1999 Readings
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five and dime store dreams
i grew up with woolworths
and kresges
five & dime stores
cause everything
was supposed to be
on the cheap
growing up
i did not understand
where the buffalo roam
we just sang songs about it
we were woody guthrie
without his guitar
traveling through music
to find our highways
we were taught
to cover our heads
in bomb scare drills
way before terrorism was born
we fought the commie treasure
fear of being nuked
fallout shelters the rage
and then we raged
through 60’s hoopla
warring factions of peace
but my heart resided
in that 5 & dime
where peace was affordable
Larry Jaffe
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Bombs away over L. A.
We huddled around
Our respective coffees
Café au le
Cappuccino
Café late’
Designer fate out of our hands
Our eyes sublime
Drinking in the
Redundant Los Angeles sunshine
The news reflected from the paper
Was anything but good
The President of these United States
Was being called to task
By An International
Human
Rights
Tribunal
The mayor of Los Angeles
Was being called to task
By An International
Human
Rights
Tribunal
Undocumented sources
Reliable witnesses
Paid informants
Served notice on
Respective majesties
Reported crimes
In Technicolor
Hollywood noir
To United Nations
To Amnesties International
To The World Press
To Rupert Murdock
To Mickey Mouse himself
They were reliable
Dependable
Trustworthy
Almost desirable
Eyewitnesses to
Witting ruthlessness
As performed by the laidback Gestapo
Of the LAPD
On a consistent basis
Of hapless minorities
That had grown majority
And only blue suits kept their vision abated
Only blue suits kept the populace subdued
Rounding up their dreams
And prosecuting their nightmares
To the fullest extent of the law
Building citadel prisons
With dungeon precision
To incarcerate
To alienate
To eliminate
The so-called criminal element
In cries of three strikes you’re out
Keeping their visions under lock and key
Imprisoned in the fortress of ineptitude
Solitary confinement for imagination
But the world was no longer
Looking the other way
Their faces turned to L.A.
Telling the mayor to toe the mark
Telling the president to not cross the line
But they pledged sovereignty
Not idle chatter
The United States of America
Was given deadline to cease and desist
The laurel wreathes of peace extended for the moment
But President and Mayor joining hands in sovereign promise
Refused with utter contempt to change ways
Homegrown and rooted in tradition
The United Nations under the direction of the Security Council
Canceling vetoes of its members
Declared Los Angeles fair game
To peace keeping Bombers
Tinsel town under attack
Shouted headlines in black and sharp white
Parker Center was ground zero
Bombs away over L.A.
Tell me it ain’t so Mickey
Tell me it ain’t so Donald
Goofy
Pluto
Popeye
Where are you when we need you
It’s all illusion anyway
It’s just another movie
Another cartoon comedy
Another siren goes off
Its air raid not cops
Bombs rain down on L.A.
The last headline spoke
Out of the blue
And the haze of Los Angeles sunshine
We are a sovereign nation
The President said
This is L.A. the Mayor said
City Hall destroyed the headline read
We are selecting only military targets
The combined forces reported
Paramount studios is forever in reruns
Sony is only a digital memory
The lion is gone from MGM
Universal is just another ride in their theme park
Disney is Mickey Mouse
Tinsel town detinselized…
The center of evil has been destroyed the BBC shouted!
The center of evil destroyed the BBC shouted!
Larry Jaffe
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Reflections on Bosnia 99
peace sings from the skies,
in tempest seas rise
whipped by cyclonic frenzy—
no hatred, bigotry, ethnic cleansing
passes in her fury,
unlike mankind who rises in wonton slaughter
shredding flesh of innocents upon earth
casting out all into the wilderness
to walk quagmire fields of war;
executive peace sings from the skies
raining words which explode cold fury
Into a sea of human misery
human-tide awash in a bath of splintered death
flung forth in the name peace
wouldst war was but a storm
for nature does not kill premeditated. you know her rain-falls are not bombs shall not wash you in ethnic cleansing they leave the earth fresh, clean in sweetness, calmness, tranquility and man, man leaves naught but the stench of death with his passing parturition upon this earth.
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There is neither pity nor compassion in peace’ Or war - when bombs- innocent’s fall—
touch a petal to dream
memories, sometimes happy
sometimes sad
Listen and you will hear
they are with me silently
embracing me forever
while new arias rise Golden
within my life - my mind
and my friends are a part of me
within - their warmth caresses my soul
their words embrace me
reach out and touch all whom
dream of Golden arias
of fields of green bathed in sun - light
who’s dream of peace never fades
yea dreams that shine bronzed
carved in word a written line
and all who read their words
and understand memories
memories sometimes happy
sometimes sad - see printed truth
an unveiled plaque to the innocent
buried in fields of tranquility
by wars infernal fury
never to touch a petal to dream
of Golden arias
of love and peace our dream.
dedicated to Angela Adoneshes
David Barnes
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Terms of War
Why make war when
you can make love
exchange your missiles for
jade stems hard & potent
created for women’s pleasure?
