bird’s fire unleashes…
The crowd increases..
Miles descendant, independent…
Relevant brother..
Bird, mother,
Magician, warrior…
Miles defender..
Bird, God, Bird..
Miles, God, Bird….
Bird fiercely…
Miles conversely…
Bird forgive me…
Miles rehearsed me…
Vivid Bird above the sky…
Essence of the primal eye…
Sound beneath the clouds,
Golden brilliance, of saxophone,
Omnipotence…
Riff the rife to the brusque…
Echo the vernal quest…
Search on, Bird…
God, Bird…
Miles, the vessel
with the eye of Bird..
Bird looks out the Miles window…
Miles, Bird, Miles,
the eye of Jazz..
Miles God, Bird…
Formulation, as…
Miles, Bird, God…
The Invitation…
God, Miles, Bird…
The Confirmation…
Miles, Bird, God..
The Providence..
Miles, God,..Bird…
Bird, God, Miles..
Miles, God…
Bird.
Don Alberts is more than a pianist, more a piano stylist in the finest and most classical tradition of Jazz. His style is reminiscent of the dignity and panache of Duke Ellington and the eloquence of Bill Evans, yet clearly contemporary, and clearly his own. Friends: Don has shared the bandstand with some great musicians including Leroy Vinnegar, Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank, recordings with renowned bassist David Friesen, and a period as house pianist at the famous Bop City in San Francisco.
Don Alberts has established himself as an author with a number of books to his credit. Recent publications include: “The Rushing -Manbaby and the Crooked Road to the Big Time” (2010), a novel about a Jazz Musician’s life set in the 1960’s San Francisco and “A Diary of the Underdogs” a book on Jazz History in San Francisco in the 1960’s with 31 interviews of local musicians. These are also available at www.lulu.com/donalberts also Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Baker and Taylor, Book Baby, Ingram and Books Inc.
“Three,”
by Dee Allen
Used to be 404 and 770.
Now, I’m 415 and 510.
Seven years spent
Taking in all this Area by the Bay gives me.
The good,
The bad,
The strange,
From my adopted home on the range.
“Consume all of it,
Grow strong and
Put in the work you’re meant to do”,
My heart whispers.
Always down for the Struggle
In defense of all life
Encompassing nature, all races, sexes,
species & certain classes,
Especially the Poor—–
W: 9.26.09
[ For Lisa Gray-Garcia a.k.a. tiny. ]
SUPREME BEING
The Supreme Being is
Holy
Wise
Pure
Loving
Gentle
Giving
All-knowing
Omnipotent
All-seeing
Omnipresent
Most times He
Sometimes She
Lord
Father
King
Redeemer
Merciful
Creator
Vengeful
Destroyer
Sadistic
Incomprehensible to mortals
Higher than us
Name plastered on roadside billboards
In the South & the Midwest
[ Along with Jesus ]
Muse for church sermons & statesmen’s speeches
Backbone for governmental decisions & laws
Impetus for terrorist acts
Excuse for needless wars
Convenient disguise for personal
Unscrupulous agendas—–
The Supreme Being is
All of these to all people.
Then again,
It would be
Downright stupid
Bestowing
A name
A title
A sex
A consciousness
A personality
A moral edge
Onto
An unproven
Shadow of an old idea.
(W: Buy Nothing Day 2012)
To The Deniers
If there were no cattle trains in 1940s Europe
Loaded up with
Jewish multitudes, headed for imaginary
Death camps, queuing up for illusory
Final showers in mythical
Zyklon-B gas, mass commencements into make-believe
Fleshpiles, filling in the Nazis’
Open graves, constructs dug into the soft earth of
Someone’s twisted imagination,
If the victims’ photographs
Were falsified,
Photoshop magic conjurations,
If a young girl’s
Diary entries, written whilst in hiding from stormtroopers,
Were forgeries by hand, pathological lies,
If the camp tattoos
On a survivor’s aging, withered arm
Were a lifelong
Traumatic
Mindtrick, possibly brought on by something else,
Seriously,
If the Holocaust never happened
Then you didn’t pick up this book
And you didn’t read this poem.