Enter the celestial palaces
absorb their essence
cause them to vibrate with joy
give your women pleasure
& keep their sons at home.
Patricia Browning Campbell
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Old Men
I look at old men & wonder why
all white-haired, bald-pated, wrinkled, grey,
some look pitiful & some
strong & dangerous
genial smiles masking cold eyes & hard mouths
(like horses too accustomed to having their way).
What makes these old men dangerous?
or are they only strong & able
the American ideal of the macho male
carried into a hard old age . . . do they not soften for little children?
only their own, not others . . .
they direct the trembling fingers of
young men
to the buttons of war, reaching
through them to exterminate
the children
of other old men.
Patricia Browning Cambell
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Listening To The Government Lie About The Attack On Yugoslavia
Within the body, an emptiness.
Great clouds obscure the sun.
Of their own will, people die in darkness.
The fishers return with nothing
but the hollow echo of the sea
in their hold. Lovers lie apart.
A silence lives in the ears of corn. At the edge of a field a man stands, his hands wishing to fly.
James Deahl
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While The Terror-Bombing Continues
Red-winged blackbirds call
and call from last year’s cattails
deep in Cootes Paradise
while out, beyond the reeds, swans drift past in pairs.
My daughters and I stare
at this tongue of the lake
for a glimpse of fish
rising to insects skimming the surface, for a glimpse of the life below.
Silently, we marvel at the early spring.
Here and there thin green needles
pierce the stiff brown rushes,
a new generation rising,
always a new generation.
For we have the luxury
of living without bombs.
No gunfire disturbs our marsh,
only the blackbirds calling out
their pure desire.
James Deahl
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A Smart Bomb
Wouldn’t want to be dropped. Might get Together with other smart bombs to discuss Alternative employment possibilities like Demolishing old buildings. Then debate the virtues Of restoration, at least taking them down Carefully, to salvage reusable materials.
Several could open doors for all bombs: start A mentoring project in the armory: old cannon balls With the latest hollow point bullets Listening to speeches about social conscience.
Soon bombs are producing art and arguments Born of a frustration at the lack of opportunity For smart bombs to make meaningful contributions.
Can you see young people expressing their solidarity With bombs by exploding themselves in cities and on Military bases? Or a bomb specialist joining The View.
Tommy Hilfiger marketing a line of
Expensive clip-on fuses for bomb wannabes who
Drink too much and go to bad movies
Before you know it, parents are giving warnings To keep away from after hours munition clubs Worried their children might get rounded up By the government and dropped on Kosovo.
Brett Axel
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ANGSTROM:
Make still the tides, dead-man! Cried out.
Heave ho or so your melancholies!…
And I am more than a mile off..
Dream a spoonful…
You…
Everything…
See…
Face jumpinng on a black gate, forked with worn eyes…enfeebled tiers of
light, loose covers, long hallways; a coming Moon…Cut away to a keening,
insect noise…cold vegetation growing, sunken…the Moon sloshes forth…
We wanted to hurl ourselves against volcanoes like frozen surf!…darkling,
lost-to-view fountainheads…We set out to the death of others!…a mind
spilling openly…
Gloved thumb melting in arabesques…somnolent sounds of gunfire…
Saw the pallid, out-of-the-way evenings, all the time away to grey…Crowds brush by, and panes, minutes away, evoking it all to the open-mouthed…boundaries nodded under…caught silvery highways to the young mother…glass piling out of conjured night…a woman draped over the woodenn frame of a window...cumulous cloud-rush, soft-as-lint...away the carriage goes..riding off, mustachioed man...great, flowing cloak...
House into fading air…falling rooms, snowflakes…girl into shadow, girl into
wind…Sacred heart in the tight-post..with stillness, hung…and the clouded
states carries out her intentions…Wind-high honing structures,
hieroglyphic-wreathing day..House – rails the sad forward feeling…back…the
road rushes past…cold teeth - her smile lost – with vast notes, streaming…
And met the shadows, a few hours, after death…shunned on the
street…succumbing to forgetfulnesses, together-standings in the Dark… old
men floating, landscape-bitten… hissing of voluptuous pools… Remember
Orpheous, hell-bent? The passion of morning-ness stands…sail with St. Vitus,
bearing on his hugging, randy hand…
I’s once a lonely man…
rotten things looking left behind…and rightly so… even Love joins the queue,
papaering its face plainly… rested words of muddy rewarding lie… spoils of
smoke.. snow drops into plots…edged, abysmal…skies of blue sown, hounnding
down…
Hurt in his head, went into tumid night…far along by cathedrals outings, by pinpoints of the Capitols under star-light…hatted out in the streets, the years, the driftings-on…He skies, and like thistlewdown, months, even, fly..
The boy who stood before? – fine black hairs wind-milling up Winter’s skirt…
black huron slumbers unravelling…a low, spreading form…
As we sailed past the jagged rocks, I called out to the Sisters that guard –
a clutch of faces envisioned in a glade…rays from the clouding down burst in
bright exile…red stars flashing, violet glances, a gold over-head wholely
shifting…. dreamily even the trees lay open in heat, whisperring of her…
And gourds are falling, the gulfs with summers meeting…palms with fronds
over brooks, shooing the cool…Gemini brushes by…a waving of washed
estuaries… Watching light-house, with alarm, calls back…
Star-crossing so-filled eyes…why do I flinch from love?…and dumb in the
downpour, laugh?…
Gems unlidded, down valleys; slender-coursing rivulets…blinking breezes amid
lush, swept trails…June sunset, attic window, bay shining…hazy suns… Trees
speechlessly shriek…flaming butterflies shcooling through the branch-work….a
white drop of prey… Radio tuning to the weather reports, smooth-tongued as
rain over oranguatans…spiralling yowls!… my hand like a pond in
winter…distant, dark arrestings…ship whisperings…foam flies the bones,
frasgments of observation blending - hands overstraining, field and
railing…a silvery deluge of gustings, blind, to you…
What happened to the animals that became us?…eyes glazed, of vision
elongated in the last…refuse of scurrying exodi, sown winds beneath the
brim, howling…phosphorescent, western seas…unnamed animals in mid-night
wind…a sightless, stretching plain…
Rivers stiffening, steam up black…blizaards of fly over gore of Lamb…the
City squats in Time…
I drifted away…gone….un-recorded…
Armies in lanes…intoxications of progresss…torn shadows on long walls held
out…no hymns to reef this latening summer storm…broke poetry like wreckage
in shallow waters…no verse for the isles and our Apologies…an idle
hour…worries about on some nearby dinner-table…
I drifted away, gone…interval fingers over a flute’s myriad gates… Bank whatever you have, live at some level, but ring the criminal dent of Land!
Property has failed though itself remains the generational spur…A younger
purchase jaundiced?…don’t think any of us are…
Touch on, touch on…
A wistfulness into morning-time..
A heart into wavce after wave knocked home…
To know…let the thieiving pains go…
Green-deep, we kneel in the evenings…a disintegrating peacock opens, its
ovals shuffled slowly…sussurus in the high, each turn, stale Fall, tugging
at your grassed beds…
Sun-down will mum down all…
My heart! I saw it! (SIGH) The family tomb!!…
Nights, then, the day blew up from long hair!
So high, grown wild…
Soon my head ready to low again…blue eyes spiriting, when even empty…one
gempool, vanished, now…needles of sun hard to say…down, Time…
Upper works crushed…
Dusks settling…
Haunt’s meagre haulage, gone…
Fear opens its sea-black purse…
And the hands of the Nuns,
Years old,
Pass by…
Die out…
You…
everything…
see…
And at dawn, Desdemona!…
Robert Inglis
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Nova
If it were up to me,
I would let you see everything.
You could tour the universe,
witness the end and the beginning.
You could feel what it’s like
to be sucked into a black hole
and spit forth on the other side.
You could explode like a nova,
feel yourself hurtling out from a center, bright and fast, at incredible speeds, in the darkness of space, scattering light.
Halvard Johnson
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FOR THE DISINHERITED for my daughters
As if the constellation tacked to legend had seen through the smoke cracked mirror and opened code on the tracks I made.
Why did I say that? As if no bombs dropped on Belgrade and the holes in the wounded are there to let light in.
A woman lives in the house. She plays with her cobras and writes to the window. She asks for a dream. She is a stranger in this land. Milk blood at morning.Red milk at noon. Who will drink.
your ashen hair Rainer
your golden hair Jessica
As if the gunned down children got up to do their homework and no one is listening to prozac tonight.
A woman sits in the house. she writes to her cobras and waits for a dream and plays with the window. She is a stranger in my land. Milk blood at morning. Red milk at noon. Who will drink?
your ashen hair Rainer
your golden hair Jessica
As if Milosovich sat all night reading Dostoyevsky and no one is trying to get home.