(W: 8.3.11)
Bio
A Well-loved performance poet based in the SF Bay Area, California, Dee Allen grows from African and Italian roots. He has been active in print in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Poor Magazine, among others. His first two books Boneyard and Unwritten Law are available from POOR Press.
“Video Excerpt,”
by Vincent Carrella
(from an earlier 100 TPC reading)
“No Safe Spaces”
by Fred Dodsworth
Republished from 100 Days Action
Standing midst the flames
like wolves’ tongues
surrounded by shattered lives,
the sun sets in the East this time,
a dark orange pallor
casting its sickly shadow
over dreams once offered
it’s a republic, if you can keep it,
said an old white dead guy
while a child, incandescent like the stars,
burns through the night
her eyes the color of embers
an abyss beckoning to a future
too like the past,
another season turn, turn, turning,
Guernica, guerre, resistance …
is inevitable,
art is an act of war.
You Must Apologize! Apologize!
…for the art you never birthed!
for the smiles you made instead,
there are no safe spaces
when the playwright writes
“whenever I hear the word culture,
I release the safety…”
It matters not which safety,
there is no safety in such a storm,
the sibilant hissing sounds Hanns’ made
are as silent or loud
as the starbursts of guns,
the blossom of bombs.
The bird, victim to its falconer
blinded,
its talons torn out,
its powerful beak broken,
this beast knows no center,
only a night of broken glass beckons
such things as happen in the darkness
and still the child stands in the flames,
her burning eyes on you,
on what you knew,
what you know,
what you failed to do
in these times the whole world must be rude,
even to the best of men
artists, poets, musicians,
such soldiers in such a war,
seize up your arms
make no safe spaces for those
who would enchant or enchain us
stand with that child incandescent
like the stars
Make your art hard.
11-26-16
(*Hanns Johst, SS Officer & author of Schlageter beloved of Nazis and the GOP: “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I release the safety of my pistol.”)
A version of this poem was published in Anti-Heroin Chic, an online magazine.
An ink-stained wretch, Fred Dodsworth spent most of the last 30 years in newsrooms picking fights.
The truth is a slippery bastard and he lost most of those fights.
Now he writes poetry and fiction because there’s more truth to be found in fiction than in any news story ever printed.
“SF Jail Haiku,”
by Fred Dodsworth
In this hard, locked box
I look for signs of new growth.
Spring comes, even here
In this hard, hard box
—July 31, 2015
“Poets For Change X3,”
by Anita Erola
100 thousand poets for change
100 tuhatta runoilijaa muutokseen
100 mil poetas por cambio
begin the change
be the change
aloita muutos
ole se muutos
comenzar el cambio
ser el cambio
with words
sanoilla
con palabras
change will come with words
muutos sanoilla
el cambio vendra con palabras
change your words
change the world
muuta sanat
muuta maailma
cambie palabras
cambie el mundo
change will come
muutos tulee
el cambio vendra
change will come
muutos tulee
el cambio vendra
“Changed Words Bring Change”
by Anita Erola
It has been written
It has been read
It has been said
Change is going to come
We are here now
With our words for change
With our words of change
Seasons change
Nature changes
Bring change
To the nature in us
Change your words
Change the world
The change
Is in the words
What you say
Changes the world
Mother Teresa said
I will never attend an anti-war rally
When you have a pro-peace rally, invite me
Hear the power
In the words
Seize the power
Of words
Seize the power
Change the world
Be positive about change
Listen to what is said
Hear what is said
“Dream Poem,”
by Al Winans
I see you in my dreams
you are wearing a silk scarf
your smile hovers over me like
a hummingbird
you are standing at a public square
in Mexico
The women are selling pottery
the men drinking wine
a cat crosses the road
purrs against your slender legs
you an early century Madonna
with no need for church or man
you sit cross-legged like Buddha
fill me with words that twist in my mind
like helicopter blades
your words soft as a feather pillow
blend with mine like buttered toast
explode like shrapnel inside my head
sweet fragrance of lilacs draws me in
sweet as a virgin’s innocence
I take refuge in a sea of stars
walk back into my mother’s womb
no longer stumbling like a blind man
in the dark
your limbs sing like crickets in the night
rub their hind legs in applause