She lives in my house. She sharpens her pencil and plays for the cobras and talks to the moon. She is a stranger in my land. Milk blood at morning. Red milk at noon. Who will drink?
your ashen hair Rainer
your golden hair Jessica
and in a distance bombs on Iraq spilled water and seed; while the Oka wove barbed wire baskets I opened my mouth and gave birth to a daughter. Blood moved me and love—this code I ate...
how to break it for life? I live in the house. I write for the cobras and talk to my daughters and sing to the east. I am a stranger in this land.
Milk blood at morning. Red milk at noon. What is written in blood? It is
getting dark
your ashen hair Rainer
your golden hair Jessica
Tanya Kern
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The Unanswered Questions
She looks over my shoulder, my seven-year-old daughter,
catching me by surprise as I read the morning paper,
asking if those horrific photographs were from Yugoslavia.
I thought she was in bed, safe from these images, but there
she was, beginning a new day. “You mean Yugoslavia is
in Colorado now?” I remained silent, feeling a loss that
spread into so many depths of unfamiliar, yet painfully intimate
territory, I didn’t know where to begin. It was like the day
she wanted to know about Yugoslavia, and why we were
dropping bombs on the people, and if I had ever been there, when
suddenly my earliest memory returned with a distant
familiarness, and all those letters from my first pen pal
materialized, her descriptions of Yugoslavia, her stories
of coming to visit America, and the letters I wrote back
about our dogs, and my questions wondering how close
Yugoslavia was to Vietnam, wondering if it was close enough
that she might know my cousins or neighbors, and if she was far
enough away to be safe from the war. I was relieved when my
daughter then asked her next question, freeing me temporarily
from the past. “Your pen pal spoke English?” was the first of many, that
finally ended with, “Is she still alive?” Then wanting more answers
about what happened in Colorado, the bombs dropping in Yugoslavia,
all those questions answered with, I don’t know. But I do know
when my eleven-year-old student walked into school today in
our 90 degree desert heat, wearing a long, black trench coat that’s
never been worn to school before, he was looking for more than his
coat to be taken away. And I keep seeing images of that young body
in that oversized, long coat, arms stretched out at night, reaching
into that world of too many questions answered the same way the bombs dropped and the letters ended.
Diane Payne
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The Cats Are Waiting For Their Breakfast
Murderers
are easy
to
understand. But this: that one can
contain
death, the whole of death,
...can hold
it to one's heart
gently ,
and not refuse to go on living,
is inexpressible.
____THE
FOURTH ELEGY
Rainer Maria Rilke
Their blue enigmatic eyes resent my writing and they sit like toys in a group of six holding life dear knowing they are safe in this world Rilke’s infinite , blissful space between world and toy.
A day begins, one that will never be repeated again we are at war a special war a corporate endeavor to take over the world BIG BROTHER says bombing is love it saves people...
The dogwoods bloomed yesterday and continue suspended woody petals collecting and dispersing sun...
copies must be made
to send to the spiritual
who choose not to be aware
of facts
the facts that little Yugoslavia
has sovereign rights
that it is only a small part of the plan
to take over the Balkans.
Is it spiritually wrong to take to the streets to demand diplomatic solutions?
Is the world actually going to allow us to take it over?
The Cats Are Waiting For Their Breakfast
2
Can a lie be told so often it is accepted as truth? Can murder committed with the most horrendous weapons in history be condoned by caring humanity?
The cat sits on the mouse creating symbols that make as much sense as the lives most of us live... lives of inaccessibility even to ourselves but does that mean attempts to work for peace are futile? Is it no more than pretense marching and waving sighs to stop it?
The sun hits the barn out back whitely the crabapple blooms predictions of the fruit to come for birds waiting behind the curtain of expectation;
this beautiful day is such a gift
in this particular space
yet across the ocean elderly and children
are hiding in cellars for safety
dreaming of such a day
with air raid sirens moaning
the terrible acknowledgement
that we will be bombing them out of reality they will be no more than part of bombed out ground unrecognizable as anything separate from the crater ... that the life they hold so tenderly and vulnerably will be stolen and smashed like a toy.
c. Joan Payne Kincaid
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FROM AN OLD SONG LEARNED 1
IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CALLED
MARCHING TO PRAETORIA
We are marching for Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia
we are marching for Yugoslavia
while NATO bombs away:
depleted uranium
uranium uranium
depleted uranium
poisoning the countryside forever.
While everyone blames the latest demon test demon test demon while everyone blames the latest demon politicians can persuade them to.
We march where Yugoslavians
goslavins goslavians
we march where Yugoslavians
sing their national anthem
and air raid sirens sing their songs
rens sing their songs rens sing their songs
and air raid sirens sing their songs
while refugees run through snow
to escape the NATO bombings
TO bombings TO bombings
to escape the NATO bombings
we drop for humanity.
We are planning now to colonize
to colonize to colonize
we are planning now to colonize
just like in ancient Rome.
I’m reduced to writing doggerel
ting doggeral ting doggeral
I’m reduced to writing doggerel
due to corporate lies.
FROM AN OLD SONG I LEARNED 2
IN JUNIOR HIGHSCHOOL CALLED
MARCHING TO PRAETORIA
The media says anything
says anything says anything
the media says anything
the President says is true.
We are an imperialist nation
ist nation ist nation
we are an imperialist nation
und we shall rule the world.
Amen!
c. Joan Payne Kincaid
Joan P Kincaid
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Blind Denial
Who’s the foul apparition that has been hunting
My soul as prey? What is it you want from me?
Have I not given enough…blood…soul…tears…?
Why must you lash out against me with your
Venomous sting? Oh, I get it…you need an
Excuse for your lack of self-control and feeling,
Right? Sorry, you’ve come to the wrong place.
I won’t give in so easily to your ruthless, icy
Words. I see your game, but it’s an old style…
No pity here. We won’t judge you, they say—
But who are we to judge? They all have a motive,
Right? Or was it a euphemism for ridicule?
I need to get away…see the country…see the world.
Maybe I should start with myself…then you’d see
Where I’m coming from. I don’t ask much from you,
So why do you overreact and always point to pressure?
I smell your fear, seeping through the undressed
Wounds of your self-esteem. Do I threaten you
With my depth of desire…Or does your insecurity
Frighten you? I’ve fallen beyond the torturous
Tunnels of turbulence…Why won’t you wake up?
I’m waiting for a question to your answer.
Christopher David Greiner
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HIROSHIMA IS MY ELDER BROTHER
we were born in grey dust-dead shadows
undertear-shaped tepid raindrops
that fell
fell
fell into the eyes and onto the tongue
we followed its unsteady lurching course into the darkness
imitated its tight-crotched streetwise poses
saw asthmatic light glint on the knives and the guns
and it showed us how to batter an old man and steal his few pounds
and it showed us how to take a car and crash it and watch it blaze
and it showed us how to spend our nights going up into heaven
our days coming down
into hell
and it showed us how to rape a little girl and enjoy her screams
and it showed us how to murder and kill and kill and murder
and stalk the streets the way that power stalks its vanished streets
killing and murdering the million children without a name
and the million-and-first that has a name but never
never
never will use it
for fear of the burning dust and blowing heat
that gets deep down the throat and into the eyes and under the skin
Hiroshima
Oh Hiroshima
has left us in the hands of those
whose minds are burnt away through untouched faces
whose dreams are grey and white and black and grey
who take no care of their bodies
who exhale clouds that cry the face away
who fear an enemy that has never been seen
poisoner that doctors all my drinks
dolorous stroke laying the land waste
foul breath through the leaded air
flash of wrath from the evil eye of God
murder lodged in the guts of harmless killers
face that has my eyes
your mouth
scars from everywhere
who killed
who killed
who killed
Hiroshima
you you and you
all of you
with your uncaring power and your unending wars
you left it for dead
and us lost and grieving beside it
you with your ammonia smile
you with your cyanide charm
I lay a curse on you for all time
for all time
may the road never rise to meet you
may the wind never blow at your back
may the sun never shine in your face
and may the green earth for ever and ever reject you
as you have rejected the green earth
and may your maggot laughter one day blow up in your face
leaving your fractured features like an outline in the dust at the roadside
smeared on the stone
for the death you have dealt
and are dealing still
who killed
who killed
who killed
Hiroshima
you you and
me
I stood among you that day
an assassin like the rest
as we gathered in a plotting of fratricidal fury
and did our brother to death
but he arose again to follow us
and he follows us still
in our nightmares and in the light of day
across the wasted land
through the stink of dead air
into the night-time traitor alleys
that now and forever
are my brothers
domain
Nyki Blatchley
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When all is said …
Who will lament the silence?
After stirring speeches, passionate politics,
futile threats of righteous indignations -
When the winds blow, in endless darkness - (Down in the valley of the shadows) - After left confronts right confronts wrong, and the gung-ho heroes hid in concrete caves.
After none remain to even throw
sticks and stones, or rehearsed rhetoric -
Who will lament the silence?