“Open Your Eyes,”
by Al Winans
You can’t escape it
Your remote control is wed to it
Local and cable channels feed it to you
Like meat thrown into a tiger’s cage
News of wars and pending wars
Reel you in like a doomed fish
You become part of it whether
You want to or not
You don’t have to be on the frontlines
To feel the wounds see the blood
Taste the carnage
Your parents and grandparents lived it
Willed it to you
The dog feels it every time
He wags his tail
The cat hides under the bed
But can’t escape it
Walt Whitman walked the battlefields
Bandaged the wounds of the fallen
William Carlos Williams saw it in
The faces of dying patients
They built a cemetery on the lawn
Of General Lee’s mansion
General Grant tried to drink
The pain away
The disease can’t be defeated
The Pope is powerless
The President embraces it
The First Lady dances with it
The vampire Congress feeds off it
It’s a cancer that eats away at you
Sucks you down like quicksand
Admirals and Generals run through
The fields harvesting the dead
Congress gangsters rattle their sabers
In the midnight oil of democracy
Ballistic missiles pointed at the stars
The firing squad put on alert
Petrified standing like mannequins
In a death field
The businessman’s money tree
Bends with the weight
A nation in slave chains
Disguised as freedom
Turn on the TV open your eyes
It’s all there to see
Biography (from Wikipedia)
A.D. Winans has had poetry, book reviews, and short stories published in over 2,000 magazines and anthologies. He has written 63 books of poetry, and two books of prose.
A song poem of his was performed at Alice Tully Hall, New York City. In 2006, he was awarded a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was a recipient of a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.
His latest book, San Francisco Poems, published by Little Red Tree Publishing, CT, includes an extended biography with many photographs, plus 99 poems, old and new.
In 2016 he appeared in a documentary movie on the life of poet Bob Kaufman. The movie was premiered in April 2016 at the San Francisco International Movie Festival.
“Joey,”
by Fred Dodsworth
Joey served three tours
killing Afghani and Iraqi patriots
who fought for their country,
for their beliefs.
Joey fought for us,
it was a job in a time of joblessness
he came back home confused and lonely
he kept remembering the war,
he could not forget,
only comfortable
—safe—
in the company of children.
No one trusts a man
who prefers the company of a child
Joey went away a young man,
but he came back home a broken one.
No one trusts a man
who prefers the truth of children.
When a parent,
an angry adult,
asks a child
‘“What did he do to you?
Did he do something to you?”
the nightmares mix with the fantasies,
adult desires smear childish confusion.
When the police arrested him
and asked him if he did those things
to that child
this was just one more question
he didn’t know how to answer.
Joey served three tours
killing strangers in the Middle East
now he serves 15 to life behind walls,
in a locked cell.
We forget the wars,
but the wars never end
for the soldiers who can’t forget.
—July 14, 2015
“Mule Shoe Salient,”
by Will Holst
“On May 8, Union Maj. Gens.Gouverneur K. Warren and John Sedgwick unsuccessfully attempted to dislodge the Confederates under Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson from Laurel Hill, a position that was blocking them from Spotsylvania Court House. On May 10, Grant ordered attacks across the Confederate line of earthworks, which by now extended over 4 miles (6.5 km), including a prominent salient known as the Mule Shoe. . . . Attacks by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright on the western edge of the Mule Shoe, which became known as the “Bloody Angle”, involved almost 24 hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, some of the most intense of the Civil War.” –Wikipedia, “Battle of Spotsylvania Court House“
Yesterday morning at the Rose Garden
needed lips as blossoms like ears.
This morning their winter came,
pruned back at their wrists, hips and elbows.
I stand here at the breastworks of Bloody Angle
at the Spotsylvania battlefield where teenage boys fought
for 26 hours in the mud and rain face to face murdering
until the gray sadist drew them back for another year of it,
boys who never got laid or bit into baked lobster.
Beaten to death, burned, shot, decomposed
reading their Bibles and writing home scared.
Liars get away with murder
or Real Estate swindles.
A country that got matters resolved.
Not a word. By silence.
My blood thickens.
From Lightfoot Harry Lee I hear ‘nigger’
burying the alive dead as Desert Storm,
Chancelorsville: the gray line from the forest,
flushing the bear, deer, every living wild animal
before their charge,
that Cherokee ground dog stick’n possum Rebel yell,
bayoneting boys putting on their underpants,
playing harmonicas, stirring breakfast coffee,
as Stonewall’s 87th Airborne swooped in,
singing ‘I’ll club your skull in, my brother’s, father’s,
women’s, to save ma’ rites.’ To Dixie.
We know what’s going on.
We all take a bullet,
ankle deep in battlefield fluid,
our own faces screaming as sound,
as starving residue,
our skulls racked up to laughter,
our limbs sawed off, our skins hotter
than crispy critters scared shitless.
We know, we know, billions murdered.
We know why. We do nothing.
We take images to remember,
not words, not names, human being words.
Find your back torn away butchered as turtle.
We wriggle together in terror so
that our speaking looks like the eye of the blade
that comes down to split into quarter pieces.
We are feed.
Spotsylvania, Virginia
Will Holst was an educator in the Bay area public schools and lived in Berkeley, CA. He was a close friend of the poet, Eugene Ruggles.
“The Fire This Time,”
by Fred Dodsworth
My family, my children by other mothers, my children
I cherish your bent being and your gender bent clothes
Your dirty faces, all your different colors
Skin and hair and fabrics and desires unexpected,
Gathered round the table, eating, drinking, laughing
telling tales of strange, often frightening adventures
And footprints on the ceiling.
It turned into a dance party, of course.
Of course, someone would hold someone else
Upside down and leave footprints on the ceiling
Before you optimistically drove off
In your wild painted but broken down buses and trucks
Headed to Brooklyn or Cementland or Slab City
Wasn’t that an abandoned military base on the Mexican border?
Either way, too far from my comfort zone.
Who else would take over a national park for a party?
With hundreds of ravers from all over the world
Security provided by PTSD vets on meth,
“but they were cool,” you said.
For the party you made home-brewed soda pop
with hand drawn labels on scavenged bottles
Concocted in a solution of cold-press coffee
Guarana and Eleuthero and Maca,
And god knows what else you put in it.
Boiled up on the stove and bottled
Sold at that rave in the woods
Guaranteed to keep the dance going all night
Everyone needs a little something to keep on going,
The rangers might show up any moment
The party is always bound to get busted
Now is the perfect time for lasers
Light painting the forests and far skies
The heavy beat of electro-house,
Or is it trance, or something called deep dub
I don’t know because I’m old but
You boys and girls with your spirited re-names
Your connection to and denial of
All that’s crass and commercial
Ballet on bicycles or trimming in Mendocino
Dance dangling on skeins of silk
High over head without a net,
Without any safety precautions.
Defying the odds to snatch you, but
The odds were never in your favor
The odds are not in our favor either
What are the odds of a motorcycle’s handle bar
Penetrating a woman’s skull,
Somehow missing her helmet
The one you refuse to wear… it doesn’t seem to matter
She wore the helmet and was forever altered
You won’t wear a helmet and I’m forever altered.
What are the odds of a big D depression
Getting to be too much this time, some time
It’s impossible, it’s unreal,
It’s the guesswork of greater powers than mine.
Forget all that, let’s talk about the fire.
What are the chances of you leaving the party
Just before the fire starts.
No, not Ghost Ship,
Remember New Orleans?
Who can forget NOLA?
The fire where ten of your friends perished,
Free spirits afloat in the smoke and flames,
Just another warehouse maze like every other
What are the chances that you won’t get to the party
Until after the fire starts, with all your friends
Hugging, Dancing and then 36 or so disappear.
Forever kith-n-kin lost in clouds of fiery dense smoke
And now you’re railing, railing against the inevitable
The recognition that even if it’s not you who died
Some part of you dies each time, every time.
Pounding on the ground, pounding on the walls
“Don’t take this away, too,” you say
That place of peace and communion
The one we all yearn for
But somehow you keep on going
Creating such illegal sacred spaces
While we worry about the inevitable
You build a better, wholer world
While we worry about the future
A future no one is guaranteed.