David Taub
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OUR BEAUTIFUL ENEMY
shiny black bangs falling in shiny black eyes
wild-eyed darlings barely taller than their weapons
languorous barechested juvenile enemy
wiping their fear drenched brow with their shirt
500,000 wistful curlylocked virginal enemy aroused
can’t you see them squirming on the satin sheets
of your waterbed what a harem 500,000 applecheeked enemy
wouldn’t you rather be plucking your mandolin
beside the mahogany hot tub
while your sinuous enemy dances and jiggles the tambourine
you’d love to be wriggling naked in the arms
of the mouthwatering enemy wouldn’t you
love oh a bushelworth contortionist enemy’s intimate embraces
erotocide dreamboat enemy celestial teen enemy fleshpots
than die from steaming pieces of poisonous metals
piercing your flesh
how could you “civilized” even contemplate
burying these tender buds unbloomed
our sweetpea enemy
our gentle and googly eyed enemy
our impish and gracious enemy
our thoughtful and creative enemy
our chickenfeeding enemy
our goatmilking enemy
our breakbakeing enemy
our waterhauling enemy
not to mention our tender and anxious enemy’s
heavenly parents’ melancholy stupor
our undernourished enemy’s blessed infant unable to suck
holy mothers milk coagulated from fear
sacred teachers songs in flames
sainted healers cures scrambled and unrefrigerated
enemy poets radiate prayers electrify laments
in candle lit shelters
not to mention our enemies sexy little kitchen help
unable to clean their serving trays, their ladles and their stewpots
our enemies humble plumbers their dormant snakes
zealous recyclers afraid to compost
our enemies solicitous librarians without a reference
our enemy’s scared shiftless computer operators
our enemies underfunded painters and struggling pianists
our enemy’s cultured commentators with no premieres
our enemies pregnant peasant’s dioxin laden fetus
our enemy’s homeless deranged angelic beggars
kissing your high school graduation ring
in gratitude you sent their miserable landlords
to the heavens in pieces
lets drop banjos and clarinets
cause a bellydance epidemic
faster than medicine
cheaper than bombs
CUE CARDS (for laughing at the bomb)
You can’t go anywhere
without the bleeding bomb these days
went to walk the dog last night
found the leash, rhinestones glittering
around the neck of the slobbering bomb
you think a dog humping your leg
is annoying imagine the bomb
climbing into your lap
standing by the door
on the way to school
little lunchbucket in hand
the bomb puckered its silvery lips
waiting for its goodbye kiss
its be careful hug
the officer of tomorrow
has radial tires on his bomb
combs his bombs his curly bombs
in the rearview mirror
the air force pipes
Beethoven’s bombs
over the beaches
and boardrooms
is that you in the men’s room
shining the shoes of the bomb
for four bits, a pot of java
steaming on the hotplate
thank goodness yesterday
i just caught the bomb
emptying the medicine cabinet
bought a megaton of sausage
for the bar b q
and a big can of Boston Baked Bombs
sliced a few dozen mushroom clouds
preparing the living end of omelettes
this breakfast
had a splitting headache
so I called the bomb
it was busy
read the Bomb Street Journal
see if your investments are taking a dive
good little bombs don’t pick their nose
don’t massage your bomb in public
you know why the bomb isn’t funny
it takes 35 square miles of corn
and melts you like butter
Billy Little
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OBLIGATE AEROBE
“Man is an obligate aerobe”
· Hippocrates
We depend on air.
All death is lack of breath.
Air paradisal, sky-blue, mist-gray, transparent as cellophane around.
Cease to mix and blend air
within us, and we’re done for.
We depend on water,
oxygen-hydrogen minglement,
to cool, quench, sooth us,
hydrate and drench us,
from depths of olive green
to shallows of aqua seas.
We depend on a tranquil backdrop painted in greens and blues.
But we daub it with red of blood, scratch garish orange of explosions, spatula-smear hot scarlet with fire. Wash black with smoke.
Eden to purgatory then.
Undefiled, suspended between heaven and hell, earth was the tabula rasa when man beset it. Given our ration of obligate air and water, we wield upon it furious brush strokes, like a mental patient excoriating his past, to expiate his sins.
Yamile Craven
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Mid-November
Driving east from Lake Michigan,
the world was leeched of color
like a Wyeth print
until the sun abruptly slipped
into the horizon’s stripe
like a photon bomb,
setting the moth-brown oaks aflame—
rust, scarlet, then bloody purple
as the sun’s stare waned
and the sky melted down
the vision again to brown.
So I thought of Hiroshima’s
sudden mushroom of a minor sun
turning the same trick of light
or even the Second Coming
flashing horizonward as predicted,
but neither the folly of man
nor the glory of God
could account for the moment,
so I thought of earth’s tilt
and her consequent seasons
and this season past its peak,
autumn’s autumn, resurrected
in a transient, strangely
supranatural fire.
C.E. Chaffin
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Mushroom
I
Atomic silence
sudden blossom set toward
red heaven’s petal.