Oh my family, my children by other mothers, my children
You keep on going on,
Creating, Communing, Living
I cherish you. I love you.
All of you with your smoke smudged faces.
Please don’t leave me behind.
Take me with you when you go.
Feb 28, 2017
“Untitled,”
by Vincent Carrella
You are not going to rest on your laurels. You are not going to sit around and wait for something to happen. You are not going to procrastinate. You are not going to suffer. You’re not going to remain complacent. You are going to believe in yourself. You’re going to take risks. You’re going to dream and reach for your dreams. You will not allow fear to hold you back. You will embrace change. You will thrive. You will claim joy and happiness as your rights. You will work hard and be rewarded. You will not succumb to defeatist patterns of thought. You will love and accept yourself. You will pick yourself up if you fall. You will help other people. You will help yourself. You will be your own best friend but you will be helped by the friends that you have. You will be lucky. You will be given grace. You are not cursed, or broken or doomed. You will smile more often. You will laugh with greater frequency. You will take any setbacks in stride. You will trust in the universe. You will follow your heart. You will rely on the kindness of strangers. You will keep your light on and love the world like crazy and you will live each day as if it’s numbered because it is. You will treat yourself kindly. You won’t beat yourself up. You will learn new things all the time. You will stay humble but think mighty thoughts. You will cry when you feel like it and listen more closely. You’ll remember to be grateful for every thing that you have, and that it’s the little things that matter. You will treat each moment like a gift. You will always be gentle and always be forgiving and always be polite. You will be your own hero. You will be your own savior. But you will be patient and accepting and let the answers come in their own time. You will stay grounded in the present. You will let go of the past. You will be far less rigid about outcomes and the whys. You will breathe and breathe again. You will not fear death. You will acknowledge the power of your mind. You will talk less, think less and care less about the madness of the world. You will sit still. You will observe more. You will become like a very wise child. You will live well and be content because these are all choices and Heaven is is one of them and you were made in the exact image of God.
“Photo was taken at my favorite breakfast place, The Hummingbird, in Fairfax, CA.”
Vincent Louis Carrella – Writer/Author of Serpent Box, a novel | Photographer at The Light House: Photography by Vincent Louis Carrella
“Mexico Poem,”
by A.D. Winans
Alone in my hotel room
In Mexico, twenty-four hours before
My flight back to San Francisco
A hundred blank pages rattling around
Inside my head
I can turn each one into paper airplanes
Fly them to imaginary places
Or write poems on them in vivid old
Mexico song rhythms
If I could draw
I’d draw a rainbow picture
Of beautiful Indian women
With faces brown as the soil
Soon I’ll return to San Francisco
City of dreamer’s drunkards
And lonely lovers
I will turn the blank pages into poems
Fleshed from the pond of my memory bank
Baited with the history of old Mexico
“Great Things About Getting Old,”
by John Tischer
You can’t remember if you have
any regrets.
“Curmudgeon Cudgel”
…everyone expects you to hate everything.
…good excuse for
incontinence and
incoherence
…people are more likely to help,
because they don’t want to see you
die in front of them.
…you don’t have to move much
to have a good time.
…you can look at women,
and they’re not offended.
…women look at you,
and you’re not aroused.
John Tischer was an actor, plumber, teacher, and now writer. He lives in Tepotzlan, Mexico. His blog “Eggtooth Breaks Open” is at https://johntischer.blogspot.com.
“Witching,”
by Geri diGiorno
tony and me are looking at property
up around nevada city
a nice half acre
with a mobile home on it
the realtor is holding a stick
moving it along the ground
both hands seeming to guide it
he’s looking for water
he stands in complete concentration
his face half-tense half-relaxed
he stops in an open field
full of wildflowers and weeds
there’s water here he says
six ten feet down
probably an underground stream
i’m awed
i never saw anything like this
the stick is moving vibrating
like its plugged into a socket
we’ve stepped over to another world
of belief or hope
our city-selves standing there in disbelief
like two strangers
wanting to look back to ancient times
to rely on instinct to believe
to listen to the earth
Geri Digiorno is a visual artist, and poet. She was Sonoma Poet Laureate (2006-2007) and is founded the Petaluma Poetry Walk, where she is the Director. She studied art at College of San Mateo, Solano College, Sonoma College, and Santa Rosa Junior College, and has read her poems widely in the North Bay and SF Bay Area.
“Poem For Monica”
by John Tischer
They’re building a wall in my house
on top of an old wall because of leakage.
The whole family is here including five
year old Damien, who likes me. He has
a new puppy as big as my hand. I gave
both of them cold milk to drink.
This just happens when you’re alive,
all of it, so ordinary, so magic…we take
for granted the magnificent dream we
wake up into every day. Everything
that emanates from our hearts and minds
fills the universe like a perfume, “immense
and living.”
“Hope Savage”
by Aaron Lantz
Better to go uncertain
Than to fetter yourself needlessly
To the changing winds,
The bitter winds.
To the jealous gusts of stolen air
Ghost-wandering to a Paradise
That will never quite be theirs.
Better to keep a distance,
To remain aloof,
While the hordes of impatient
Seekers of happiness
Drown themselves one by one
In their leaden ideals.
Better to fly alone,
The solitary hawk
On the mountain peak
Where neither fog nor sand
Obscures your sight,
But distance and height
Make a map of the earth;
A vision of Nature
Expanding in vastness,
Open to your thirsting tongue.
Forget the heavy pages
Memorized by candle-light.
Those countless nights of insomnia
Insisting your youth was a
Fleeting hope.
Shelley can wait ‘till
The mountains fall.
Follow Rimbaud
To the dying Sun.
Leave to mere memory
The damp, moldy rooms
Where they drank up your words
And caressed your throat.
Imprison their vice
In their earthbound Dreams.
Embrace your wings
And be one with the song
That encompasses freedom
In a holy chant:
Better to go uncertain
Than die fettered– locked in chains.
Better to let the walls collapse
Than be held in trust of sanctity.
Better let the unreleased linger
In their shallow beds.
Better to jump and find yourself
The Sun, a burning eye.
“Lost Above The Trees”
by Aaron Lantz
(For Lew Welch)
Buzzard sky
Won’t you take a ride
On the wings of clouds
The first we’ve seen all month?
See as time goes by
And the air is dry
The night wine bottle
Keeps a watch
He keeps a watch
For the first
Sign of sunrise
To show its face
Yellow dawn
And taxi-cabs
Vision of action
After Anacreon
Almost forgotten
On the tongue
Of wisdom
Flying for the forest
Lost above the trees
Somewhere past the desert
Coffee cups or bear claws
Wolf eyes or poetry
Lost above the trees
Aaron Lantz is a writer from Lawrence, Kansas where he lives and studies literature. He loves poetry and music, especially music from Norway. Previous publications by Aaron Lantz can be found at Pacifism21.org.
“From Wamba Poems,”
by Bill Vartnaw
(for Druid)
in the shadows
where definition is made
suspended from floor joists
under the floor
hang soft yellow furry balls
mothered by black widows
& the word was passed…
gray squirrel runs vertically up a tree
stops
sticks head around curved space
senses reaction
he cut a big gash in his thumb
clear to the bone
sharp knife
steel from Pittsburgh
Billy Ralph could feel his friend’s pain
beyond facial expressions
stomach drops in wound
a pebble in the grand canyon
circles of waves
reverberate from center of agony
rapids of blood
shock!!
the waters are calm
near Orion
Wamba feels nothing
hospital emergency room
3 wait in line
behind moan on a gurney
the receptionist is filling forms
she asks: what is your name, sir?
address?
name of insurance?
do you have any identification?
he answers: the pain
I can tell it anywhere!
so vivid
a throbbing picture
my red period
flesh, a bloody thumbprint
my signature
he continues to bleed
:can we bill you at this address?