II
Sheer burning center
dirty white toadstool covers
frog awaiting kiss.
III
Bergen-Belsen bells
ring, not spring at all, now falls
a different rain
David Schuster
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The Air War
In my sleep,
messages arrive with the force of disintegration. A silence that gathers petals of sound like the beating wings of an atom, raising a cloud of dust and orange that brings night to this desert from far away.
Approach by sky
in hurtling silence,
swooning backward
descent filled with burning embers.
Messages in my sleep.
I am told of other places.
of sand fields so vast
meteors will be swallowed.
roads lined with bodies
sitting patiently in cars, trucks, and tanks.
A descent filled with black aether.
At night we explore
and become soiled with cold.
stepping lightly over plastic mines
left over from a city dream,
carefully arranged
on this square plain
where other planes fall from the sky, melting in bone madness.
Meteorite visitors from far away.
Beating locusts from far away.
A crater dug with the force of far away.
Waking up to the souls of far away.
A sucking death from far away.
Napalm and steel shards from far away.
Ten thousand bodies,
a gift from far away.
A descent from far away
in a maddened place
filled with concrete lizards,
filled with meteorite visitors
and desert dreams.
David Schuster
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The Story As Told (Found In A Capsule Dated 3512)
Before the time of Har Maggido,
Before the burning rain,
Before the dance of the Dragon Mere,
Before the breath of pain
A people lived in this land
Who rode the stars and ocean.
In an Iron Horse they went
And to their steeds, devotion.
Never before and never since
Have such a people lived.
The culture of confusion’s dance, Who take as well as give.
They pulled the blood from Gaia’s veins And then gave back their bones. They ruled the greatest of the fires And took away the sun.
The sun came back to shine again And Gaia healed her wounds.
The people passed along to time, Burned in their fiery doom.
So cover your heads, the rain is near, Remember to wear your masks. Return to Gaia the things you take.
That’s all our mother asks.
Joseph M. McCauley
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Alpha Ray
· first section of Mushroom Cloud Redeye
It was the ‘50s
when they droppped the bomb on us
born in the postwar boom
Our eyes like radar
trained on the horizon
scanning for the high noon
Matt Dillon sudden death
shootout in the OK corral
OD in the bathroom
exhaust pipes pumping
two car dinosaur monoxide
Our pulse plugged in
& thumping
rabid foot
to the beat of the big bang
Dresden
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
White sands raining Uranium-235
Our ears glued to the tube
retinas glowing
bluegreen & horizontal
in the flicker of the cathode’s
buzz & bombardment
Newspeak in Newsweek
Wall St. & Madison Ave.
Winston tastes good like cancer should
Bing Crosy
Bridget Bardot
James Dean
Dinah Shore selling Chevy V-8s
Perry Como pocketing stars like stolen watches
While
tooth & nail down on the floor of
the stacked market tickertape hoopla
Fortune’s Five Hundred
paraded us
doubletime head-on brick wall
into the lead of the Cold War
Swiss Bank destruction derby
When in doubt
slug it out
Dancing hula hoop
Betty Boop
coonskin caps & bobby sox
Chubby Checkers doing the Twist
the Limbo
Cherry dragsters driven off cliffs
silver nitrate
sodium nitrite
cocaine cola
“You got a reefer, man?”
Pur madness
the ‘50s
& we were all cheechakos
still wet behind the ears
tenderfoots lost in the wasteland
brownies & altar boys
sucking nipples of aluminum
& permapress polyester
Mea culpa
mea boca
mea maxima mamella
Mimicking Douglas McArthur
in John Wayne drag
bb-guns blazing
Iwo Jima
Battle of the Bulge
hands in our pants
Too young to understand why
frigid Miss Purse mae us
first period
pledge for the principal
I LIKE IKE
I LIKE ICE
I LIKE
General Motors
pom-poms
Texas S&M
Minnie Mouse spread-eagled
behind Frank Sinatra’s golfcart
Joe McCarthy in the icebox
leading three lives
reds under the beds
blacks on the buses
& Elvis in sequins shaking his thing
shameless hussy
duke of earl
hound dog stud
“How much is that doggie in the window”
Our hearts
geiger counters
gone wild
Art Goodtimes
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Fission
White glow melts life
Freezes shadow, twisted bottle
The birth of the transistor
And then.
Of doom wide open
Flash bang flash bang
Dead ballet in radium
Stuck to the walls that
Disintegrate at the speed of light.
Hiroshima is mother and push-button
Skeletons do the rattle dance.
Together, we are the industry of poison light.
Hiroshima, apotheosis of weapon & machine,
Your centenary will shine a sly beacon
In a forest museum. The extinct
Are preserved and money spurts.