in darkness
under ceiling
that is still
somebody else’s floor
a black widow eats her mate
ending
a proper relationship
& the word was passed…
gurney moans
to questions by police
two men
in thin white frock coats
sneakers
wheel her into elevator
my grandfather bled to death
in an emergency room :he said
Wamba reads AMA periodical
on upcoming flu epidemic
40 minutes turn
into a pure red handkerchief
:what is the date of your birth?
blue-bellied lizard skitters
under a stack of 2 X 4s
does not trust the hands of man
chloroform thoughts
curious logic of a scalpel
ambulance siren is
heard in the distance
people on street hold ears
as it passes…
this is accepted
the family of moaning gurney
enter room
policemen approach
a thankless job
a few questions
nurse says: follow me
in 20 minutes
he clutches 8 new stitches
he looks relieved
Billy Ralph looks relieved
Wamba looks annoyed
he has seen this pecking order
hammer smashes black widow
then her eggs
the word is obscured
by fear
& abstract overkill
Bill Vartnaw, a former Sonoma County Poet Laureate, is the author of several books of poetry. He is also the Publisher of Taurean Horn Press and a Director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk.
“Busing Justice Through
Freedom Summer,”
by Eugene Ruggles
All right. We’ll start over. Again.
Say we go back about thirty summers
to nineteen sixty-three–sixty-four,
between Mississippi and Massachusetts.
And then, after burning the keys
left in the ignition to rust
and paying the tow truck driver,
we’ll have white men sit at the rear
of the bus.White men like my father,
who thought we were born at the front.
At the end of the aisle in the bus
we install their own fountain
of water. Their own toilet.
We hand them the miracle
of a voter registration card
and open all the windows and doors.
We place first graders on their knees
and give them placards reading,
Honor Thy Children. Freedom Summer.
I don’t know how he does it,
with the ignition full of ashes,
but the driver turns over the engine.
The rear tires are wrapped
with barbed wire for traction,
as we drive through the bottom
of an open wound still wet with hate,
after thirty years. This is where the three
scarred roads of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman
come together. Among others. The splattered wreck
of a bus begins to lurch and climb toward
a light where the skin grows together
before the wound closes over us.
Photo Credit: SF Chronicle
Classic poem by Eugene Ruggles. Available in his Roads of Bread (Petaluma River Press).
“Memorial Day, 1979”
by Eugene Ruggles
(originally published in the New Yorker)
1.
My neck sits in a pool
of gray leaves. In May. Draining.
To the west, on the other side
of Lake Michigan,
hundreds of shoes are scattered
across the end of O’Hare runway .
All of them are on fire.
A path of smoke is rising
from the center of the nation;
from the insides of shoes,
death has left
two hundred and seventy-three footprints
in Chicago, in daylight,
with a map of gasoline
curling around them;
where oil is burning the blood off
the bone begins to flow,
as the skin ends
the sound of rivets
and eyelids closing is spreading.
2.
Hydraulic fluid has entered every vein on board.
The huge wing of steel is offered, broken off, and lifted up
through the lungs of an infant.
The other wing is a cliff above tides of metal.
All the glowing instruments
of weather and direction and triumph
kneel between these wings
and begin to darken.
There is another kind of time
that does not stretch ahead of time
that does not stretch ahead of one
or sink behind one —
it flows off to either side
and hangs there, pressing the light
from bone, beyond arms, wings, prayers,
reaching for the echoes of God’s body.
Perhaps some hear them once before dying.
I don’t know. There are winds so hard
they leave behind them a silence
where the rain can be heard
hitting the bottom
of Lake Michigan. And spreading.
3.
Though it is not water
that has fallen like rain today.
A grave is drifting over Chicago,
and the ashes of three friends,
a father, mother, and daughter,
sift to the bottom of the runway.
They are not with strangers any longer.
Near the edge gravel is turning over.
Insects stir beneath the concrete slab.
They scurry from the heat. Still alive.
In three days we honor the war dead;
beside these miles of white crosses
the lake waits , the news moves over it.
News of the dead, towed this far
by hand behind the boat people —
they arrive with our guides, the refugees
the ones living on water. And spreading.
4.
I want to sleep for a long time
inside this husk of a tear around
my shoulders; beneath the left one
is a knot of rust. Turning over,
I reach out and feel the path beat.
And the grass ending at my throat.
A path through leaves of water.
In town the library and the tavern
open their shelves to the same dust,
the same ruins in my mouth.
Beyond all this a child is beginning
to run toward us from the beach,
the waves lifting spray around her.
She pauses, listening to the lake
until she can hear the lice
moving upon the sea gull’s wing.
She closes her eyelids and waves
from where she can see them flying
through skin. There is no trust
beyond hers.
And she is touching nothing alive.
The light keeps falling into her mouth
with such grace, like an echo, a word
coming to rest in her, as though
it were already shaped by another.
“Morrison, A Prelude”
by Aaron Lantz
there was a low sun and a quiet beach
the careless waves went over sand and ignored the people gathered there
the people were resting mostly or were singing to themselves in shy tones not knowing
that some of them were going to end up becoming the luminaries of the next Age
one of those on the beach had long hair
and he lit his lips with the white clouds of a terrifying future
but he was too intoxicated with his evening daydreams to be afraid yet
fear would always have time to come later
and it did
and when it did it took him with it down to the red pools of something ending that can never be reversed or reclaimed again
but this was so far into the future that beginning with the quiet waves on the warm sand and the tentative voices singing visionary songs it would be reverse prophecy to dwell on the future stops in time
as it was the car just rolled forward and disappeared a little bit into the smoke and the sand settled
where the wheels had been and an electric organ carried them the rest of the way
“Family Picture,”
by Aaron Lantz
Here’s a picture from 1995.
Lizzie and Lois in front of the fireplace.
Both holding your instruments of choice,
Guitar and a clarinet.
It’s a little fuzzy, but your smiles can be seen.
Now, Lizzie, everyone knows your name of course,
But who is it who is beside you?
Who is Lois other than your older sister?
Why are you both smiling with the same amount of confidence
When it’s only you who grows up a success?
Of course the answer is that clarinets, well,
You can’t sing and still play a clarinet
At the same time.
And Lois was always quieter, shy even,
Not the “performer” that you are.
Anyway, no one likes the name “Lois”
Like they like the snappy name “Lizzie”.
Well what if they called you “Elizabeth?”
Your parents still do.
Remember the other day after the show
And the guy comes up all excited and asks:
“Lizzie, do you want to go out with me sometime?”
And you’re like:
“Of course not, like I’m always super busy, I’m never even home.
Maybe ask my sister, I know she’s always free. She works in a boring bank.”
Then the guy looks at his phone (where’s the hopeful excitement now?
I’ll tell you later) and pulls his sunglasses
From his forehead to his eyes.
Don Alberts
“On The Way,”
by Anita Erola
songs written about it
remember?
do you hear it ?
coming around the bend
hear the whistle!
let it wake you
from your slumber
do you see it coming?
some standing up for it
others taking a knee
it is
around the bend
get ready
bring what is important
with you
the whistle will wake you
from your slumber
be ready
the peace train
the freedom train
on its way
to wake you
from your slumber.
“Final Jeopardy answer
What is: is the price right,”
by Anita Erola
The Price is Right
daytime favorite
funny costumes
price savvy rewarded
Family Feud
players dress alike
quick on the buzzer
pass or play
spin a wheel
buy a vowel
solve a puzzle
win big money
become a member
a Wheel watcher
if your number matches
you’ll win big money
has anyone noticed
popular entertainment
follows evening news
a timed diversion
game shows
gossip shows
bells and bright lights
audience in a trance
Edward R. Murrow said
television is the opiate of the people
turn on the tube
stay tuned zone out
have you heard
missiles dropped on Syria, a big one on Afghanistan
risk all for what’s behind door #3
win big money
know price of washer
45 wants to build a wall
answer like a survey
win brand new car
pick a category
world opinion falling
match an answer
North Korea situation
global warming serious issue
spin it like the GOP
45 keeps tweeting
he’s costing us big money
go outdoors and play
same today
as when you were a kid
you’ll win fresh air.
“Two Images” by Christian Damian
Trout
Krishnachameleon, multimedia artist extraordinaire
Krishnachameleon is Christian Damian from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a multimedia artist, writer, and musician.
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