TV spawns a billion little Hitlers:
Radiation Plus, this Island Earth.
A petrified breeze from the virtual trees
Whispers Hiroshima.
S. K. KELEN
Bio-note: S. K. Kelen is an Australian poet. His books include "Atomic
Ballet" (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger 1991), "Dingo Sky" (Sydney:
HarperCollins/Angus & Robertson 1993), "Trans-Sumatran Highway and other
poems" (Canberra: Polonius 1995), and "Dragon Rising" (Hanoi: The Gioi
Publishers, 1998).
Table of Contents
Survivor of the Holocaust
I'm a survivor of the holocaust
A child of nuclear war
I'm the last of the human race
Mankind exists no more
I can't explain why I survived
In this war ravaged land
All I know is I lived somehow
With no one to lend me a hand
My mother died in child birth
My father is long since dead
The sewer system is my home
With rats I make my bed
Ev'rything's been laid to waste
The buildings that stood tall
Are now mere piles of rubble
There is nothing left at all
the land lies bare before me
Where once stood trees and flowers
All because mankind could not
control it's lust for power
The acid rain now eats away
At everything in sight
The sun no longer shines on me
I can't tell day from night
The fallout from the war
Has eaten holes inside my brain
My flesh and bones melt and mix
With the contaminated rain
Dan Armstrong
Table of Contents
No More Breath
Anger
Bloodshed
Famine
War
Which side's winning?
What's the score?
Face to face
Wrath to tongue
Does it matter which side's won?
Ready to kill our own kind
So one can be the better side
Ego's rush
Frozen soul's scorn hurt
Threats are made to end the world
Billions shake
Tremble
Cry
Fearing,
When will be their time to die
Eye to eye
Hate for hate
Vulnerable people
In fear they wait
Women and girls
Men and boys
Which side has the better toys?
Words thrash out
Emotions rattle
Life and death
Senseless battle
Just one push
And millions die
Enemies toward their own kind
Bombs explode
Hello death
Existence gone
No more breath.
Ó Mia Barker
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FORE…
one) Steppes
In 1947,
it was a black and white world, we were right and they were wrong— and we had the bomb.
two) Old Soldiers
When Hitler died
and went to Heaven
he met Genghis Khan
to whom he said
What the Hell are you doing here
whereupon Genghis Khan replied
Attending a lecture on forgiveness
taught by Harry Truman
three) Do Or Die
A number of years ago
i was really worried
about the threat of a
nuclear holocaust
so i put on my skullcap
crossed myself several times
faced east
burned some incense
lit the sacrament
and waited
Coolville, Coolville, Coolville,
7-14, 7-14, 7-14,
it was a clue
so i went to Coolville, (Ohio)
July 14, 1982
and i read poetry
from dawn until dusk
and a crowd gathered
and through the crowd
a stranger wandered
saying, “Love one another”
The following year i was really worried
about the threat of
nuclear contamination,
mass starvation,
world defoliation,
fiscal de-escalation,
nicotine deprivation,
and living at the
Salvation Army,
so i put on my skullcap
crossed myself several times
faced east
burned some incense
lit the sacrament
and waited
Paradise, Paradise, Paradise,
7-14, 7-14, 7-14,
it was a clue so i went to Paradise, (Pennsylvania)
July 14, 1983
and i read poetry
from dawn until dusk
and a crowd gathered
and more poets stepped forward
and read better poetry
and a larger crowd gathered
and through the crowd
a more familiar stranger wandered
saying, “Love one another”
i was still really worried in the year:
1984, Central Park, NYC, (NY), 7-14.
1985, Boston Common, Boston, (MA), 7-14.
1986, High Park, Toronto, Canada, 7-14.
1987, The National Mall, Washington, D.C., 7-14.
1988, Pipe Crossing, Seabrook Beach, (NH), 7-14.
1989, Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, 7-14.
1990, Water Tower, Kill Devil Hills, (NC), 7-14.
1991, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, (CA), 7-14.
1992, Riverview Plantation, Boaz, (WV), 7-14.
1993, Pig Farm, Starks, (ME), 7-14.
1994, The Breakers, Newport, (RI), 7-14.
1995, Java Joe’s, Brattleboro, (VT), 7-14.
1996, Rose Garden, Hartford, (CN), 7-14.
1997, Volcano Pit, Portland, (OR), 7-14.
1998, Public Library, Ward, (CO), 7-14.
1999, Walnut Hills Bar, Dayton, (OH), 7-14,
2000, Wenceslaus Square, Prague, Bohemia, 7-14
2001, The Sphinx, Sahara Desert, Egypt, 7-14
fore) Domino
Peace is a nu
clear reaction
R.U. Outavit
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